|
|
Post by pat perry on Oct 26, 2012 10:29:45 GMT 9
If any of you besides me and MOW keep any photos or videos on WebShots that are linked via URL to the Forum or the main F-106 site, you need to know that American Greetings, Inc is dumping WebShots on 12-1-2012. AG, Inc. actually sold it to the two guys who started WebShots many years ago and those guys are changing it to a photo storage site that will in no way resemble the features of WebShots. They have created a new site called Smile that is being developed on the fly before Dec 1. Users have the option to migrate their pics into Smile or delete them and go to Flickr or one of the other photo storage websites. Users also have the option to download a copy of all their stored photos to their PC. Over 12 years I have stored over 5000 photos in 106 albums and linked them to many of my posts here. I have spent many hours adding captions that will all be lost in the change. Those links will be broken on Dec 1. I am really pissed about the short notice they have given on this. Got to www.webshots.com if you are a customer and read the options you have. At least we have the option on the forum to load one picture per post on the ProBoards server. And MOW has added a new picture album function to the main site that will allow us to upload pics. It would not surprise me to see some of the other photo storage sites adapt this new Smile business model going forward. Pat P. :onfire |
|
|
|
Post by Mark O on Oct 26, 2012 12:27:04 GMT 9
Kodak did something similar a few months ago, but I believe it was more to raise capital than anything else. It's called "Shutterfly" now, but I never really kept much there to begin with. Photobucket was much easier to use especially when I wanted to post photos to other sites. Have you found a new site to use, or are you just going to go with Smile? BTW, I've had Photobucket for many years, and have been pretty happy. They went through an upgrade a couple months ago that caused a few headaches, but have allowed users to use the existing version if they choose. (I get the "invite" for the "all new" version whenever I log on.) I suspect once they get all the kinks straightened out they may make us start using it. I don't mind. I thought it was pretty nice the short time it worked during the test phase. www.photobucket.comMight want to check it out. It's still free! |
|
|
|
Post by Diamondback on Oct 26, 2012 22:53:30 GMT 9
Wouldn't be a "service"provider if they weren't a COMPLETE pain in the ass, though, now would they?
+1 to Mark's recommendation of Photobucket, I've used them for years.
|
|
|
|
Post by pat perry on Oct 27, 2012 0:46:53 GMT 9
Kodak did something similar a few months ago, but I believe it was more to raise capital than anything else. It's called "Shutterfly" now, but I never really kept much there to begin with. Photobucket was much easier to use especially when I wanted to post photos to other sites. Have you found a new site to use, or are you just going to go with Smile? BTW, I've had Photobucket for many years, and have been pretty happy. They went through an upgrade a couple months ago that caused a few headaches, but have allowed users to use the existing version if they choose. (I get the "invite" for the "all new" version whenever I log on.) I suspect once they get all the kinks straightened out they may make us start using it. I don't mind. I thought it was pretty nice the short time it worked during the test phase. www.photobucket.comMight want to check it out. It's still free! Thanks Mark & Diamondback for the heads up on Photobucket. For now, I have downloaded all my albums from WebShots and will wait and see what the Smile program looks like and how it will work. The initial sample program they put up really sucks in that it is like a wall with over 5000 of my pics on it. No organization at all into albums or topics. No place for captions. No hint of links capability to forums. On the plus side, the thumbnails are bigger and the enlargements from them are bigger than WebShots used to be. Smiles focus is on storing all your photos (including those on your PC - optional) in a cloud server and manageable from any source, eg: Facebook, Twitter, smartphone, PC, etc. Presumably they are charting a course to monetize their product (your photos) in a social network environment which plays to force feeding you ads based on your social profile. That would be handing control of your privacy over to companies like Facebook that regularly make huge mistakes with security leaks. WebShots, when owned by American Greetings, offered products for sale like prints, T-shirts, mugs, greeting cards, etc with your photos on them but I suppose they didn't sell enough to suit them. Social networks monitize their membership like many websites and forums do by ad views and personalize them to the user based on their internet activity and profile. I think that all other photo host sites will eventually adopt this business model. If MOW's photo upload capability on the main F-106 site will support a large storage capacity, I rather load my F-106 stuff on his site and let him make any incremental ad view dollars that may generate. We also still have the ProBoards attachment capability on the F-106 forum with its current limitations of one attachment per post of less than 1 megabyte in size. We can also post multiple pictures in a PDF file as long as it meets the same limitations. I wish they would increase that to 3-4 megs. The landscape of the Internet is sure changing for photo sharing. Pat P. |
|
