j's scratchpad

I have some photos I would like to post on some weblogs, but I’m out of space on my own rented server. (The space is very small.) I began looking at various options for uploading and sharing photos via the Web. Yesterday, I played with Yahoo! Photos long enough to realize it won’t meet my needs. Although it does allow the uploading and storage of photos, sharing is problematic because it doesn’t give permanent URLs for the images. I learned this the hard way because I couldn’t find anything in Yahoo!’s documentation that specifically said permanent URLS wouldn’t be available for the images. I kept trying to figure out why my photos weren’t appearing in the blog posts, even though they were supposedly open to the public. While futzing around, I realized each time I clicked on an image in an album, the URL changed. The URL would only be good for about five minutes.

I can point people to a photo album, but I can’t use a photo on another Web page or weblog.

As frustrating as it is not to be able to share images as I hoped I could via this service, I do appreciate that the changing URLs hamper someone who might want to use an image on someone’s space without appropriate permission. It’s not complete protection, though, because someone could still possibly download a photo and upload it elsewhere. Yahoo! does allow users to block photos from being downloaded.

It doesn’t even seem possible to link images from Yahoo! Photos to their blog platform. I can share a photo album via the 360 weblog, but I can’t integrate images into a blog post. If I want to use a particular image on the blog, I have to upload it separately to the blog. Photos uploaded to a blog have the same permanent URL problem photos uploaded to Yahoo! Photos have.

Two of the nice things about Yahoo!’s service is that it’s possible to order prints from digital photos and users can control access to individual photos and photo albums.

I glanced at Flickr, which Yahoo! now owns. I’m not sure it’s what I want to use, but I might explore it further later.

I tried uploading photos to yet another blog platform, but I kept getting a message that the service is down for maintenance, so I wasn’t successful. Uploading photos to Manila is a slight possibility, but Manila does not allow for the complete deletion of photos. Anything I upload is here permanently. Images might disappear from the list of pictures, but they remain on the server. When I delete a file, I like for it to disappear completely.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005 at 10:55 am and is filed under Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.