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I've been using Ofoto to create online photo albums from digital pictures for a while now. Actually I used Zing before they were bought and merged with Ofoto. Up until a few weeks ago I was happy with Ofoto until they changed the way shared albums are accessed. It seems they must be in a crunch to register users so they were forcing invited parties to register with Ofoto before viewing the album. That is rediculous. I've emailed them for an explaination as to why they have implemented this annoying feature but haven't received a response in over a week (and probably never will).
So I'm on the hunt for alternatives and there seem to be enough to choose from:
Epson (photo.epson.com)
Unlimited storage capacity. You can view the photos in their original resolution. Ofoto and most others reduce the image size for viewing but keep the original for when one orders prints. Some basic stats about how many visits to the album etc.
Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com)
Unlimited storage capacity. Upload facility is similar to Ofoto (ie. drag image files to upload) and much better than Epson (where you have to select files one by one). I think it also did concurrent file uploads which is a bit of a bonus especially when uploading a whole bunch of images. Looks like they do something similar in reducing the image size for viewing. The sharing of the album/photos not as nice as Epson and Ofoto.
Sony Imagestation (www.imagestation.com)
Unlimited storage capacity. Very similar to Shutterfly. Same reduction of image size. Sharing is a bit better than Shutterfly. Very similar to Epson.
Apple
www.apple.com/itools - Built into Mac OSX as far as I can tell. Cannot create an account from a PC but apparently can view from a PC. I think all types of files can be shared, not just photos. I'm not a MAC user so not useful to me. Only 20M of storage though.
Haven't decided yet whether to go with Epson or ImageStation. Epson edges out with the original image size and ImageStation edges out with drag and drop upload. Other than that they are similar enough. Even Shutterfly was very similar but I just seemed to like Epson and ImageStation a little better.
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