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I've been on a bit of a de-cluttering jag over the past year or so. Too much paper, too much "stuff" around the house. So I've been slowly dumping the junk and selling or donating the rest.

This includes photographs. I had stacks of snapshots of family, friends, places, and so forth sitting around in various drawers and boxes. I had made a half-hearted effort to digitize some of the old slides previously, but scanning is really tedious work. Scanning the hundreds of photos involved here was just more than I realistically felt like tackling.

Over … Read more

The preponderance of digital photo frames has been a standard rant in this space, and for good reason. Not only are they overproduced and overmarketed in every iteration, from keychains to cubes, but they can also be found in practically every size imaginable.

Yet here's one that may prove to be a good idea despite its original pedestrian concept: a tiny digital magnet for the refrigerator door. Rather than having a virtually useless display all of 2.4 inches and 320 x 240 resolution, we've got a far more practical application. If you're trying to lose weight, … Read more

Flickr announced today that they now support video sharing to go along with their popular photo sharing services. The option is only available to "Pro" accounts, however, so those using the service on the free level will not have the option. Adding video support not only encourages the upgrade to the pro account, but it also takes an obvious swipe at YouTube.

Says the announcement on the Flickr Blog, "If you're a pro member, you can now share videos up to 90 glorious seconds in your photostream...90 seconds? While this might seem like an arbitrary … Read more

It's a virtual arms race among Web-based photo editors. Each one is trying to partner with as many third-party services as possible in an attempt to gain mass appeal. This morning Picnik, which has already begun to get some traction as the primary editing tool for Flickr has teamed up with Photobox, another large photo host in the United Kingdom.

Photobox is about a fifth of the size of Flickr in active users, and the two have very different services. Photobox provides 1,000MB of storage and gives users more space each time they order prints while Flickr operates … Read more

It's hard to say whether this is innovative or just another company jumping on the touch-based gesture bandwagon, but Pandigital's announced a new line of digital photo frames with "intuitive" touch controls. Not surprisingly, the line's called PanTouch, but what's weird about it is that the whole touch part doesn't apply to the screen itself but the frame around the display.

What's this mean exactly? Well, check out the image and you'll notice that good looking index finger is touching the edge of the frame, not the screen itself. The press … Read more

I'm pretty excited about Vringo's new Facebook app for a number of reasons. First, I'm a big fan of Vringo's video caller ID service, which lets users choose a video ringtone (vringo) that plays on their friends' phone when they initiate a call to said friend. Second, this new app carries Vringo's concept of personalizing the moment of phone-to-phone contact by syncing your address book with your friends' Facebook profile photos.

It takes about 5 minutes and quite a few steps to set up the service, but the directions are clear and fairly straightforward. You … Read more

Digital photo frames are really just expensive gift ideas for people you don't know how to buy for.

We've all got a few of those types on our lists every year. And now there's a kinda cool feature for one of them: Kodak now makes the Quick Touch. While you don't have to touch the area of the frame where the photo would be (fewer greasy fingerprints!), the border can be swiped with a finger to advance through a collection of digital photos.

One of these will set you back $120, $180, or $230, depending on … Read more

I'm always on the lookout for new ways to host images for quick and dirty sharing. Worth checking out is Photie, which is an incredibly simple photo host. It's light on features, but offers unlimited storage and file sizes (great for people with 14 megapixel SLRs), along with generous sharing options both for downloading shots and hosting on external sites and social networks.

What might be its killer feature, however, is that it gives you a detailed listing of when and where your photos have been viewed. It's something you find on YouTube and Viddler for videos, … Read more

Adobe Systems is getting all of the attention today in the digital photo world with the launch of Photoshop Express. Google, meanwhile, continues to add features to Picasa, Adobe's main online rival.

Google has released a new application programming interface (API) for Picasa that makes it easier to transfer pictures from Picasa to other applications, both online and offline.

Developers can use the Picasa Button API to make custom buttons that can open image files in local applications and upload selected image files to the Web via Google's Picasa Web Uploader service.

"Using the web uploader, you … Read more