Several more mainstream online photo album evaluation

With the advent of digital photography, almost everyone now has hundreds of gigabytes of digital images that they want to post to the Internet to share with friends and family, record their lives, or show off. For bloggers, where should they put a lot of images in their content? Or, what kind of web album/online album do you choose? This has always been a controversial issue, and the choices can be broadly divided into three categories:

1, upload the photos to a professional web album/online photo album service website.

2, upload the photos to their own purchased virtual host, server space, and use the corresponding software to build albums to organize and present.

3, put the photos in the storage space of various BSP/ portal websites, such as Sinang, Sohu, NetEase photo album, Baidu Space, msn live space, QQ photo album, etc.

As for the third option, I personally dislike it. The reason is that the photo storage services of these BSP/ portals lack sufficient openness and autonomy, and there are many restrictions or deficiencies in their presentation and use, and the storage space is also limited. The photos stored above are difficult to relocate as a whole, there are restrictions on external chain references, and you can't see them in RSS... In the long run, it may cause you even more trouble.

For the first two choices, it should be said that each has advantages and disadvantages, you can choose according to your actual needs:

The first, the use of professional network photo album/online photo album website services, there is a strong hardware guarantee, technical support, a good browsing experience and user interface, its application and maintenance for users almost no technical threshold, its free account can basically meet the needs of most users, while the fee account will bring better service. At the same time, these sites emphasize the concept of sharing and community, and have the function of "meeting friends" or communicating with friends and expanding social networks.

Second, the advantage is more flexible and free, such as different access permissions for different photos can be set, there are no artificial restrictions on the use of the overall relocation in the future by their own control, if the use of fixed domain name to build albums, after the relocation will not affect the previous BLOG, forum reference links. However, relatively speaking, the cost and threshold are higher, network technology, the cost of purchasing domain names and space, software installation and configuration, etc., may become the obstacles in front of ordinary users; The access speed and stability of web hosting, the browsing experience of self-built albums, and the interaction and sociality of other users cannot be compared with the first option. Therefore, most people are better off with the first option.

For the first solution, I recommend three web photo/online photo album sites that I have used myself: Flickr, ikaca, and Youpai.

Flickr.com. This is the world's most well-known web photo album site, later acquired by yahoo, strong capital, strong technology, a lot of innovation (many of which have become the industry model of web photo album), a large number of users from all over the world, browsing speed and experience are good. You can upload videos. Free user storage space is unlimited, the monthly upload traffic limit is 100M; For $24.95 a year, subscribers get unlimited uploads, storage, unlimited album Settings, rich statistics, and more. I have been using it since January 2005.

The problem is that: 1, free users can only display the latest 200 photos on the website (has been quoted to the blog/ forum can still be displayed in the blog/ forum page), and can only create three albums, can not provide the original size image download;

Ikaca.sh.cn: Chinese name is also called love click, interface is one of my favorite reasons, Baidu encyclopedia to his explanation is: ikaca/ Love Click, is a new way of life, through ikaca you can feel the changes of the world every moment in the most intuitive way, at the same time you are part of ikaca, always pick up the camera in the hand, let the world freeze at that moment, and record with everyone to share,ikaca is a collection of works display, photography friends, photos Enjoy, free online photo albums and other rich features of the comprehensive platform.

Web site :http://www.ikaca.sh.cn"

The advantage of Ikaca is that it is free, massive, supports external chain, has no ads, and the atmosphere of the whole site is relatively upward. ikaca is one of the more professional websites among the free online photo albums. I think IKACA users have more mature photography skills, and another point is that the website management is relatively strict. In my opinion, ikaca is slightly inclined to sns mode except for online photo albums

Hit the net again. It just celebrated its third birthday and released a series of updates to officially launch its VIP charging business and a new website policy. Specifically, there are now seven different categories of VIP products for ordinary VIP (public, advanced, master) and online VIP (entrepreneurial, economic, practical, elite, all-in-one). The difference is mainly the difference between monthly upload traffic and external chain traffic, so as to facilitate users to choose according to their personal needs (online store version is designed for commercial purposes such as Taobao store owners). There are special restrictions). For details, see another shot net's own instructions.

I have been using the website for more than two years, with more than 3,500 photos and more than 62,000 page views. My experience is that Flickr has high similarity, stable service (it does not collapse like some domestic network albums, and there are almost no problems with daily access), and reasonable limits (61M upload traffic per month for free users, unlimited storage capacity, and more than half of Flickr users' daily access). Album unlimited), the speed is acceptable, the interface is simple and beautiful, the functions are complete and diverse, the open API, there are upload clients, one-click moving (moving in) tools. Some time ago Yupoo was criticised by many for preparing to charge users to add advertisements to the images of free users. However, it is commendable that the team can quickly listen to various opinions and adjust operational policies, such as changes in advertising forms, such as the segmentation and different pricing of VIP products. For "always beta" web2.0 companies, this flexibility and openness is important.

As an aside, I am in favor of charging for online photo albums/online photo album sites on a free basis. The reason is very simple, reasonable price charges, for the user is affordable, for the lack of profit model and very expensive such websites, it is necessary for survival and development. As regular users, we don't want a website that we have used and felt good for a long time to shut down because we can't make a profit after burning through the venture capital. To complain that the net does not provide a direct right click copy image address outside the link to the forum, it is better to complain why you want to fill the forum does not give you enough large and convenient map space; And those shop owners who scold because they do not allow themselves to quote pictures for free in Taobao stores are a little unreasonable.

The regulatory risks faced by domestic online photo album service websites may become the risks of users, but we can only pray for the safety of seriously operated websites; The inconvenience caused by "first review and then send" to both the website and the user can only be tolerated; In addition, some news and political discordant pictures, pornography/art blurred pictures, I am afraid to escape the fate of deletion.

Look at the book. Another domestic online photo album/online photo album website. But maybe the big bad Wolf students who look at the book may not agree with my division, according to their own positioning, look at the book is a "picture blog".

On the one hand, good-looking book promises users that "photos do not need to be compressed, batch upload, support external links", "before January 1, 2010, good-looking book promises to do not do any restrictions on bandwidth and storage space for personal use." It should be said that compared with other photo album services, it is the most generous one. On the other hand, the user experience is indeed very different from flickr and the domestic imitation flickr website, more emphasis on "story", "activity", "community" and other concepts, you can see that they will keep users in their own website, strengthen user interaction and sharing of good intentions. Combined with the recording function and upload ppt function, good-looking book has been quite distinctive in terms of the theme and application of education. At the same time, this kind of "story" as a unit, graphic, pay attention to the picture and its description in each story in the "order" and "coherent" form, is also very suitable for writing travel notes or activities.