A Perfect Compliment

Being a avid photographer with a camera in hand almost everywhere I go, I never had much good to say about what some consider a competitor to still captures, namely video.

It's not that I despise it or anything like that, it is more that I never really thought it was practical. After all, think of all the things you need. A video camera, tapes, a player to play it back on, a television and a whole lot of time to watch it. And god forbid you actually wanted to share the video with say your cousin seven states over. It's not like it was easy to transfer the video to the pc and upload.

Compare that with photos, with all that can be done with them with relative ease.

Times have changed though, so i have learned today. Why? Because I ordered a Flip video camera 2 days ago and today it came in.

This little thing is amazing. In fact, I have been videoing all night and playing it back on a television. Total time to do that? Oh, about 30 seconds from the time I hit STOP on the recording. Yup, 30 seconds to plug the Flip in to the tv and I was playing for a roomful of guest.

They were so impressed that I bet two sales are genereated. :)

A little plug for Phanfare

In the spirit of wanting to add stuff to this blog every couple of days and making sure it is somewhat useful information, today I figured I'd share with you one of a handful of services I use.

The service is Phanfare, a hosting service for both your photo's and video. I know, there are a ton of photo sharing sites in existence, some even do video. There's Picasa Web, Flickr and a several others, but trust me, i have tried them all and use multiple. But todays focus on my favorite, Phanfare.

Why?

Well first, because it does actually cost money to use. That's right, I actually pay to use it. Image that. But trust me, the modest annual fee is worth every penny.

What does Phanfare provide? A few things:

• unlimited hosting of your pictures and video
• no ads
• sharing
• a awesome application to mange your photos from anywhere and any computer (even if yours crashes)
  
• probably what is the best slideshow interfaces of any site i know
• applications that integrate into Facebook and Lightroom 2
• and the list goes one....

Not only is it real easy for me to post & mange pictures, it incredibly easy to share with others.

Ok, rather than me go on and on, check it out for your self at www.phanfare.com. If you would like to see some of the shots I have up there, click here.

BTW, I realize that this picture posted with this entry has nothing to do with Phanfare other than the fact that it is posted there as well. But after all, it is Breast Cancer Awareness month, so that's good enough reason. Right?