REVIEWS: Photo hosting & DIY book sites

Reviewed by Brian Jacobson of CoPA

1. flickr: Despite recent international troubles (namely Germany and China) with censorship, flickr remains the emperor of online photo management and sharing applications. It's free to sign up and post - to a point. The wise owl buys the $25 pro account with unlimited storage and bandwidth. This site also allows for deep "creative license" encoding so people can't (theoretically) host your stuff elsewhere or use it for commercial purposes without your consent.

2. BIGHUGELabs: Really, a whole lot of fun. Turn your flickr-hosted photos into a number of online slideshow variations, toys, utilities, and so on. My favorite is the LOLCats Generator.

3. Qoop!: This is the best place so far to take your flickr account to the next level. Some items are too cheesy for the strict artist (mugs, keychains) unless said artist can take such convention and make a statement. What is notable here is the ability to make quality but simple 20-page photobooks inexpensively and easily (with many malleable steps).

4. FlickrNation: A useful blog/site profiling highlights and issues going on with flickr, but run by outside users and not the company itself.

5. Zazzle: Overall a neat store, but featured here are high-quality postcards. Still pricey but cheaper and with more options than most local vendors.

6. Lulu: One of the premier Self-Publishers out there. Bookmaking is a bit more expensive here but the end result is a real book with a real spine (and dustcover). Plus Lulu helps guide you in buying and selling books through their site similar to Amazon.com

7. Zooomr: A few disgruntled yet talented and powerful users of flickr decided they could do it better and although the jury is still out it is starting to look that way. Recommended.

8. Photobucket: The old man of online photo-sharing, I still keep a pro account here as well. Why? I like to keep complete collections of stuff I'm working on (along with more personal, family works) while leaving select art-prone pieces to flickr for scrutiny. Also, photobucket makes it easier (and more possible) to host a photo on one of my blogs.

9. Picasa.Google: More or less a desktop album tool than a website. But with purposes very similar to Photobucket, flickr, and company, this is another site friendly to services such as "Blogger" and company.

10. Shutterfly: Another example of print-making service for making books, calendars, invitations, etc. Not flickr-linked but more mindful of common internet users.

11. New World Digital Arts: A premier provider of high resolution slide scanning, film scanning, and more. They also offer photo restoration services, DVD slide show movies, custom T-shirts, and VHS, VHS-C, 8mm, Hi8, Digital 8mm, and Sony Beta tape to disk transfers.