Online Photo Albums

Many online photo sites exist providing storage and online album distribution. Most are free. I have tried a few and prefer Sony's Image Station and Shutterfly because neither requires guests to create an account or log in when viewing photo albums.

Before June 2004, Image Station was the better option because it allowed guests to download the original photos, a feature which now requires their premium service with an annual subscription fee. Now both sites have the same features. I still prefer Image Station's user interface.

These services make creating online photo albums quick and easy. However, if you have enough room on your personal website, you may choose to host your own albums instead of using one of these services. Creating album websites can be time consuming. I have found a fabulous free program that will create the album with little time and effort. The program is called jAlbum and requires Java Virtual Machine 1.3 or higher installed. This is different than JavaScript. Java is useful for various open source applications and can be downloaded free from Sun Microsystems. (Get more recommendations on free and open source programs at my Open Source Programs posting).

I have recently tried Yahoo! Photos and think it works pretty well.  I got stuck using it because Yahoo! directs photo attachments to this service when a user tries to save attachments to his Briefcase.  It's an underhanded move, but it did get me to try their service.