Pixiq

I’m intrigued: just how many photo-sharing websites can the market bear? Today, the answer is ‘At least one more.’ Or so Olympus thinks, anyway. It has just announced details of its latest addition to the mix. It’s called [ib on the net]. Obviously Olympus’ marketing peeps were so convinced that we’d be bowled over by all the lovely functions offered by the site that a catchy name was just not that important. We’d better look at what it can do then, shouldn’t we?

The idea is that you should be able to take your photos, then upload them to the site, share them, store them, and print them in one streamlined process. So far, so good. What’s more, a group of people can upload their photos to one shared area: when you celebrate your niece’s third birthday everyone at the party can share and see their photos in one place. And a photo book can be made from everyone’s pictures, not just yours. That’s rather dandy.

Right now, it, okay, [ib on the net], offers 2GB of free storage, but it’s in beta and it is only available to people in the USA or Japan. That means I’ll continue to use other photo-sharing sites if I want to use my photos creatively. Who knows how it is going to alter. Maybe I’m just being cynical, but I can’t see it taking over the world quite yet. What do you guys think? Have Olympus hit on something here, or are there enough means to share, store, and print your pictures?