Sharing photos … and information
I liked reading about this application since it reminded me of a project that I set aside. A couple of years ago, I began to work on my “slide-show screensaver” … something that a lot of people have. A screensaver that flips through a directory on my hard disk, displaying each of the photos saved there one after the other. This is no big accomplishment, except that I then expanded it to begin to sync the directory with one on my server. Now I have a screensaver that pulls the photos from my server when new ones are placed there … by anyone.

What makes this a useful application is that I don’t have to go looking for photos for my screensaver. I don’t have to update the photos on my hard disk. If I, or anyone that I permit, puts new photos on my server they just start to show on my laptop. And on any other laptop running my application.

I really believe that it is the ease of use – and the automation – of applications that makes them more and more usable. And more accepted. This is why RSS news aggregation makes so much sense, and is used so heavily. I don’t have to go looking at web sites to search out the news I want … I subscribe and receive the information automatically.

I like this application … I’m going to dig up my source code and experiment with my screensaver again … this gave me some new ideas!

Share That Photo: Hit Save. Some photo buffs have so many pictures from their digital cameras, they don’t know what to do with them. And sending by e-mail is clunky compared with new technologies that make storing and showing as simple as pie. [Wired News]