Our users have discovered many more uses for Picurio than we originally imagined. One case we've seen over and over is a medium to large group collecting photos for a particular event. Examples of this case have included the Stanford 2009 Senior Formal and college dorm end-of-year yearbooks.

When users approach us about this case, they talk about how they had been considering creating a single Flickr or Picasa account and then sharing a password among a group of people. This is far from ideal as it really abuses the notion of an "account." If one person changes the password, it blocks access for others and it also imposes remembering extra information for everyone involved.

Most recently Picurio is being used to collect photos for the upcoming Stanford Homecoming in late October. As part of the festivities, the class of 2004 wanted to produce a slideshow so they came to Picurio as the central depot to collect photos for the event.

We're pleased to offer this service and hope Picurio might be helpful for your own event too.

We just launched something new here at Picurio that we're really excited about.  For the first time, we're enabling the browser to talk directly to the camera.  No one else does this.  Just plug a camera or camera phone into your computer and the photos appear immediately in the browser.

It works by using a Mac/Safari plugin that installs in seconds and doesn't require a browser restart.  It makes uploading a cinch.  Why don't all photo sites do this?  We have no idea.

It's available for download now for Safari users in all Picurio rooms. 

Try it out now in the Picurio Demo Room.

At Picurio we refer to this problem as Import Fear.  The thought of uploading photos (camera to computer to Flickr, Facebook, blog, and grandparents) can be an overwhelming task, and it makes us procrastinate on importing our photos for weeks or months.  We dread uploading, sorting, ranking, and tagging like we dread Monday mornings.  But shouldn't this be fun?

Our ability to wait for photos must stem from the Kodak processing days when we dropped off rolls of film at the drugstore and picked them up five days later, but these days we want things fast, now, in real-time.  We want to have that photo waiting for us by the time we get home, or better yet in our pocket just moments after it was taken.  Wi-fi or Eye-fi enabled cameras and camera phones are a step in the right direction, as is Posterous's new PicPosterous app, but the pieces aren't all fitting together just yet.

How should import fear be eliminated?

Brand new on Picurio: tweet your photos!  Click the twitter button in slideshow mode to post your photo on twitter.  Friends who click the link to your photo get to see the large version in slideshow view, can download the original, and can re-tweet the link.  It's a simple way to share photos with twitter friends and followers.

Happy tweeting!

Back in May we conducted a stream of interviews with current Stanford students about how they share photos.  They all had two things in common.  1) They use Facebook.  2) Their parents had tried unsuccessfully to add them as friends.

No factor bothered them more than allowing their parents to see all their college photos - dorm events, parties, and the like.  In their parents eyes it was a hip way to keep in touch with a child living far from home.  In the students' eyes it was a voyeur's request for too much information.

All the students handled the situation differently.  One accepted the friend request, got scolded for some photos posted by a dorm mate, and promptly de-friended.  Another refused the request, and instead gets photos from his father via MMS in his efforts to stay in touch.  None of them had attempted to navigate the elusive Facebook privacy settings to solve the problem.

Facebook was not designed to be a photo sharing app, nor was it built around permissions controls.  In the beginning, only college students at elite universities were allowed on the site - the air of exclusivity that undoubtedly made it popular in the first place.  They could post anything and everything, knowing it would be seen only by peers.  The site opened up to more universities, then high schools, and now parents and grandparents.  A recent article in the Stanford magazine encouraged parents to use social networking tools as an "opportunity to connect with their children".  I question how many were successful.

We at Picurio hope to solve this problem.  The site is built around photos and photo permissions.  Rooms make it easy to see who can see which photos, and a dead-simple drag-and-drop can be used to move photos between them.  When a friend shares photos from an event in one room, all it takes is a single drag-and-drop to get the mom-friendly photos into the family room and vice versa.  It's easy to share not only photos you took, but photos anyone took of you.  And you can do it in a one-off fashion without hassle.  The photo permissions problem, solved.

When asked if he'd pay $5 a month to see photos of me, my father replied "$5? I'd pay $500!".  Needless to say, my Picurio-enabled father is a happy camper.  And he's sticking to his own friends on Facebook.

--Laura