Today there are many ways to share pictures with friends, family, colleagues and clients.  Images can be found everywhere online, and any social media site worth its salt provides a photo album or gallery application.  With such an emphasis on sharing pictures, and so many outlets to do so, it can be hard to decide where to upload your image files.

I am a bit more traditional, and maybe even conservative when it comes to posting photos of my friends and family on the web. It seems safer to just make copies of pictures and pass them out at the next family function. Unfortunately, that’s not very cost effective or timely.

Email has come a long way as far as using attachments to send large files is concerned, but it is very inefficient unless you have the time to send three pictures per email. If you’re trying to share a vacation’s worth of photos, email is not an option.  Online profiles usually provide an outlet for pictures, but they frequently limit images by size and sometimes dimension.  Dedicated photo sites are also great for sharing, but are often inadequate with security.  I’ve read stories of personal pictures ending up in advertisements in foreign countries despite strict copyright protection.

The solution for me is a widget within the TrueShare online file system called PhotoShare. Not only can I safely keep my pictures in online storage in their original resolution, but I can share them with friends and family without allowing the rest of the world to see. It’s actually a revolutionary concept: A photo album that doesn’t take up shelf space (or disk space for that matter) and is accessible to anyone I choose, at any time.

Here’s how it works: I use TrueShare to send a direct link that’s associated with the photos I took last weekend to my sister. Yes, this is cloud computing, but it’s simple and easy to understand. TrueShare, in this instance, acts like a virtual thumb drive or a virtual hard drive “in the cloud”. My sister just clicks the link and there are the 150 photos I wanted her to see, viewed from their online storage through a flash viewer that starts automatically. The images are also not downloaded to her computer (unless she wants them to be) so they don’t take up any space. No more worries about attaching pictures or navigating complicated websites where pictures can be stolen.

Of course sending a direct link is not the only way to use PhotoShare to share pictures.  If you have a website, a blog, or even a newsletter, you can link a PhotoShare album easily using a simple image tag.  There are also embedding options for website integration, and slide shows you are able to connect to your blogs, sites, and articles.  So if you’re like me, and need a way to share your photos efficiently and affordably, check out PhotoShare. It’s changing the way we view things!

Each PhotoShare viewer can be set up with a number of configuration options. You can:

• Allow viewers to download one or all of the (full-size) images from the viewer
• Set up a number of different picture transitions
• Allow printing of the image from the flash viewer

Here goes…my first official blog post…I hope it doesn’t suck…but sink or swim I’m diving in…

If I had to define the TrueShare Direct-Link feature in alphabetical order, I would say that it is a cool, easy, effective, efficient, flexible, fun, liberating, powerful, and secure way to share files on the Internet.

Any of the files stored on your TrueShare drive are accessible from anywhere you need them through a Direct-Link.  As the name implies, this feature provides a hyper-link to an individual file that can be used like any other hyper-link on the Internet. It’s too easy. Just click on the file action menu for a specific file and select the Direct-Link option to access a pop-up window that allows you to create (or delete) a link to the file. You can then copy/paste this link anywhere you need it.  For instance if you wanted to include a picture in a blog post you could simply paste the Direct-Link into the image tag of your blog editor and your image will present in your blog without having to upload it to your blog host.   There is also a Direct-Link Manager where you can manage links to all of your files so it is easy to store and manage links to entire collections of files.

You can use a Direct-Link for any files that you want to share on the net.

Here are a few examples of how you can use Direct-Link to provide access to your files:
Provide PDF downloads from your website
Embed a video in a newsletter
Email a link to a large file
Post pictures to Facebook

No matter what the use is, Direct-Link is an awesome feature that significantly simplifies and greatly extends the ability to share files online.

But don’t take my word for it, share a file with someone today and see for yourself just how fun it is.