Although MyPicShares is not necessarily on-demandish, it is a little side project I’ve been working on that I hope people will find, like, and use.
I don’t necessarily expect anyone else to use MyPicShares – and really, I don’t care. I created MyPicShares because I needed a mechanism for uploading and sharing pictures that other websites weren’t really offering.
What is MyPicShares and Why was it created?
Sometimes it is easier to show someone a picture to explain things than it is to try to explain something verbally or in writing. I first thought of creating MyPicShares as a way to capture a screen shot of something like, for example, an error message; upload the screen shot and then send someone, like a technical support person, an email with a link so they could look at the picture. In this way, the technical support person could see first-hand what you’re talking about. Although some day I hope to complete the screen capture software and have it available for download, MyPicShares’ more immediate mission has morphed into something else.
MyPicShares has now become a mechanism for uploading pictures so that you can link to those pictures from a blog like WordPress (unfortunately, MySpace strips MyPicShares pictures out of their src attribute – so if you want to use MyPicShares from MySpace you will have to wait until MyPicShares becomes more popular). Or, MyPicShares is ideal if you need a hassle-free way to upload a picture and email someone a link to view it. I’ve also included the ability for you to suggest a Google search, in case you think someone viewing your picture might be interested in a search you suggest. In addition to that, I’m going to be creating a little utility that will enable you to right-click on a picture and send it to MyPicShares. If the picture is larger than the current 125KB limit, the utility will automatically re-size it for you before sending it to MyPicShares. Once again, though, even though that utility isn’t created yet, MyPicShares is still perfectly usable, as is.
There are some things that are unique about MyPicShares versus other gallery and video sharing websites. First, MyPicShares is NOT a photo gallery. Instead, it is a communication mechanism using pictures as the communication medium. If you want a photo gallery, use some other tool such as Flikr. Second, you won’t need to sign up for an account to use MyPicShares. I wanted the MyPicShares experience to be simple and anonymous, like Google. By not requiring you to sign up for anything, you can accomplish picture sharing without any undue fuss and bother. Finally, MyPicShares follows the K.I.S.S. (Keep is Simple Stupid) axiom, like the good folks at the Mozilla Foundation who created Firefox – any feature added to Firefox is thought about deeply before making the cut. MyPicShares essentially enables one task, and one task only – but it does it efficiently, and it does it well. By focusing on this one task, MyPicShares will help alleviate frustration that often accompanies complicated gallery sites. That is not to say that I won’t be adding features to MyPicShares, but its core functionality is going to remain essentially unchanged. My goal is to have MyPicShares be the little utility that could, be rock solid, and simply be there when you need it.
Another nice feature about MyPicShares is that once your picture is uploaded, it’s going to be hosted for as long as MyPicShares is around – we don’t delete pictures. Originally, I had the thought that they would be deleted after a little while, but what’s the use of that? You couldn’t link to your picture from a blog if it were going to be deleted. So I made the decision to let the pictures stay. Besides, I have this crazy far-off idea of building a search algorithm that actually uses the contents of pictures to come up with matches. As an example, if I were searching for pine trees, my search algorithm would bring up all pictures with pine trees in them. Having a huge database of pictures will certainly help me develop my algorithm – well, that’s definitely a ways out there yet.
Back in reality, I don’t necessarily expect anyone else to use MyPicShares – and really, I don’t care. I created MyPicShares because I needed a mechanism for uploading and sharing pictures that other websites weren’t really offering. Most of the “free” picture sites want you to create an account, and they want to be an everything destination for you – which was total overkill for what I needed. If other people find MyPicShares fills a certain need in their lives, then so be it. If I’m the only one ever using MyPicShares, I can swing the meager hosting fees. If other people start using it, the Google AdSense words should help fund it. We’ll see. Finally, I’d like to say that I hope people don’t abuse MyPicShares. Unfortunately, with popularity comes problems. So, in a way, if no one else ever used it except me and my friends, I wouldn’t have anything to worry about. But, if it does gain in popularity, I guess I will deal with the problems as they arise.
Well, now that you know what MyPicShares is, and how it works, give MyPicShares a whirl. If you like it, tell your friends about it. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll help make your life just a tad easier.
