easiest photo sharing site

Hi,

At her request, we have just set elderly Mother in Law up with a PC and want to be able to share a few photos with her - she's 200 miles away and we don't get to see her in person as often as we 'should'.

She is very very new to computing ( this is called a mouse etc.) and we need to encourage her to use it to build confidence but not give her anything too complex to do in these early stages.

Also she is using a mobile '3' dongle with 12GB / 12 month usage not broadband so download speeds and capacities are a restrictive factor.

Flckr seems to be most peoples 'default' photo sharing site, but are there any even simpler for her to see a few photo's a month on? She won't care about quality like we do.

Any advice appreciated'
Sharon.

Photobucket seems easier than Flikr and there's no quality issue involved really. A digital file is a digital file, wherever you store it.

The other real alternative is for her to post a picture a day on ePHOTOzine. That's free unless you want the e2 membership and it's both easy to upload to and easy to view for everyone.

picasa web albums might work

you should be able to set up your mum with a google account
you then share folders with her

you can upload pictures from your PC using picasa and share them with family

not sure how the resolutions will work with a dongle though but you can monitor the data usage.

http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=8989

If you have BT Broadband you can use your BT digital vault and share pics with that too.

https://sh.digitalvault.bt.com/help/tutorials/index.html

The idea is for her to see your photos, not for her to post her own?
With Photobucket you can set up an album that only she (and others you invite) can see. The quality is good - a lot of the photos posted here are on Photobucket after all.

Otherwise it is pretty easy to set up our own site - you may even have space free from your provider. You could use something like jalbum to make make mini albums for her to view and FTP them to you url. She the types in your URL and can view the photos.

If she wants to post her own then set her up a Photobucket account - it is really easy to use.

If its only a few photos between two family members. Surely a direct enail would suffice. If you want to build up albums, try facebook. My parents are in their seventies, not particularly computer literate, but have really embraced the social betwork site. Though personally it would br Flickr for me...

You could always print them and write a letter to go with them!

I use Picassa for my albums, Sample link, If you keep the file size down to 800x600 it's amazing how much you can upload.

You could also consider Dropbox,Link, it's good for sharing and has more uses than are at first obvious.

Another option?

I bought my Mum & Dad a digital photo frame, as they weren't computer 'adept', so all they have to do is switch it on and the pictures appear.

What we do now when there is new pictures, is to swap the SD cards in the post.

I put the new images on a card, and send it off, they swap the card and send the old one back, job done !

We often send my wife's auntie (8 in Australia a CD packed with pictures, usually of our grandchildren. She then happily plays it on her DVD player whenever she wants and can take the CD to an "Aussie Boots" for any hardcopies she wants. We tried Photobucket as she has an old PC, but she will only use it for writing letters.

regards
Bernard

Why not get her on Facebook. She may also be able to get in touch with old friends etc. Other than that, flickr's my favourite, and I prefer the way they process your shots into different sizes ( they seem to get a quick sharpen-up or maybe it's just my eyes.

Oh and 3 mobile internet is pretty good and about as fast as a regular internet connection usually.

I would generally prefer Flickr over Photobucket, largely for the lack of advertising.

Picasa web albums or (if you pay for it) MobileMe are both good for sharing albums with technophobe relatives. For Mac users this might change in a couple of months once iCloud is launched with the free option.

Facebook isn't bad either, since I use Facebook anyway it's the one I use to share photos with my folks. IQ isn't brilliant though, I think Facebook compresses jpegs a little more than 'real' photo sites.

I'd say that from the viewpoint of potential for confusing elderly relatives MobileMe or Flickr are less confusing due to the reduced amount of visual clutter on screen. Facebook's not very good from that point of view.

PS Pentaxophile Flickr definitely apply sharpening to each resized shot. It's a common complaint on the Flickr forums. My other bugbear with Flickr is that they although they leave exif intact on the original uploaded size, they don't carry it over to the resized versions.

Can't say I've noticed adverts on Photobucket tbh.

I personally refuse to use Picasa. Part of the enormous and ever growing Google big brother empire.

But it is free.

At least its not funding the jobsian new world order

Seriously though, Facebook might be a good option because of the enforced lower resolution meaning lower bandwidth.

Another alternative is a site like snapfish. Has similar benefits for lower bandwidth, but allows people to order paper prints of the images they like, posted to their home address at a reasonable price.

Thanks for the suggestions I will investigate.

We want to do it via a website ( rather than just attaching to an e-mail, sending SD cards etc.) so that she gets used to using websites. This gives her a reason to do so as photos from us is something she will see the point of.


The only one I will rule out is Facebook, for some reason I find that difficult to use myself so can't imagine instructing her on how to use it - Twitter I can cope with Facebook just seems counter-intuitive to me.