Tabby’s blog

For many years, internet users have treated online photo services like a batch of holiday snapshots, looking at them for a while, then leaving them to collect dust on a shelf as soon as something new comes along.  Smilebox.com, a start- up based in Redmond, Washington, is offering customers the oppotunity to build online scrapbooks with animation, music, and artwork.  In a market cluttered with free services that struggle to produce a profit, Smilebox is actually attracting paying customers.  Smilebox.com users pay $1 or $2 to choose from 350 graphic templates for their digital photos, or pay a $5 monthly subscription for unlimited access to the templates.

Shutterfly is an independent company with a singular focus- you and your pictures....your story.  Shutterfly claims to understand and share your passion to create and communicate.  Everyone at Shutterfly is also a customer, deeply committed to delivering th highest quality products and services while making things as easy as possible.  Shutterfly has three main goals:

1. We make it easy to organize, share and create.  All your pictures can be stored on Shutterfly free of charge without limitations, restrictions or deletion.  Your pictures are instantly online and friends can see them without signing up.  Your special memories can be turned into personalized gifts, and there are several "How to" tips to help with everyrhing you need or want to know.

2. We will inspire you in so many ways.  Shutterfly provides a community meeting place where members can exchange ideas.  Shutterfly also quarantees customer satisfaction.

3. We are dedicated to making the world a better place by helping you share life's joy.

Photobucket is a photo sharing and hosting site owned by News Corp.  In addition to photo hosting, Photobuscket allows its users to upload video clips which can be edited with an integrated video remixing tool designed by Adobe.  Users can also make their own profiles and portfolios to share with other users.  The service hosts almost three billion user photos and is one of the most-trafficked photo services on the Internet.  This year Photobucket integrated fellow 2008 Webware 100 winner Photoflexer as the built in editing tool, an added a great new feature that allows you to tag people in photos and browse Photobucket photos on your Tivo.

Would you like to capture your passion for photography and architecture in a few snaps while making a few extra dollars?  A real estate photography service is a terrific and inexpensive home-based business to start and operate.  There are thousands of real estate agents and homeowners that simply don't have the time, equipment, or skills to take professional photographs of home or building they are selling or listing for sale.  The best method of marketing a real estate photography service is t simply arrange appointments with real estate agents and present a portfolio of homes, buildings, and properties that you have photographed.  Ideally, the service should be provided to clients in both film and digital image format.  Surprisingly, photographing only fifty houses a week and charging $25 per photographed home will produce revenue in excess of $50,000 per year.

Picasa is an interesting photo sharing website.  Picasa is used to instantly locate and organize all the pictures off your computer.  There are six key features that Picasa offers.  The first two are as follows:

1. Find pictures you forgot you had.  This website can organize your complete collection of photos by scanning the images on your computer and organizing them by date.

2. Picasa can move and re-name pictures from inside itself.  You simply drag and drop the pictures from one folder to another.  Picasa will make the change permanent after confirming with the user.  Pictures can also be renamed individually or as a group for better organization for easier future access.

I have been searching for a clear definition of photo sharing on the web.  The best on I could find was provided by Wikipedia.  Photo sharing is defined as the publishing or transfer of a user's digital photos online, thus enabling the user to share them with others.  The photos can be shared publicly or privately.  There are several websites used for photo sharing.  Flikr claims to be almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.  When I viewed Flikr, I found their two main goals:

1. We want to help people make their content available to the people who matter to them.

2. We want to enable new ways of organizing photos and video.

Photo services are very useful to the business world.  Whether for print, advertising, or on-line sales, photo services are frequently used.  Do you shop on the internet?  Photo services were used to create the merchandise display.  Pictures or videos are uploaded for your convenience.  Everybody does it!  Department stores, small boutiques, real estate agencies, car dealerships- anyone who sells their merchandise or products on the internet makes use of photo services.  It makes all of our lives much easier by bringing our needs to our fingertips.  This is beneficial to the buyer and the business owner because the products can be easily accessed by the buyer.  What a modern convenience!