Review : Shutterbook

For as long as I can remember, Flickr has been the most popular way of sharing photos online, but some people have decided it’s time to change all that. Step in Shutterbook ! Shutterbook is currently providing a mammoth 20 GB of storage space, unlimited bandwidth, and the slickest interface of all photo sharing websites.

Features : First and foremost, Shutterbook is a photo sharing service, not an image host, so there are no features like thumbnail code generating, anonymous uploading, etc. You must sign up for an account to avail their features. Now, the great part is that if you sign up while they are still in BETA testing phase, you get the following:

• 20 GB Storage Space
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Password Protected Albums
• Complete Access to all Upcoming Features

As I said before, Shutterbook’s interface is 100% Flash (also powered by php), which means there are features like background music through uploaded MP3’s. Cool ! But, if the albums are very large (like mine), accessing them over broadband (256 kbps) becomes quite difficult, forget Dial-Up, so my advice would be to keep albums small, and avoid background music if you want to share with a lot of people. Shutterbook also generates an RSS Feed to keep everyone updated with the latest happenings at your gallery. You can also select private and public albums.

Uploading

Uploading photos is a breeze with the Shutterbook Uploader, but first, I’d like to mention that there is an online uploading option as well, which allows drag and drop uploading from your computer, but this is quite slow compared to the Uploader. The uploader is a very simple drag and drop program that allows you to create albums, and upload pictures to albums. You can download this program for Windows Xp or Mac OS X from here, but remember that you must have a shutterbook account in order to use it.

Also, the uploader suggests a limit of 150 pictures per album, but this is not enforced, and you can make albums as large as you wish.

Community and Forums

Like other services, Shutterbook features a community where the best pictures are put in one place. A good place for idle browsing. There’s also a forum to discuss Shutterbook, troubleshoot, etc…

Viewing

Now we come to the most important part, viewing the photos. Here, if you have a 128 kbps or faster connection, Shutterbook gets along fine, but anything lower than that and that’s when things can get ugly, especially with large albums. Other than that, Shutterbook is probably one of the coolest looking sites ever ! It works fine with most browsers including Opera and Firefox, but works best with Internet Explorer. The color combination of gray is nice, and goes well with photographs of any color. However, please note that Shutterbook does cut down the resolution of the pictures you upload, so professionals beware, but this is a positive for photo sharing.

Sliders are well used and the slideshow feature is similar to Flickr’s and very nice. There is also a full screen viewing feature, and many more features such as Friends, which links to their galleries, profile, etc…

Conclusion

Considering Flickr’s puny storage limits, I would say that Shutterbook is far easier. Moreover, minor aspects such as the sign up procedure are very simple in Shutterbook, compared to haveing to get a Yahoo ID for Flickr. Short names are easily available with Shutterbook right now and they even give you a subdomain. So hurry and sign up right now while you can still get a premium account !!! :bingo:

One more thing, is this the first Web 2.0 application that does not use AJAX ?