The UK Mobile Phone Blog

Camera Phones - Take a Picture, Share Online

June 9, 2008 at 7:30 am by Jay | In Just for fun, Mobile content/services

If you own a modern mobile phone, it is very likely that you have a built in digital camera. For some, the camera means little, they use their phone for traditional communication, voice calls, maybe a few text messages. For many, though, the inclusion of a camera on their phone means they have the option of recording moments of their lives that would otherwise be missed.

Once the picture has been taken, the choice then is what to do with it. A picture can mean so much too so many, if it is shared. There are many services available to you to enable you to share your pictures with as many people as possible.

On a simple level, you can send a picture captured on your phone by MMS picture messaging, to a handset of a friend or family member. MMS can also be sent to an email address. Sending via MMS rescales the picture so it can be sent via the network servers. Therefore if you are going to send a captured picture to an email address it is much better sent via your handsets email client. Sending this way has two advantages;
1: The picture is sent in its full size
2: It is most likely the cost will be cheaper than sending directly via MMS. Depending on which data plan you use, the cost of sending an email will often be cheaper than the flat rate fee charged for MMS.

Another way of sharing your pictures is via your own blog. You can send pictures from your phone directly to your blog via email; the subject of the email will be the title of your blogpost, the picture will be stored as per your preset defaults and the body of the email text will be the main text on your blog. This is an excellent way for posting pictures online quickly and simply. If you have many pictures you want to share then you can take advantage of one of the online portals, such as OVI from Nokia.

OVI is Finnish for door. Nokia are arranging the OVI portal as a door to their online services. So you will find links to Nokia maps, Nokia Music Store and for online photo storage, which is located under the Share banner. The OVI Share site is Twango from old, Nokia bought out Twango and it is being listed now on OVI as Share.

Through OVI, you can group your photos together on one main page, and also arrange them into different channels. So you can have a channel for your best friend’s wedding, a channel for your holiday, a channel for family pictures, the work’s Christmas party, etc. Once all of your photos have been tagged and arranged into their respective channels you can share them with the world, or if the pictures are personal, just choose to share the channels with people whom you authorise to view them. With OVI you can add friends to your profile, much as you can on many social networking sites, which allows them to see your latest updates, and also you will see all new public photos they post, or private channels to which they have authorised you to view. Much more than just a photo sharing site, OVI allows you to network with your friends and see their latest uploads.

The channels you create on OVI can be embedded into your blog, and presented as a slideshow or thumbnails, with code that is created for you on the OVI site. Alternatively you can link to individual photos from your channels into your blog or forums, again using embed code provided by OVI.

Much like using a Nokia mobile phone is simple and straightforward, so is using OVI. Everything is logically laid out and simple to navigate. If you use a Nokia NSeries phone you can also download the share application to your handset, which integrates the online service with the gallery and camera application on your handset.

The magic of a photo is best enjoyed when shared, the only question to answer is which way works for you?

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