Sharing photos online for dummies?
 

Don't laugh, but I thought I might actually post some of my Africa photos, but I have been having trouble with the two sites I tried. (Three, one cost money--Smugmug) Picasa rejected most of my pics perhaps bec they were edited, and my computer would not let me install whatever Kodak requires. What site is the friendliest for someone like me who has never done that and hence the long delay? I want one where I can exclude some pictures and rearrange, to spare you from the awful ones. I have been obsessing about Africa lately and really want to go back, but money is elusive. Thanks in advance for advice about sharing.

I've found KodakGallery to be a reasonable, and free, site.

My guess is that your computer will in fact allow you to install the Kodak software. Follow the Kodak instructions carefully: the instructions tell you what to do when you get the "Install ActiveX Content" message.

As Rizzuto says, give Kodak another try. Free and the easiest. If you cannot install their software, there is an option to load photos one by one. Slow, but it works. I bet one of your teacher colleagues could even help you out at a school computer after work so you see how to do it.

I copied these Kodak instructions from another post.

Here's how to get the Kodak gallery link into a Fodor's post.

Email a link to the photo album to yourself.

At the bottom of the email message that you sent to yourself is a line that reads something like:

"if the link above does not work, copy and paste the line below into your address line."

The line below has a long address. That is what you copy and paste into Fodors.

The Fodor's preview screen will make the link look extra long and maybe even distort the width of the frame. But that is only how it previews. Once you post it wraps around and fits in the normal screen width.

Rather than do your editing in the online photo site to spare us the bad shots, do it offline on your computer. If you have your photos loaded onto your computer, most Windows software will let you see and delete photos. Again you could have a colleague help you with that feature. You don't need your own pictures. Any downloaded pic from the internet would work for you to be shown where My Pictures is and how to delete things. Then you could do it at home.

Here is a link to an inexpensive trip, but it's only for 5 days in Africa.
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=35070891

I will try Kodak again. I had trouble with ActiveX before, so I guess I need to persevere. I did spent an absurd amount of time since I posted trying to edit pictures, etc. I kept crashing my computer because I was loading so many pictures from my DVD. I found some short videos I didn't even know I had, so that was fun. Thanks for the additional directions for posting to Fodor's. I did see that posting about the "cheap" safari and already bookmarked it. I have been looking at other people's pics from their long, expert safaris and mine have been looking pretty lame and ordinary, but somebody has to look at them bec it took me so darn long to do it.

The next time I tried Kodak, it loaded fine. So, I spent hours loading pics. After I loaded them to Kodak, I didn't know they had to remain on my hard drive, so since they were all on a DVD, I erased them from my very full hard drive. Big Mistake. Now all my pictures are "disconnected." I reloaded my pics from the DVD to the hard drive,altho I don't think my Kodak edits are there. I thought that would solve the problem, but nothing changed as far as the connection problem. I am going to try reloading from the DVD, copying the pics instead of the whole folder. The folders do show up in MY PICS. I tried turning off the computer to help it all reset, but that made no difference either. Does anyone have a solution?

No help, but, unless I misunderstand you, I really doubt if the photos on Kodakgallery come from your hard drive. What if your PC were turned off and I wanted to see your Kodakgallery pictures? I believe the/you photos are stored on KG. Suggest before you put hours into loading up 800 photos that you make a test trial with say maybe just 6. Look at it as a learning opportunity for twoteachers :-)

regards - tom

Kodakgallery is only free for 12 month, unless you make some kind of purchase, then it is extended 12 more month.

Why not try Flickr, the worlds largest photo sharing community, with lots of forums too to help in any area and lots of contests.

Otherwise I find the prettiest of all free I’ve tested (and that’s a lot) to be dphoto.com, but it has a 100 photo limit and a 3mb file size limit.

I am still working on Kodak. Today I loaded several short videos and some were on the DVD and some were in MY Pics and the ones from the DVD had that same broken connection symbol. It doesn't make sense to me either, but when I try to show the other problematic (and edited) photos full screen, I get no picture but a message saying that these pictures are no longer in My Pics and so no longer available. I even did a search through the whole computer, but the little puppy came up empty. Thanks for all the suggestions. I happen to be somewhat obsessive once I get started on something ( a year later), so I will persevere, though there will probably be less editing.

Good luck! I hope this is a learning experience and not a big pain in the neck.

Shutterfly is also easy, so it's a very good all-purpose site to start with.

I like winkflash because the quality and price combination is the best, but it is definitely not as easy to use, so I'd avoid it for your first attempt.

I think I finally figured out my problem, but not until I lost the whole new set of pics I had loaded and edited after they had been fine for several days while I added to them. Did I curse, yes!! The last time I ordered from Kodak was the end of last OCT, so once the date reached Oct 1, all my pics were disconnected again! Of course, it took me a long time to realize the date had anything to do with the problem. So I dutifully made a purchase from Kodak a few hours ago, trying to redeem myself, but so far my pics are STILL disconnected. I am hoping their computer will catch up to the purchase and my pics will be restored. SO for anyone trying to load to Kodak who forgot they had ordered from them some time ago, you can not upload fully until you make another purchase. I just figured this upload would start a new year. I have a too long trip report ready to go when I straighten out my pics, a different report from most. I hope it will be interesting to SOMEONE out there.

OK, I have my pictures ready to go after basically a nightmare experience. It turns out my Kodak software was defective, and I spent 3 hours on the phone with technical support, I wiped out the old program and installed a new one, but it basically wiped out all my work too.

I have a question about videos. I have several short videos, but I can't get them to load. I have a Canon S2 camera, and the format is MVI__AVI. Kodak says it will accept AVI, but I am not having any luck. Anybody know what to do? Thanks.

AVI files are confusing (but what isn't when it comes to video and audio coding?). The Canon S2/S3/S5 video files are AVI files called "Motion JPG", or M-JPEG, or MJPG. They are NOT compressed AVI files. A lot of AVI movie files have actually been compressed using MPEG-4 compression. Or compressed using some other scheme. Compressing the AVI files saves disk storage space and makes for faster internet downloading. Talk with Kodak again and ask them in what format do they require the AVI files. Perhaps the Canon AVI MJPGs are ok, perhaps not. IF not, then ask what AVI compression code to use. (I wasn't aware that Kodagallery would show vieos?)

regards - tom
pa - and good luck. Another learning opportunity for twoteachers :-)

twoteachers,
I can't help with Kodak gallery, and don't know much about video file format. But, I loaded my photos to picasaweb and the video went right in with the photos. I have a Sony H-9. I took photos at a neighborhood jazz concert and didn't even realize the video clip was in the same file folder I uploaded until I opened the slideshow and the music started blaring at me :) If you don't have any luck with Kodak gallery, you might try out picasaweb.google

Dana

I tried loading videos to Picasa and at first it seemed to work for the really short, but then when I tried to open them, there was only a black screen.
Kodak told me when I asked technical support that your pictures do have to be on your own computer for the EasyShare to work. I asked specifically--twice.
Still will try a little longer on the videos --after I turn some grades in....

Sorry twoteachers my suggestion did not work. My video is very short. I also cannot tell you if it opens as a video when anyone else looks at the slide show. Good luck.