Project to explore photo hosting and sharing sites

We are BACK!…… at a new time and day.

At the end of the last academic year, in December and January, we had a project to make a small Flickr site as a project and use it to give a short Show-and-Tell style presentation. (A picture is worth a thousand words.)

I wasn't very happy with the results for a few reasons:
Two people never showed up, didn't give a presentation.
Some people had very few pictures.
Some people had few or no tags.
Most people did not create any sets (albums).
Often there was no organization or ordering of the photos.
Many pictures have no English titles, captions, or descriptions.
No profile picture. (Put something there.)
No profile. (Write a little something.)
No comments. (Link to other students and make a few comments on their photos.)
Sites were not public. (Too much privacy! I don't think it is so dangerous. But you could make your site only for contacts or friends, and then invite us to be your contacts or friends.)
No badges. (Try making one and put it on your blog or somewhere else to direct people to your photos.
No favorites. (You may find some photos taken by other people which you love. Mark them as Favorites and they will appear on your page of Favorite photos.)

We are going to do this project over! Our goal is to demonstrate that we understand, and can use the various features and even teach others how to use them. In fact, if you finish, please help teach another student how to use these features!

In addition, this time we will compare 2 different photo hosting services. In order to do this, you will have to make a second photo site at any othe rphoto hosting site. It doesn't have to be an English site; it is OK if the site is available in Japanese. We can still use it and compare it with Flickr, using English. Here are some suggestions:

Picasa
It is owned by Google, and if you have a Blogger account, you can use you Google ID to log in to Picasa as well as Blogger, Gmail, and other Google services. Today, I showed you my Picasa web albums. Picasa gives you one gigabyte of free photo storage. Privacy controls are not very sophisticated, however. Photos are kept at the original size.

Facebook
It is social networking plus photos. The photos are downsized to about 600 by 450 pixels. You can upload 60 pictures in each album. You can have unlimited albums. Free. I showed you my Facebook pictures today.

Others
There are many others. Explore and find a good photo hosting and sharing site! Try to read about it first.
Photobucket
Smugmug
Fotki
Zooomr
Photoshop Express (only available in the US?)

Here is a useful link which reviews 7 alternatives to Flickr: (late 2007)
http://www.photographybay.com/2007/12/03/flickr-alternatives/

More alternatives:
www.photographybay.com/2008/02/11/45-photo-sharing-sites/

Q. What is the minimum number of photos you would need to upload to evaluate a site?
A. You would need to have enough photos to make a few sets or albums. Probably 9 or 10 is enough.

You can use the same photos for the two sites if you want, and see which site makes the photos look better.

If you don't have any pictures to use, take a walk around the campus, go to Tsutsuji Matsuri, or visit the pond on the Tokyo University campus, about 10 minutes walk from us.

Another consideration is the uploading process. Some photo sites let you upload by e-mail or directly from your cell-phone! If you can find a site which lets you do that, it might be easier.