Flickr

Flickr is Yahoo!'s website for online photo storing and sharing. The website is huge with millions of users and offers free accounts alongside the paid service.

Technical Support

You don't usually want to contact them, but when you need to - how do they react?

Flickr's support team normally responds to emails within a few days. This is considered quite good in the industry.

Privacy

While photo websites are about sharing, you may not want to share all of your photos with everyone who happens to stumble upon them. What privacy options do the services provide?

Photo sets can be protected so only family and/or friends are able to view them. Sometimes you may choose to grant people 'guest passes' that let them view an otherwise private set until you decide to deactivate the pass. You may also protect individual photos. Note that you can only designate people with Yahoo! Accounts as friends and family in Flickr, which may make it a bit more difficult for them.

Photos Organization

Most people don't want to just dump all their photos as one big stream. Users normally want ways to organize their photos in a way that makes sense. What organization mechanisms do the services support?

Flickr employs the concept of photo sets and Collections. You group related photos into sets, and related sets into collections. This is in effect a two-layered hierarchy.

Photo Tagging

Photo tagging is about adding data to your photos - who is photographed? Where was the photo taken? What was the event? - All these may be added to the data around your photo, and take sharing to a different level.

Flickr lets you tag photos with keywords, and also integrates with Yahoo Maps for geo-tagging. You can then search the photos by combinations of these keywords or locations.

Free Account

If you don't have many photos, or don't care how many photos the site shows, you may be looking at a free account. How do the services compete in this aspect?

If you don't want to spend money, but still want your photos on the web, you can start a free Flickr account.. The account is limited in the number of photos it holds (newer photos make the older ones disappear) and you can have only three sets, but most of the rest of the functionality is still there. The free account has a monthly upload limit of 100MB, and a maximum of 5MB per photo.

Extras

What add ons do the website provide?

Flickr has a lot of add ons, but not as nice as Smugmug's. It lets you order your photos on a DVD (or cd) for an extra fee. You may also order DVD Slideshows, photo books and many more media options with your photos on them. The 'Favorites' option is a nice perk, letting you save photos you stumble upon as 'your favourites', in essence letting you create a personal online photo album from photos other people share. You can also browse other people's favourites. Photo prints can be ordered through Flickr's partnership with Target Stores.

Customization

What if you don't linke the way the website and galleries are laid out? Can you change it? Can you add color or style to the gallery pages?

Flickr is very basic when it comes to displaying your photos. It has one view which resembles Smugmug's default view, but both the photos and the thumbnails are a lot smaller. Flickr does not have customized themes, but the default theme of the site is very clean and appealing.

Low Cost

Both sites have yearly fee, but there are different options. How much will you pay with each service?

A Flickr account costs $24.95 per annum. For this fee you get unlimited bandwidth, upload, and storage of photos. There is a size limit of 10MB per photo, but this is more than enough for most photos out there. Flickr also lets you upload videos, but it has a 90 seconds limit on these.

Community

This being the Internet, both services have a community around the photos and photo sharing. What can you expect of this community for each of the websites?

Flickr is all about its online photo sharing community. The site lets you join a medley of groups in a social networking manner. Photos uploaded by group members get more views and comments, so if the social aspect is important to you, groups are crucial in Flickr. Flickr is usually beter for "being discovered" and have your photos found by people. This sometimes can lead to financial deals, and makes Flickr a good starting place for aspiring photographers.

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Average rating: 4 / 5 , based on 107 customer reviews
Feel factor: 11


good, but not that good.

(score 2/5)

I've always been a Sony fan, especially with their cameras. Sony products tend to be well built and intuitive, which I've always found with their cameras, and so I have been willing to pay the high price charged. I do feel though that Sony's usual high quality, high functionality and ease of use hasn't been carried through to their frames.

When I got this out of the box I noticed it took me ages to figure out some basics, a lot of the menu system is counter intuitive, so i kept having to go back to the user manual to figure out what should be really simple.

I find the control buttons on the back are in a really bad position and i always get fed up operating the frame with the button on the back that I can't see.

The two biggest problems are this though:

1. The screen is the wrong shape for standard photos! My sony camera shoots images in 4:3 yet the frame is 16:10. This means that the high price paid for the frame results in only part of the screen being used. seems a waste.

2. doesn't play video. i know that to many people this doesn't seem like a big issue, but my Sony camera takes video which i can't view on my frame.

the above two issues make my frame only partially useful in displaying what I've taken with my Sony camera. I have a NIX frame as well and I have to say that the NIX frame seems to have addressed all the above issues: it's controls are very easy to use and intuitive, the menu system couldn't be easier to use, the screen is about the same quality as the Sony - but it's 4:3 format, and it plays video. In fact the version I bought for my mom even has an internal battery. I just wish Sony would make a frame that matched the camera i bought from them. It seems that other brands like nix are stepping up to the plate.

Posted on: 2010-05-09
By L. Hill



digital photo frame

(score 5/5)

Purchased this as a Christmas present to go along with the sony cybershot camera. Great frame. Arrived on time and in great condition

Posted on: 2010-04-05
By Judy A. Shaughnessy



Super picture displays

(score 5/5)

Bought as a gift and I am very satisfied with it. Very clear pictures, better than the originals. I used a SD card (2G) for better flexibility in loading photos, and this works well. Loaded digital & scanned pictures and the image quality is almost the same, which surprised me. Lots of display features that can be changed with the remote. "Great unit".

Posted on: 2010-03-31
By Nit Picker



Great gift for grandparents

(score 4/5)

We got this for my in-laws, and it works reliably and was not hard to load with pictures or set up. The grandparents love being able to see a slide show of the kids, and it's easy to add new photo files any time. This is the best frame of its type out there.

Posted on: 2010-03-08
By C.W. Knits



satisfied with sony

(score 5/5)

The digital photo frame made a great gift. We're happy with the clarity of the pictures. Easy set up and multiple options.

Posted on: 2010-02-25
By K. Fonville

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Technical Support
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Photos Organization
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Photo Tagging
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Free Account
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Extras
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Customization
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