TechBulletin

Today, the web is everything - the present and future. No longer are people content to storing their photos in their computer or emailing others, they want to show off and thus the need for online Photo Sharing arose. While flickr with hundreds of thousands of members has been dominating this area for a long time, other services like Zoto, Snapfish, etc have tried their best to emulate Flickr’s success. However, they have not been able to do so. But out of the darkness arises light and here comes Fotki, a great, feature-rich extension of Flickr especially in the Pro account area.

Initially & Space::
The first thing that strikes you as you visit the main page is the design, which I must say is not that catchy. However, after the initial backing off, you discover (after a quickfire sign up) how Fotki is loaded with tons of features. Firstly premium users will have to pay US$30.00 per year for an account, but basic accounts do exist. The main page shows a list of the Top users and the top photos. The premium users get amazingly UNLIMITED SPACE! That’s right, Unlimited with a capital U! Keep on uploading. They also get 500 MB of Email Space and there are no stupid ads littered on your page and Fotki definitely scores here.

The Photos - Uploading, Managing::
Uploading is what Fotki is great at and Fotki rocks this area. There are simply tons of ways you can upload from Windows, Linux or Mac. There is a neat downloadable tool which lets you upload photos from your desktop, or a simple Bookmarklet for your browser, or direct uploading online via Email, via a FTP Client and loads of other ways. Ofcourse one thing that I didn’t like here was the need of Java for the upload program and also the direct uploader lets you upload only one at a time which is 100% annoying. And Fotki is one the first services I’ve seen that let you copy a image. Just enter it’s URL and the image gets added in your collection. Fotki recognizes all the major image formats - .jpeg, .bmp, .png, .gif, .psd, and .tiff. So you don’t have to worry about converting your image’s format at all! Once you upload a photo you can alter it directly online, inlcuding rotating, cropping, quick download, etc.

You can manage your images with ease. Tagging them is a 5 seconds process with the simple use of AJAX. But more options for classifying photos like Genre, Person, Background, Location, etc, etc(other than tags, Copyright) would make Fotki smarter. You can also direct link to your images or choose to link to your images presented in a HTML Page. And most of the features available in the other Photo Sharing sites are available in Fotki with a few boosters ofcourse. )You can basically control who views your albums, give permissions to certain people alone and all the like. Also, a new feature is the “Edgy Content” feature by which you mark an album as having content which is not appropriate for all audiences, and if a member wants to view it, it’s upto you to decide! And all the rest including commenting and rating are available. Also, Fotki lets you arrange albums in Folders and sub-folders with good hierarchial positions and makes them easy to find!

Here is an example of a Fotki User.

Features::
Features, Features, features, Fotki is full of innovative and interesting features to keep you occupied for a long long time. It’s gonna take you time to adjust yourself to the features and explore all of them. Fotki scores full marks in this department with tonnes of amazing features. An interesting feature available to only paid users is Co-Branding. In this you can build a whole web site and use Fotki to organize your photos. Pre-designed themes are available or you can design your own themes using HTML. Ofcourse, better provisions in Co-Branding should be done to make it easy for members to organize their website better. Fotki provides you with a guestbook, blog/journal and a links page where you can link to your favorite websites. And you can mod the appearence of your Fotki account so that it appears different. Great color sets available.

The best feature of Fotki is the printing of photos. Fotki takes only 9cents for a 4-by-6 normal print which is hell yeah dirt cheap. The best is you can order prints of not only your own photos but also those of your friends. Moreover, you can even sell prints of your photos to other member at the custom prices that you specify, cool eh! However, be warned that Fotki takes a 15% commision here so don’t blame someone else if the full account is not there in your bank balance.

Phew! I’m not yet finished but there are tons of other Super features at fotki which If I start mentioning I would have to write all night, so you can register for yourself and check it out.

Community::
More than anything Fotki is a great community. You can easily search by photo/tag or by user, find similar users and add them as your friends, share a combined album with your friend. Fotki also holds loads of contests with great prizes where you can submit your works of art and rate others’s as well! You can have a nice “About-Me” page where you can explain all about you to make more friends. Ofcourse a feature like “Private Messaging” would be super cool here I suppose! Ofcourse as told above Fotki gives it’s own email address to you!! Know what, you can now view the exact statistics for each of your albums and images including Hits and IP Addresses of the viewers.
Cheers!

The Basic - Fotki Slides::
You are probably going down to comment “Dude this is too good to be true, are you a joker”. Unfortunately not Most of these features are available to the Premium users alone. So scroll up, make a list of features which appear too good to be true and mark them as paid. The basic account frankly sucks due to one damn reason - 50MB. Yeah, a lousy 50 MB is all that you get which makes you want to kick Fotki hard but you can’t Comparison of Free & Paid Accounts.

It is to be noted that despite the 50MB limit, Fotki free users do get most of the features available in other Photo Sharing sites, but what’s the purpose of coming to Fotki, eh?

The Bottomline::
If you ready to shell out $30, there’s no place like Fotki, where you can enjoy the fullest. Yes, the basic account sucks frankly and you’d rather do well at Flickr instead of Fotki if that’s what you want but at $30, the paid account is a pure steal and I advice you to go for it!! Ofcourse, if you have a paid account, the customer service is simply superb and you get instant answers but meh, why do you need Customer Service when the Help Database is splendid!

Pros:: Cheap Premium Account, Statistics, Great Hierarchy, Better Community Features, Photo Selling & Printing, UNLIMITED, Co-Branding, Supports most formats and super ways of Uploading.

Cons:: Shitty 50 MB for free accounts, one-upload-perpage-direct uploads, Mediocre customer service for free users, Horrible Design, Bad Fonts, No Private Messaging, Could have used more AJAX, Speed can be faster!

Source:: Chrono Tron