One idea is to share the best using an online photo sharing service. Those services are popping up everywhere. Not a day goes past when an email for software to catalogue photoes and/or upload them to some sharing site arrives in the In Box. It seems that every man and his dog is getting in on the act. Are they all worth of our precious memories? Well not all.

So why are they so popular? Their trick is they make it simple and easy to upload the pictures. Some allow the user to fancy up their part of the site. All this comes at a price. Not a monetary one but by exposing any user or visitor to yet more advertising. Most insist that even viewers register before they can view any photos. The site owners then have enough information to target advertising to the user and those who would be interested in viewing his or her artistic work.

In the past month I have registered and used several of these services just to see if my spam increased and what form of advertising is used to pay for the "free" service. So far I am not impressed.

So why do we constantly expose ourselves and are willing to scarafice privacy for a free service that we can easily do ourselves without exposing any details at all? The most underused part of being on the net is the space most ISPs reserved for each member to use for their own web site. Having your own web site has it's advantages. You have full control over content. No ads to annoy users plus the freedom to add other elements to the site. With the right tools you can create a full blown attractive web site where you can show off your pictures.

Using the free java based Jalbum from http://jalbum.net, I created a site in less than ten minutes then up loaded it to my ISP's server. I registered a domain name and using the domain registration address forwarding service and ended up with a reasonable looking photo web site.

More time could be spent on dressing up the site using add on components. Photoshop Elements, Ulead's Photo Album and a bunch of other photo software can do similar. You can have a peep by just clicking here  -  the series of photos are of Melbourne.