Hosted Online Photo Albums: Where Can You Find Them?
Although the term shutterbug has lost its original essence, the meaning is still quite clear. When someone calls you that, it basically means that you are a photo addict and you just can not help whip out the camera and shoot away. The term shutterbug, by the way, was first coined in the 1940s, and was named after the obviously loud mechanical device that handles the aperture of the camera lenses. These days, with digital photography and handy mobile phone cameras, that noise is virtually gone; but the passion for shooting away and capturing images certainly has not.
In recent studies, it shows that more and more people are actually buying cell phones primarily for the camera and video functions. Music storage and players are the second concern. Games and other additional features are the third. (We wonder where the call functions are.) Apparently, this surge in mobile cellular technology has further fueled the common man’s passion for picture taking and image capturing.
If you have enough finances, you could always have these captured images printed. But if you are a genuine shutterbug, this may pose as a huge problem especially with the volume of the images you now have. Besides, even with the printed copy, there’s still something about digitally storing images that appeals to most of us. Digital storage of pictures and videos gives us the liberty to send / resend electronically the ones we have. We can also digitally re-master (edit) them and make as much copies as we like without touching the original one. Also, with the emerging technology over the World Wide Web concerning image manipulation, digital images can now be made into slides, electronic collage shows and even videos.
The one problem that most shutterbugs face is storage. Where do you find enough electronic storage space over the Internet that can accommodate all those snapshots? Community websites (like MySpace and Friendster) offer a limited number of slots; although admittedly, both sites have expanded their image storage capacities (per subscriber) by more than 300%. We also know that uploading a huge number of pictures on our personal websites will only make our websites suffer in terms of download times and the pain of having to do all of this manually.
Fortunately, there are now a lot of affordable web hosting companies that allow image hosting and video hosting. This means that you can upload as much images you want. The good news is: most of these image and video hosting sites are actually free. These aforementioned sites are supported by advertisements that pepper the pages of the display area. The only drawback here is that almost anyone can look and comment on the videos you post and there is no way of removing offensive posts other than blocking the other user. There are also limitations as to the content of the images and videos you post, and stealing of images is quite rampant.
If however, you prefer a somewhat more private screening arena, with better tools for image and video sharing, and password protection to boot - there are plenty of low-cost web hosting sites (or the so called budget web hosting sites) where web hosts asks for a certain monthly / semi-annual / annual fee.
Trying to locate a web host and your are confussed? View our suggestions of low cost web hosting plans.
Some more web hosting articles are located here.
