As I've mentioned before, I'm getting into digital photography more and more, and recently I've been looking for a place to host my digital photos. Basically, I've got two sets of photos - personal photos of vacations and family (mostly taken using my Canon Digital Elph), and artistic photos that I take with my digital SLR (Canon Rebel XTi). The photos from my Elph are in iPhoto, organized into events and albums, and the SLR photos are taken in RAW format and processed using Lightroom.

I had signed up for .Mac and used that for posting my photos from iPhoto into my .Mac site. Then Apple introduced web galleries, and all of a sudden I had another place for photos to go. I'm also a member at Flickr, and was posting my "artsy" photos there. I had friends who were posting photos on Facebook as well, and I uploaded a few photos to Facebook. It was getting out of control. I had at least 4 places that my photos were online - obviously this wasn't working for me. I loved each solution for various reasons: .Mac allowed me to use my own domain name, integrated into iPhoto, and had great themes that I could use. Flickr allowed me to share my photos with others, and get comments on them (assuming that others could find my photos). Facebook allowed me to share them with friends.

Smugmug takes the best of those sites and packages it into one package. You can use your own domain name. You can customize the pages as much as you like. They have various themes you can apply to your photo pages. And when you upload them, you can add them to other communities automatically. Your photos are added to communities that you specify, but only links to your photos, bringing traffic to your photos. (Within a week of uploading my last set of photos I had received a comment on it from someone in the "Flower" community. Cool!) You can also password protect your family photos, so that only family and friends can see those ones.

Viewing the photos is done in a nicely implemented Ajax powered application. You can also export your photos from Smugmug to Fotoflot, a nice Flex based RIA for creating wall mounts of your photos.

There's even a Facebook application that links to your Smugmug photos.

If you're going to try it out, enter this code for the Referred By field, and you'll save $5 and I'll get some money too: rxFVWsxd9QzgA. Win win.

If I were in charge at Smugmug, I'd deepen the Facebook integration, and add the concept of groups for my photos. I'd love to be able to select a group of people, from Facebook friends and others with email addresses, and share my personal galleries with them. As it is, I have to set a password on each gallery separately - having an easier way to share a set of galleries would be great. I also don't like the fact that I can't set default settings for new albums that are different from theirs. They default to allowing people to buy your photos (without paying you) and not protecting them with right click "Save As" protection. I don't think that's right - especially since I'm paying them a yearly fee. Finally, I can't upload my DNG photos to them - they have to be exported as JPGs. This nice Lightroom plugin makes that easy, but still, I'd prefer to use them as a backup service, and I want to backup my RAW photos, not the JPG versions. (Even better would be backing up my Lightroom library to Smugmug!) However, even with these "problems", I still think this is the best solution for sharing digital photos.

Now my workflow is much easier. All the photos in Lightroom are uploaded to Smugmug using the Lightroom plugin, and the iPhoto photos are added to Smugmug using their Mac uploader. I haven't tried the iPhoto plugin yet, but will soon. All my photos go to one spot, and are added to communities on Smugmug automagically, and integrate into Facebook with their plugin. I can get rid of my .Mac membership as soon as I get an invite to DropBox for file syncing.

If you'd like to see my photos, you can head to my Smugmug page.

This is a pretty cool site that I should have blogged about a while ago. These would make great Christmas gifts. Unique Skins allows you to easily create custom skins for your electronic gear, like your iPhone, iPod Touch, Nintendo Wii, Blackberry etc... Users select images from the site, add custom text and create skins that can be applied to pretty much any device.

The editor for the site is made using Activa Canvas from the team at Active Media Architects, and is done in Flex and Ajax. First you select the device from their list of template, so you can see what the end product is going to look like. Then, you select an image from the right hand side of the screen to add to your custom skin. They have categories such as Holidays, Nature, Abstract, Sports, Flags which each contain a dozen or so images. If you don't like what they provide, you can easily upload your own photo and use that for your skin. You can add custom text to your skin, with support for different colours and text styles.

Once you're done designing the skin, you go through a simple ordering system. Most skins are about $15 or so. Once the order is submitted, Unique Skins will create the custom skin and then mail you the finished product. When you receive the skin, you apply it to your device, customizing it with your own look and feel. Their FAQ has more details on the process.

The idea is excellent and I've seen the finished product- they're really well done. The site is well done and easy to use, and from a technical stand point the integration of Flex and Ajax makes a lot of sense. If you're interested in customizing your iPhone, or if you're interested in seeing Flex and Ajax work together, you should check them out.

Google launched an Ajax based presentation tool yesterday called Presently. Available now at Google Docs, the application has a very simple and intuitive interface for creating applications. Unfortunately for me, it doesn't work well in Safari (v. 3.0.3) - I couldn't edit any text in any of the slides at all. The top of the application also has a nice note for me: "Presentation features are not fully supported on your browser. Please consider upgrading to the latest version of your browser or switching to a supported browser." Unfortunately, they don't tell me what a supported browser is, but I assume that IE and Firefox work fine.

Personally, and I know I'm biased, but Sliderocket blows this application out of the water. First of all, its built with Flex, so it will work in Safari, and all the other browsers. More importantly, it has all the graphical elements that I like from PowerPoint and Keynote. I prefer to create stunning presentations with nice graphics and transitions. Presently appears to be geared towards those people who are need to create basic slideshows easily and quickly.

Duncan Riley at TechCrunch agrees with me, though he prefers the simplified UI to what's available in PowerPoint. "Presently doesn’t have all the bells and whistles PowerPoint has, but that’s in part the appeal... Presently, like Docs and Spreadsheets before it is straight to the point." I guess I don't think it has to be one or the other - I'd like something easy to use that let's me create really great presentations, like Keynote does. And from what I've seen, Sliderocket fits the bill.

Having said that, I haven't used the application enough to try any other other features it has, like the collaboration elements. Try it out, and let me know if I'm wrong.

Via TechCrunch

Its easier to build an enterprise Flex application than an Ajax application. However, you don't have to take my word for it, take the word of Bill Scott, the Ajax evangelist at Yahoo!, who told a crowd at the Ajax Experience: "In the enterprise space, I tend to recommend things like Flex because the development is much faster to get up and going".

Scott Davis, co-author of JBoss At Work and author of several mapping books, including Google Maps API and GIS for Web Developers: Adding Where to Your Web Applications, said that he was getting more interested in Flex recently, mostly because of the recent announcement that Flex would be open source.

You can read the entire article over at InfoWorld. Looks like Flex is really starting to gain momentum.

Google yesterday announced a new library called Google Gears that helps developers take their Ajax applications offline. Gears includes 3 main things: a local server that stores application pages for working off line, a database (based on SQLite) for storing (and accessing) data, and a "WorkerPool" that does most of the work, including synchronizing data between the server and the application. As a developer, your Ajax code will always hit the local server, and the WorkerPool class will take care of managing the data between the client and server.

The question on a lot of people's minds today is what does this mean for rich Internet application developers. David Mitchell Smith, Web analyst for Gartner, says that this actually reduces the need for RIAs and rich clients, and Ryan Stewart seems to agree, saying that this will likely mean fewer applications built on Apollo.

They may be right. Google is certainly pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the browser with this release, as they have for the past few years. Ajax development is difficult, but their GWT toolkit is making it easier (at least for Java developers). I'm sure a few developers will be looking at this as a solution to many of their problems. However, I'm not really sure that the main problem for Ajax developers right now is offline access - I don't think that's the holy grail (David HH agrees).

I think in order for this to be truly successful Gears is going to have to be installed in browsers by default. The installation process right now is fine for developers, but my mom won't be too happy to have to install an extension to Safari in order to get something to work. Time will tell if Apple and Microsoft agree to install this by default in their browsers (Firefox including it is a no brainer). That is going to take a long time to happen, likely a few years, if it happens at all.

There's a lot of coverage on this today. Here's what I would recommend reading: Slashdot, Ryan Stewart, Information Week, O'Reilly, and TechCrunch.

TechCrunch had a story the other day about a new start up called CoRank that allows you to setup your own Digg like website for any specific topic. I have set one up for rich Internet applications, and its online at ria.corank.com. The site allows anyone to submit stories that are then voted on and promoted to the front page. There are bookmarklets available for every major browser that allow you to easily add a story to the site, as well as links for blogs and websites.

Check it out and participate if you'd like to help highlight the great stories and examples of rich Internet applications that are out there.

Streampad is a web music player that allows you to access your music library from any internet connected computer. Streampad is written by Dan Kantor, who I had the fortune of interviewing a few weeks ago. Dan's previous work included development work at del.icio.us / Yahoo, and he's now working on Streampad full time. The site was featured on TechCrunch a month or so ago.

Once you signup for Streampad, you'll be prompted to download a Java applet that will scan your iTunes library or hard drive for music. This desktop application is what will allow you to play your own music anywhere on the web: when you're on your main computer, that application needs to be running. If it is, you can then connect over the web to that application, and play the music that its found on your machine.

Streampad integrates a number of cool web applications, including Last.fm, MP3Tunes, Google Maps and others. You can upload your stats to Last.fm, store your music on MP3Tunes, view other users in a Google Maps view.

Streampad has released a useful tool that allows you to stream music from your blog into a Streampad player. A number of sites are using this useful plugin. They've setup a blog that alllows you to keep up to date with new features easily.

The site is really unique in that it brings a whole lot of services together into one compelling application. This is the type of application that Apollo is perfect for: a strong desktop presence with the need to integrate various web applications.

Kleenex has a website that allows you to design your own Kleenex tissue box online. The site provides a number of backgrounds, and allows you to add your own photos or pre-made clip art to the design. You can add any text you want to your Kleenex box, and preset themes include those for babies, sports, celebrations, pets, vacations and more.

The site to build your own Kleenex tin is done using a combination of Ajax and Flash. Flash is used as the box canvas, with Ajax and HTML being used for the rest of the page: selecting themes, adding text and borders to the canvas etc. Overall, its a very well designed site and is probably one of the best showcases for Flash and Ajax working together that I've seen since Google Finance.

Their online FAQ answers a number of questions. One box costs $4.99, plus shipping, which they say is about $6.00 for 1 to 6 boxes. At this time, only US residents can order the boxes, but they're hoping to expand to Canada and Europe soon. Someone was thinking ahead when they added in this question and answer "Are there certain types of pictures or text you will not print?". A:"...The Kleenex® Brand stands for family values and we will not print any pictures or text that are in conflict with those values..."

Overall, a pretty unique site that allows you to create a unique gift. If only this was available a few months ago.

(From Digg)

Many people are confused about the relationship between Flash, Flex and Ajax. Its a bit tricky, because in many cases the three technologies are similar to each other: all three allow web developers to add dynamic elements to static webpages very easily. Flex and Flash are both delivered via the Flash Player (normally used as a plugin to browsers), Ajax applications are delivered via the browser. Ajax is written with JavaScript, XML and HTML components, Flex applications are written with ActionScript, XML and MXML components.

I think that because of these similarities, many people often assume that you'll build your site using Ajax OR Flex OR Flash. The truth is, that's just not the case. There are a number of great examples of sites that are using Flash and Ajax together. Today I'm highlighting two of them: Google Finance and Yahoo Finance.

To finish off my first week in the RIA blogosphere, I thought I'd add a few thinks to Adobe Apollo. For those of you who don't know, Adobe Apollo will be the next major client application to come from Adobe. It joins the Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash Player family, likely (hopefully?) sometime next year. Ryan Stewart has a link to "Keep an Open Eye", which has an overview of Adobe Apollo.