After I stopped renewing my .Mac account, I was looking for a new place to post my family photos and decided to check out Flickr to see what all the fuss was about. Well, I'm glad I did. It is an awesome photo sharing web site. Not only do they have numerous tools to help you manage and upload your photos, but there are also so many ways to interact and connect with others. The only downside was that the free account is limited. You can only create 3 sets, you only upload a certain amount of photos per month and of course you can only store a limited amount of photos. The upside is that the cost of a year long account is only $24.95, a fourth of what my .Mac account costs and there are virtually no restrictions. There are unlimited sets, bandwidth and storage space. It is a very good deal.
Although the Alumnae Association has it's own online photo galleries, I thought a prescence on Flickr would help connect with alums that are also on Flickr. I have also created a group on Flickr that alums can join. It helps that the same software I use to manage our online galleries, also has a built in option to easily upload photos to Flickr. The program is called JetPhoto Studio. It is a free application that works on Windows and Macs. It's a fantastic tool for organizing your photos, as well as creating wallpaper, screensavers, flash galleries and publishing galleries to the web.
Another very useful tool for working with Flickr is the social web browser called Flock. It is based on Firefox and integrates with Flickr and PhotoBucket. It also has builtin blogging tools and a RSS news reader.

20 December 2006, 16:45
I've used and loved Flickr for a long, long time now -- the free version of it is precisely what I need.
And well within my price range.
One of the lovely things I like about Flickr is the ability to surf other people's photos, to tag photos, put notes on photos, and belong to photo communities.
I like being able to set photos to different privacy settings, allowing me to share some with just friends, and some with family, and some for the public, and some just for myself.
On top of all of it, the whole thing is easy to use. What more could you ask for?