Was thinking of starting a travel blog, and travel blogs being image-heavy (what kind of travel blogs/books would feature lots of text but few pictures? Oh ya, Lonely Planet guidebooks… hahaha), I would need to find a suitable FREE image hosting service.
I’m not familiar with image hosting services, so I did a quick research and have narrowed my search to the following 4 image hosting services:
- Picasa Web (picasaweb.google.com)
- Facebook Photos (www.facebook.com)
- Flickr (www.flickr.com)
- Photobucket (photobucket.com)
Evaluation:
I’ve evaluated the above 4 services based on:
- Free storage space
- Max image resolution/size
- Download Bandwidth
- Max video length/size*
*Note that I’ve added video length/size to complete the picture (pun intended).
| Criteria | Comparisons | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free storage space |
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| Max Image Resolution/Size |
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| Download Bandwidth |
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| Max Video Length/Size |
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Verdict
I’ve eliminated Photobucket because of its storage and download bandwidth limitations.
To a lesser extent, Flickr, even though it provides unlimited storage, it restricts the amount of photos that I can upload per month, so I dismissed it as well.
This left me with either Picasa or Facebook.
Either one of the two could have suffice, but I chose to go with Picasa as I find Facebook a little too personal (it’s psychological 
).
How about imgur, ImageShack, and TinyPic?
I had not included services such as imgur, ImageShack, and TinyPic, as these services are more inclined toward “fire-and-forget” type of image hosting, and provide little in the way of ownership, or photos organization. Their main strength lies in their fuss-free image uploading and sharing – most of these services don’t even require you to sign up with them – and are therefore perfect for the occasional sharing of a funny picture on a forum, but falls short if you require more control over your images.
- Lem
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Facebook Photos, Flickr, image hosting services, Photobucket, Picasa
