Aug
16
2006Sharpcast - (Not just) another photo manager
16
2006
I just discovered a very cool new application/service (”beta”, naturally) for managing and sharing photos, called Sharpcast. Seeing as I already use Picasa and Flickr, why would I need another one?
Well, here’s the thing. Web apps (like Flickr) are lousy for “managing” photos, and desktop apps are lousy at sharing photos (Picasa’s new so-so Web Albums notwithstanding).
Sharpcast straddles the two with aplomb. Here’s how it works: You download the Sharpcast web application (Windows-only for now), and you dump your photos in it - via a very clean, intuitive UI. Folders automatically become “albums” (which you can modify later, if you desire). So far, no big deal. Here’s where the magic comes in…
All your photos and albums are automatically synced with a web server, which you can then access online, to view/download/manage your picture - a la Flickr. Any edits you make there will then sync back to your desktop. Cool, huh? And, the really cool part is this: when you install the app on multiple computers, all your photos get synced there, too. So, load up your images at home, install Sharpcast at work, and suddenly you have full access to all your photos - everywhere! It’s all very (dare I say it?) groovy.
Then there’s the sharing aspect. When you create an album it starts out as a “private” album - a good thing. Two clicks and it becomes a public album, which anyone can view online if they know the URL. How do they get it? Welll, Sharpcast contains a very primitive but effective “contact” manager so you can very quickly spread the word about your new online album without having to re-type email addresses, or copy and paste URL’s into your email program.
Finally, there’s a very clever capability to share photos within the client application. If I add “foo@example.com” to my contact list, and he has a Sharpcast account, his public photos (as well as the semi-private ones he specifically chose to share with me) magically show up within the Sharpcast app on my computer for my perusal. Rather view them via RSS? They’ve got that too (as a Web 2.0 app, they’re obligated by law to have RSS feeds, you know.)
There’s also some features involving mobile phones, but they’re limited to Windows Mobile 5, which is a pretty limited audience. They also claim they will expand the whole system to include more than just photos. Of course, sharing audio files this way will lead to a legal death trap, but videos would be an incredibly cool feature. Documents? Hm…
This whole system is very, very nice. There are some obvious features missing (like the ability to sort photos by date - if they inadvertently get imported in the wrong order - a snag I hit in my first session), but it’s very solid for a beta application. A Mac version is allegedly in the works - I think Mac folks would eagerly embrace the clean UI and “it just works” functionality.
Jeff,
This is Gibu Thomas, CEO of Sharpcast. Thanks for the kind sentiments expressed in your blog about Sharpcast Photos. So, here it is straight from the horse’s mouth — there is a lot more goodness in the works for the photo app besides the usual ones you expect like editing, printing, etc and we absolutely plan to expand the experience to other data types/applications.
Stay tuned and thanks for the support! Please send us feedback on what you’d like improved (especially in the contact manager), we’ll listen.
Cheers,
Gibu Thomas
Gibu Thomas 8/16/06 @ 10:58 pmCEO, Sharpcast
Hi Gibu, thanks for stopping by. About that contact manager… Can you only send notifications to people who are already Sharpcast members? I added a bunch of friends’ email addresses and tried to notifiy them about an album via the red envelope icon, and no one received them (I verified this by trying to contact myself). So, is this a bug or a confusing “feature”?
P.S. I loved your blog entry about eFax. You should submit that to Consumerist.com
Jeff 8/17/06 @ 9:47 amJeff,
You should be able to send share notifications to anyone from the Sharpcast system, not just Sharpcast members. If the other person is a Sharpcast user, they can view your shared photos within their Sharpcast app, otherwise they will get an email with a link to the Sharpcast Photos website, where they can view the pictures.
When you clicked the red envelope on the web and it took you to the share dialog, did you enter the email addresses of the recipients and click share album (and did not uncheck the send email box)?
If you tried that and it didn’t work, I wonder if the notification email got caught in a spam filter.
Can you please try it again? If you’d like, share an album support [at] sharpcast [dot] com and we can verify if the notification went through.
Glad you liked my eFax blog entry. The way some companies treat their customers is so awful, we need to do everything to raise awareness. It will get their attention eventually, at least it did DELL’s.
Thanks,
Gibu
Gibu Thomas 8/17/06 @ 3:29 pm