I was standing in my storage facility this weekend, trying to decide what I could trash. My husband found a box, and then another box, filled with old scrapbooks. This is why I love digital cameras – I’ve eliminated the need for physical scrapbooks that eventually gather dust in my storage facility.
Of course, there are now as many options for creating online digital albums as there are for creating physical ones. I probably have albums mouldering out in cyberspace now. There’s Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug, PhotoBucket and too many more to count. The newest of the bunch, PicWing, has a twist or two that make it stand out in the crowd a bit.
PicWing, allows you to email or upload photos to your albums. Like any photo site, you can always access and share your albums via a web address. It’s the widgets that make the difference.
The first nifty widget works with your Chumby? Don’t have a Chumby? Neither do I, although at the moment I sort of want one. The Chumby is a little gadget that pulls down information from the Internet (sports, weather, etc) and now, it retrieves photos from your PicWing album. Of course, the Chumby requires a wireless network, which sort of eliminates me giving this little item to my Grandma, but I still like the idea.
The next nifty widget is a digital picture frame. I like the idea of this, but I feel the execution is a bit flawed. Right now, because it’s a beta frame, the PicWing team is putting these frames together by hand. Their frame, which costs $249, look identical to my own digital frame that I picked up one Christmas for $65. Of course, my frame doesn’t receive over the air updates from PicWing, displaying all my online photo albums. It’s a great idea, but I’m a little wary about the price point considering other frames on the market.
Finally, you can also install a simple desktop widget – sort of a digital picture frame for the desktop. Since my Mom has a computer, I could conceivably install the widget on her machine. Whenever I uploaded new photos, they’d appear in her desktop widget.
While I’m not ready to jump Flickr-ship yet, I like the ideas that PicWing is implementing – daring to get away from the computer.
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Discussion
I like their slogan “Free your pictures”.
I have just given it a try and I like some of the features of Picwing. First of all the sign-up is process super smooth. I have not tried the desktop widget and it worked like a charm and updated my pictures when I emailed them (when I emailed a 500KB picture it did not show up though).
The desktop widget uses Adobe AIR and is super easy to install.
I will sure spread the word about this service to my site visitors.
Collagist ~ do more with your pictures ~
ps: did you notice our mantra?