'Net Features : photo sharing

Make Photos Interactive on Your Website

Mike Phillips — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:20:00 GMT

We all want our website visitors to spend more time on the site and interact with our content. Photographs are a good way to keep people interested in your content but, traditionally, have not offered much in the way of interaction. Phlook has a solution.

By uploading your photo to Phlook, you then get an embeddable piece of code. This is then entered into your content and the photo appears with several interactive options - such as the ability to leave a note, vote on a photograph, zoom functions and photos can be e-mailed to others.

While this might not be for every website, for some, it could prove to be a good way to keep people engaged and give them a reason to come back often. After all, people like the opportunity to have their voices heard and they will often check to see if their comments have resulted in any discussion on the site. This might also be an interesting way to gather feedback about new products or even website designs. Think of it as a way to build community with your photographs and to give people the opportunity to "have their say" about the content on your website.

See a Phlook demo here.

Stipple is another, related service. Here, users can tag photos anywhere on the Web, including using their Facebook accounts, via a mouseover. And beyond people, items within the photo can be tagged. Not only can items be tagged, but particular items within the photo can actually be purchased by users, directly from the photo. The publisher can then earn a portion of the revenue or earn per click, depending on the set revenue model.

Making Images Accessible - Snapixel Stock Photography

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:45:00 GMT

One of the challenges with using stock photography (besides the fact that others can use it too) is that the cost is nearly out of reach for many Web professionals and designers. Creative Commons, while helpful, does not really provide the deep creative library one would hope.

New photography site Snapixel hopes to correct all that by combining elements of the photo sharing site Flickr and the popular stock photography site Istockphoto. The service's recently announced Openstock offering is a system that provides photographers with an easy-to-market solution to sell photos.

"The Snapixel model extends selling power to all levels of photographers. While not every image belongs in a stock photography marketplace, our ultimate goal is to widen the creative spectrum of traditional stock photography, without decreasing the value," said Ivan Wong, COO and co-founder of Snapixel.

Built using the Amazon Web Services(TM) cloud-computing platform, Snapixel offers photographers of all levels to opportunity to upload and organize their photos. Photos for sale can be distributed with a standard and extended license, or Creative Common licensing can be applied to images that are not for sale. Photos can be easily purchased with Snapixel credits, and prices vary depending on the license type and size of an image. Most of the images found by Website Magazine (even those of high resolution) were in the five to twenty Euro range.

Snapixel offers 1GB of free storage or a premium package for unlimited storage.