Online image sharing has gone extremely popular and day after day, we get to see new and better photo sharing services. Slide.com, Flickr.com, Zoto.com are some of the examples. Today, I would love to present the review of another photo sharing website called MySlider. Before we start with the review, I would like to tell you that mySlider product, comes from the pro’s in image gallery software called ImageFolio. Imagefolio has good an impressive list of clients and includes ESPN, National Geographic, Citrix Systems as their clients. In short, we can trust on this product :)
The concept of mySlider is similar to slide.com, which displays the images in a slide show and makes use of Flash technology to display those amazing photographs taken by you. However, the good thing about mySlider is that it doesn’t need any plugin like flash to display the images in the slide show. Here’s the demo of the mySlider.
Here are some of the plus points of mySlider, which make it a good service :
* No need to sign up : There is no need to sign up for any thing. Anyone can use the service.
* No Banners or ADs on Slideshows : This is where it beats slide.com too. It doesn’t puts any logo or banner or any ad on the slideshows. No one will be able to guess that where exactly your photos are hosted, except that they look at the source code of your webpage :)
* Highly Configurable : mySlider provides lots and lots of options and lets the users control almost all the aspects of the slider.
* No Limit to the uploads : There is no limit to the amount of images you are going to upload. However, there is a limit to the file size of 50 Mb. That is, the file size of one image can’t be more than 50 MB (he he, who’ll be able to see the image of 50 Mb on a computer screen).
* Supports MAC too! : It support MAC OS X and all the main versions of it. It supports, Jaguar, Panther & Tiger.
* It’s Free! : I guess, I don’t need to explain this one :)
Where it lacks : No service is perfect and you’ll find something missing in each and every service. Same is the case with mySlider as well. It needs lots and lots of updates to become one of the best in the business. Here are some of the points which I think are must :
* No external integration : What I believe that they must offer the integration with other services like Flickr.com, Slide.com or other popular services. This will also allow those users who’ve gone to Flickr or any other service in starting to migrate easily to this service.
* Other upload options : At this point, mySlider only offers one way of uploading the photos and that is through a bulk uploading software utility only. It doesn’t offer any other uploading option. Thus, Linux users will not be able to make use of this service. If they are not comfortable in allowing users to upload the files using their browsers, then I believe the option of emailing the zipped files must be one of the option.
* No comments feature : It fails to allow the people to leave the comments on the photos. I believe giving the option of comments will actually make them a good community. Remember the example of YouTube, it was completely a community driven site.
* Not the best of the website designs : I think they must get the site redesigned. It needs a lot of improvement in that area. A good and web 2ish look will help them a lot. They are giving a good service and if the presentation can be good then it will be like Icing on the cake.
All in all, The service is extremely good and it just needs a bit of Web 2.0 features in it to make it one of the best service available around. However, if your idea is to display the photos in a rotating manner then this is the best way of doing it, use it to display banner ads or any other way and you’ll simply fall in love with it.
[tag]ReviewSaurus, mySlider[/tag]
