The Multi-User Photo Archive-Site…
So for quite a while now I have been looking to find a photo site that does everything you would expect from a photo sharing site. It would need be secure, sexy, and socially aware. Basically, it “just needs to work.” And while there are plenty of photo sharing outfits out there no really has gotten it to work without certain pitfalls. In fact, I would say the closest are the companies that set out with photo management as a secondary venture.
I come from a moderately sized family and keeping in touch is easier than ever before. But once you ask anyone to share something with you via the internet, email, or social networking site…well suddenly one of the parties involves is bamboozled with an insurmountable task.
I have tried just about everything from getting up and going to friends’ homes with portable hard drives, to setting up my own FTP server and gallery, to social networking sites like Facebook, to even a shared Flickr account. But the task to easily share, backup, and gather photos from family members is nearly impossible. Mix in my friends and IT IS impossible.
So I have to say that I am excited about the potential that a little find called Phanfare holds.
At first glace it offers about the same services that all the other guys do. With several exceptions. Phanfare offers support in some form or another to move/upload your photos onto their site, doesn’t require you to be a paid user to join, offers Social Networking site compatibility, 1GB for the free user, Unlimited for the paid user ( ~$55/year ), and even lets the free users download their full resolution photos without extra charge. Additionally they offer a nice web interface, along side their Mac or PC native clients and some nice social features built-in to their site to manage you photos’ security/viewing permissions, order prints, and allow for photo hosting for blogs and websites. Another perk is the support for Picassa and iPhoto via their plug-in architectures. This really comes in handy if you are like me and trying to go through and tag your backlog of photos and wish for you hours of meta tagging to transparently post to the web for easy searching/organizing.
I know that this all seems kinda standard but if you checkout their feature set you might find that several of the things they offer just aren’t as refined or wall-less on the “other guys” sites. While the service does have some downsides….like the limitation of photo file size, limitation to the JPEG file format ( read: no RAW support ), limited HD video support (read: file size limitations ), and of course it has its own funny glitches when it comes to uploading and sorting photos at present based on their meta-data. But, all in all, if they keep up with the updates and continue to grow. This could be the end all personal photo sharing site.
With iPhoto 2009′s new feature set about to be released today, my hope is that Phanfare will update their plug-in to better streamline the iPhoto upload process. It would also be nice to see if Apple opens up iPhoto’s plugin structure to work as easily as their built in Facebook & Flickr sync for tagging purposes. Honestly, the only thing that really competes as far as simplicity and social features to Phanfare would be Facebook if they started offering full-resolution file retrieval, remove the album size limitations, and continue to offer unlimited storage.
Perhaps it is the state of things at late, but I am truly disappointed by the lack of viable options for family/friend photo sharing. The home media server front always looks promising but still always comes up short in interface and API. The latest from HP and MicroSoft (Read: more HP… ) looks promising but still not the value it should be.
Until the market matures, or someone comes up with a home server that you can run yourself ( and hopefully co-locate ) I would sincerely suggest checking out Phanfare.
For some more interesting reads check out the following links:
http://blog.phanfare.com/2008/11/why-do-we-take-photos-and-videos/
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/why-we-shoot-home-videos/
