There are lots of photo-sharing websites out there, but Picwing may be the only one that caters to tech-savvy geeks, their parents and their grandparents. Here’s how it works-you take pictures, and then either upload them to your Picwing album from your home computer or email them to the Picwing email address you create when you sign up.
Then, with a monthly paid printing account, Picwing automatically mails real, non-digital copies of your pictures out your specified recipients twice a month. Do you have some pictures that you don’t want to send to Grandma? You can also create more than one album-say, an album with Grandma-safe pics and an album of Mardi Gras pics.
In addition to sharing your photos via the Internet and snail mail, Picwing also offers a variety of free photo-sharing widgets. For example, you can link your Picwing account to your Twitter account, and Picwing will automatically change your Twitter background when you add new photos. It would be nice, however, if Picwing offered easy integration to Facebook and other social networking sites as well.
Chumby users can also arrange to have their Chumby automatically sync up with Picwing. Even cooler (although currently sold out) is a wi-fi smartframe that automatically displays the latest pictures from your Picwing album.
How useful is Picwing’s core service of automatically printing and mailing your pictures? These days, I usually don’t even print real copies of my photos, I just store them on my hard drive and back them up or share them online. Even my grandparents are tech-savvy enough to view online photo albums.
However, I think everyone has someone in their family who prefers real photographs to digital. In my case, it’s my mother-in-law, who is absolutely obsessed with scrapbooking. If hubby and I decided to have a child, I would sign up for Picwing in a heartbeat, thus ensuring her of an endless supply of actual, non-digital photographs of the grandchild.
Even without the printing service, Picwing is still pretty useful. I’ll be watching for that smartframe to come back on sale-hopefully by Christmas, guys?
What’s your favorite photo-sharing service? Do you think it’s better than Picwing, and if so, why? Leave your answers in the comments!
Our Rating of Picwing
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Tool of the Day: Picwing: Give Your Photos Wings http://su.pr/1tLPc0
Thanks for writing about Picwing! This is Edward Kim, one of the founders of the service. Just as you mentioned, our service is perfect for couples who just had a child, and want a way to share printed photos of baby with their loved ones, or if you just want some fresh pictures of the baby to stick on your fridge.
Yes, this service will be my salvation if we ever end up having kids (although at the moment, our dogs are enough of a responsibility). I love the wi-fi smart frame idea, too…when do you think you’ll have more available?