websites

16 Photo Sharing Web Sites Worth Using

November 16, 2009 By Andy Merrett 3 Comments

Here are sixteen online photo sharing services worth taking a look at.

Got a favourite not on the list? Share it in the comments below.

1. Flickr

We all know Flickr, right? Easy to upload, search, tag and share photos and videos with a premium service available.

2. Photobucket

Another favourite with a nice look and feel.

3. Picasa

You need a Google account to get the most from Picasa, after which you can edit, share, tag, favourite and chat about your pictures. As you’d expect from a Google product, there are plenty of features being added all the time, and extra storage available at fair prices.

4. SmugMug

Not only photos on this great looking ad free site but also HD video on these pay accounts.

5. Shutterfly

The service claims free, unlimited, unrestricted size photo storage and the ability to create a range of products from your own pictures.

6. Webshots

A huge collection of photos including ones from professional photographers, available to purchase electronically and as prints.

7. Piczo

Designed for use by teenagers, with plenty of glitz and glamour, photo editing tools and communities.

8. Tinypic

A registration-free site for storing photos and videos, with unique links offered for each item much like URL shorteners work.

9. Snapfish

A service for uploading and then creating products from photos including standard prints, calendars, canvases and more.

10. Fotki

Upload, browse and rate photos or keep an online photo journal.

11. MyPhotoAlbum

Focusing on greater personalisation of online photo albums, with your own subdomain at myphotoalbum.com, plus real merchandise.

12. Picli

A Digg-style voting system for photos, pushing interesting pics to the front page.

13. Photosnack

Creates photo slideshows from your uploaded pictures and then share them across the web.

14. Glowfoto

A social network with a heavy focus on photos, and a platform for sharing images on other sites.

15. PhotoApe

A photo sharing service with an emphasis on mobile usage.

16. Photowall

As the name suggests, displays a scrolling wall of photos from users around the world.

The 101 Most Useful Websites

April 15, 2008 By Admin 10 Comments

I came across this list a couple of weeks ago, but it is a really interesting one so I will share it with you guys. Basically the Telegraph (a British newspaper) compiled a list with the 101 most useful websites around the net, divided into technology, entertainment, advice, house and home, social, shopping and travel.

Here are the 10 websites included under technology:

Family Websites: Keeping Your Family Intact Virtually

February 2, 2008 By Loki 3 Comments

The family that prays together stays together. Isn’t that cute? You see pictures of families going to church, celebrating the holidays. There are even a few of these photographs where the whole family went on a beach, had some fun time in Disneyland, and threw in a party for Junior. These and a lot of other stories are worth remembering.

Well, surprise, surprise. The Internet not only allows you online photo-sharing, blogging, and video-posting, but also brought these three (and other online features) together to bring you a revolution in online networking. Let’s meet some “Family Websites,” shall we?

FamilyLobby

First in line is FamilyLobby, where you can create your own family’s private website. Family friendly and easy to use, FamilyLobby has one goal in mind: to “help keep you and your family together, no matter how far apart you may be.”

Browsing through its sample websites, I can say that it can be easily personalized. For one, the website can contain links such us your family tree, journal, chatroom, and of course, photos and videos. Also, you can add in news and calendar of events of what your family might be into, and further remind them that you will be holding a party if the schedule slipped off their minds. Further, you can allow registry of other people who happen to pass by, acting as an online networking website, too. And lastly, it’s free!

MyFamily

Next up is MyFamily. Similar to the one above, MyFamily has these following features among others: What’s New (updates on the website), Photos, Videos, Trees, Events, and People (or contacts). Added to its long roster of features are Discussions, SnapGenie, and Files. Discussions seemingly act as the family’s online dinner chat, where stories and opinions travel across from different ends of the table. SnapGenie is a storyteller in a way. It allows recordings of people’s voices (via phone and Internet’s technology). You just type in your phone number as well as the number of the relative you are calling, and MyFamily will store your conversation for the rest of the family to hear, be it reminiscing the love between your grandparents, or a greeting from a loved one who happened to travel to a different country. The Files section is just it. You can store files for your family to download or look at.

MyFamily has three membership levels. First is, of course, the free level. After a year of using the website, you can see your videos and photos. However, it will take a while before you can access them. Paying $29.95 a year gives you a Gigabyte per month of storage for your files, be it a photo or a video, while paying $99.95 a year maximizes your storage to 10 Gigabytes per month, plus options to customize your website.

TheFamilyPost

Third that I found is TheFamilyPost. It allows you to build a very flashy family website in an instant! It has a tabbed interface with contents like the other two, from photos to videos, calendar to history, to even a directory. To liven things up, it also included a My Kids tab to display personalized websites of your children, and a Newsletter and a Message Board tab to discuss things and update other relatives of the latest family info.

After a year of free trial, TheFamilyPost can allow you unlimited photos and videos once you become their premium member, for only $5.50 a month or $60.50 a year.

There are other family websites around. You can just go look for them in any search engine and see if it fits your need (they almost always allow photos, videos, calendar or events posting, and a journal). But please hear my advice. Don’t be blinded by showy or cleanly laid out pages. You should always check for the privacy policy of the website you are to register your family into. After all, it’s your family’s private memories that will be shared through it. Check user comments and demo sites of these websites, as you can get information on their privacy levels from them. And putting up family memorabilia doesn’t always mean that those will stay on the site forever. Try knowing how to take them down or delete them. This might help in cases where you don’t want to share things even with your relatives.

Finally, the Internet has a way to put your whole family in the virtual world. Just be a little watchful and secured, because it is your family that’s being registered in the cyberspace, not just you.

IE7Pro 2.0: A New Year’s Gift from Internet Explorer

February 1, 2008 By Loki 4 Comments

Here’s a quick news from Internet Explorer 7 or IE7 this year. Some time last year, the Internet Explorer team released an add-on, named IE7Pro, for their latest browser software. Some of the features that this add-on offers include management of your tabs, a new drag-and-drop option for opening links, proxy switching option, spelling check as you type on text boxes, and blockers of advertisements and Flash applications.

Last January 2, the IE team has released the 64bit IE7Pro Version 2.0. It feels more flexible being fully modular than the past versions, in which the creators hope for stability of the software lie on. Also, they team claims that “you can customize not just Internet Explorer, but even your favorite website according to your need and taste using IE7Pro.”

Further, there are Language Packs that IE7Pro boasts of, although only Chinese and English are the only complete translation options as of the moment. However, this can help in customization of your browser, as you can translate the entire IE7Pro to your own native language.

Also, despite the name, IE7Pro 2.0 works for IE6, too. It can transform your dusty IE6 browser to a hippy and modern look and feel. That’s great news for both the multiple-window-browsing fans and the tabbed-browsing fans alike. You can get the add-on from their official download site and see if it fulfills its goal to make your IE browser “friendlier, more useful, secure, and customizable. See for yourself.

18 Undiscovered Websites Every Gamer Should Know

January 23, 2008 By Skellie 160 Comments

The gaming niche is characterized by its haves and have-nots. You’ve seen Kotaku, IGN, GameSpot, Joystiq, 1UP and the others, but what about the great, lesser-known gaming sites?

This post introduces 18 great gaming sites you might not have seen before. Whether you’re looking for freebies, music, laughs or oddities, there’s something here for occasional and hardcore gamers alike.

1. Overclocked Remix is a community hub of users who painstakingly remix and arrange video game music. There are thousands of tracks available for download. If you like the soundtrack to your favorite game, you can bet it has been remixed and reworked here.

2. The Freeware Indie Games Database offers just under 1,000 play-tested freeware titles from independent game developers. The games here are innovative and unique. Some of them are bound to be re-developed as Wii titles.

3. POKE is a light-weight utility that allows you to cheat in almost any single player game, whether it’s already published or to be published in the future.

4. The Daedalus Project gets into the minds of MMORPG players. The website’s author has surveyed over 35,000 gamers and provides a detailed break-down of his findings in areas such as the player life-cycle, making friends and status reversal. It’s fascinating stuff.

5. Gaming Magazines of the Pre-Internet Era is a treasure trove for retro gamers. It links out to .PDF databases of old and out of print gaming magazines.

6. The Grand List of Role Playing Game Clichés is a list of 100+ painful clichés any RPG fan would have encountered before. My favorite? The No! My beloved peasant village cliché: “The hero’s home town, city, slum, or planet will usually be annihilated in a spectacular fashion before the end of the game, and often before the end of the opening scene.”

7. GameCakes is the website for people who love cake and video games. These game-themed cakes run the gamut, from the bizarre to the majestic. The scrumptious photos will have you baking your own cupcakes in no time.

8. CrazyPC is the hardcore gamer’s place for computer accessories. All the neon, case mods, plexiglass, tubes and coolant fluid you can poke a memory stick at.

9. VGMusic is host to 24,000+ midi versions of video game tracks from all your retro favorites: Megaman, Mario, Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog, et al.

10. Build Your Own Gaming Computers is a website dedicated to helping you… well, you can probably guess. Gaming rigs sell for thousands of dollars and learning to build your own can save you lots of cash. This website provides advice on the entire process, from choosing parts to installation.

11. Abandonia offers thousands of abandonware DOS downloads. Abandonware essentially means games which aren’t sold anymore, prompting their release into the public domain. They’re the games you might have owned and loved as a child or teenager. Chances are you’ll find some old favorites here.

12. Jay is Games sources out the best casual games and brings them directly to you. The blog’s authors sure know their stuff and their opinions are worth listening to. Subscribe to their feed for a daily stream of gorgeous, idle distractions.

13. Old Grandma Hardcore is the blog of a foul-mouthed, lovable gamer grandma (with the pictures to prove it!). No, we’re not talking Brain Training and The Sims — we’re talking games like Bioshock and The Darkness. This grandma really is hardcore!

14. Insert Credit is a multi-author Japanese games and culture blog specializing in breaking news from the land of the rising sun.

15. Replacementdocs is an online archive of .PDF game manuals for thousands of popular games. If you’ve experienced the frustration of losing the manual to your favorite title, replacementdocs should have a solution for you.

16. Wonderland is an odds-and-ends gaming blog mainly known for its cool gamecrafts. From Darth Vader backpacks to Quake coasters, this blog is proof that gamers are an arty bunch.

17. The Speed Demos Archive is host to hundreds of videos documenting the efforts of those dedicated individuals who’ve conquered games in the shortest time possible. Watch epic games like Half Life 2 and Icewind Dale beaten before your lunch-break is over.

18. The System Requirements Lab analyzes your computer, benchmarking it against the minimum requirements of a specific product. Ever wondered if your computer can handle that gorgeous new release? Now you’ll know.

Update: Here are some more great websites that you might not have seen before, suggested from our readers: