We have already seen that it is possible to use Gmail as a backup storage space for important files. The GPhotospace application adds another possibility. It makes it possible to create virtual photo albums in Gmail that can be shared with users. Sharing in this context means that the photo albums can be send to individual users which means they are send as an attachment. GPhotospace is provided as a Firefox add-on which offers another functionality. Users who are invited can use the GPhotospace add-on to view the galleries online as well.

Users who do not like to share their Gmail account data with another application might want to consider creating a secondary account just for that purpose. The application can be launched from the Tools menu in Firefox once the add-on has been installed. There is also a standalone desktop application for Windows that does not require the Firefox web browser.

The GPhotospace add-on offers a fool proof way of uploading photos to Gmail with the ability to invite other users to see them. It can also be used as photo backup storage although it might make more sense in this case to send the photos as attachments directly to the Google Mail account.

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The site makes creating a video presentation easily: to create one, all you must do is simply upload some pictures, or import them from a website, upload a song, or choose one from their, and finalise it. The presentation can then be shared or downloaded.

Whilst you may think you can do all of this in a desktop video editor such as Windows Movie Maker, animoto does it much quicker, has good production and analyses the sound and pictures and mixes them together to ensure they flow well. Humans have an input too; deciding the order in which to put the pictures, the ability to add text and ability to put more emphasis on particular images.

Slideshows speak better than words, so view mine of my holiday in Poland in 2007.

Unfortunately, animoto has some limitations.

In order to have higher-definition presentations or to make them last longer than 30 seconds, the user must pay. To remove the time limit, it’s either $3/video or $30/year and to allow them to be at DVD quality, you must pay $5/video. This may sound expensive, but in my opinion it’s worth it if you need to put on a good presentation. Only full-length videos (ie those you’ve paid $3 for) can be downloaded.

An application is also available for iPhones so you can view animoto presentations on them.

animoto allows presentations to be shared straight into most social networking sites like MySpace, Orkut and Facebook and images can be imported from Flickr, Smugmug, Facebook, Photobucket or Picasa.

(Thanks to Azhar Chougle for introducing me to animoto.)

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