What's the best type of group for posting pictures?

[The Last Laugh]

Hello everyone,

I'd like to know what you think is the best type of group to use for posting pictures. I mean groups like Yahoo Groups, Geocities, Imagestation, etc. People seem to complain a lot about many of the better known ones. Are there any that actually offer a good service?

A few months ago someone offered to post some of my pictures on his Yahoo group. A kind gesture, but unfortunately, while it was in no way this person's fault, I wasn't happy with the results. It seems Yahoo modifies the pictures when they're of a certain size. Mine were 320x240. When viewed on the group the pictures were a little smaller than the original. I mean a bad resizing job, so that they looked distorted and grainy. However, for some strange reason, when they were downloaded and viewed on a hard drive, they were actually a little larger than the originals, which made them look better than the small versions, but still not as good as the originals, since they were a tad blown up and looked fuzzy. No idea why Yahoo Groups handles pics in such a way. I was told that it might be due to the same of my pics, which were smaller than they should have been. That's entirely possible, but it doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, why would a free group have a problem with pictures being too small? How can they be too small? Anyway, I was quite displeased with what Yahoo was doing to my pictures. So the picture posting "project" was ditched.

I don't know the various types of groups very well and have no idea which I should use if I ever need to post some pictures. It would have to free, of course, provide a fair amount of disc space and, maybe even more important, accept a good deal of bandwidth use. It also should be tolerant when it comes to content. My material is very mild, but some people are so close-minded, you know. I wouldn't want a group that deletes my stuff for no good reason.

Besides that, browsing a bunch of pics should be easy for visitors. It would be neat if thumbnails were available (do all such groups have them?) Also, I personally find it really annoying when you click on a thumbnail to access a picture, only to have it open a new window with a larger but non-full-sized version of the pic which requires you to click on it or on a link to get the full-sized version. Why not link the thumbnails directly to the full-sized versions? Of course, those larger versions should appear at the same size and resolution as the originals.

I realize I seem to be asking for a lot, but I'm just describing an ideal type of group. It doesn't really have to be perfect. But it really shouldn't feature major annoyances like that stupid resizing thing I described earlier.

Besides pictures, I'd also like to know what group types are good for larger files for free, like clips or whatever.

Any suggestions are welcome. Thank you.

 

[TKpervert]

Francois, it's all economics. There's no free lunch.
I do not follow Yahoo links for pics or clips because I know it's a wasted effort.
Your own ISP is the best bet so long as there's no contractual prohibitions against mild porn.

 

[The Last Laugh]

Francois, it's all economics. There's no free lunch.
I do not follow Yahoo links for pics or clips because I know it's a wasted effort.
Your own ISP is the best bet so long as there's no contractual prohibitions against mild porn.

Hmm, I can't say I like the expression "mild porn" to describe my videos very much, but that's ok, I know what you mean.

Yeah, I understand that, generally speaking, nothing is free. And when you do get something for free, it's likely to be of so-so quality (gee, I kind of insulted my own free samples, there). But as far as I can tell, many of those group do seem to be free and decent enough, and in that case I'd like to know which one would best suit my needs.

I'm not sure what you mean by my ISP. I mean, I know what ISP means, but do you mean like simply posting pics on my own website, or some other way of using my ISP that I'm not aware of? I'd like to post pics on a group so that I don't have to deal with the extra bandwidth it involves, an issue that tends to be a problem for me. Can one's ISP provide some free space that's separate from a website? I've never bothered to check that out.

You know, now that I think of it, my website isn't hosted by my ISP at all. I've got to be careful not to get those two things confused. In any case, maybe I should check with my ISP to see if I have access to some web space. Though I doubt it would be much, and let's not even talk about bandwidth.

 

[Traveler]

I have an ezboard and use www.imageevent.com I have a premium account 24.95,and that is for 1500 pics.You can buy more space as needed.I like them they are very reliable and are seldom down.Down for usual maintence and such but would highly recommend them.Oh,yes I renew once a year.

 

[TKpervert]

Francois, my old internet service provider (Earthlink) gave me space where I could upload stuff (naked women) with no problem, and hotlink to it. 10 meg I think.
My new provider (adelphia) offers the same, but I haven't figured out how to use it yet.
Never had a bandwidth problem with Earthlink, haven't tried adelphia.

By 'mild porn' I meant that some ISP's won't even allow a neked female boobie to present its cute little self on their servers.

Clips are out of the question on ISP freespace, you either have to pay for it or bite the bandwidth bullet.

 

[The Last Laugh]

I have an ezboard and use www.imageevent.com I have a premium account 24.95,and that is for 1500 pics.You can buy more space as needed.I like them they are very reliable and are seldom down.Down for usual maintence and such but would highly recommend them.Oh,yes I renew once a year.

Thank you for the recommendation. It does seem like a good service. However, I'm really looking for something free. If I'm to pay to host my pics, I might as well keep them on my own website and pay my website host instead.

 

[The Last Laugh]

Francois, my old internet service provider (Earthlink) gave me space where I could upload stuff (naked women) with no problem, and hotlink to it. 10 meg I think. My new provider (adelphia) offers the same, but I haven't figured out how to use it yet. Never had a bandwidth problem with Earthlink, haven't tried adelphia.

I'm pretty sure my own provider must offer something similar. I vaguely remember reading something about it. But it might only be 5MB, I'm not sure. Not a lot of space. Even 10 would be limit. But I'll look into it.

You know, until very recently, Earthlink was my website host (though not my ISP, which is Sympatico). The service was just fine. I only changed because I found out I could have my site hosted by a server based only 5 minutes from where I live. I also know the people there. It's very convenient to be able to deal in person when I need it. I also needed more bandwidth, and my new host allows more than my Earthlink package did, for about the same price. Though Earthlink did offer more disc space.

By 'mild porn' I meant that some ISP's won't even allow a neked female boobie to present its cute little self on their servers.

I guess some feel they can't take a chance with that sort of thing and refuse any such content just to be safe. It's unfortunate.

Thing is, my videos don't feature nidity of any kind. Not even partial. Heck, my models don't even wear bikinis or lingerie. They usually wear something like jeans and an ordinary top. And the action is quite down-to-earth, with no "adult" activities (with the possible exception of some tongue tickling, which borders on kinky, but that's pretty harmless and more playful than anything else). So my videos definitely don't qualify as porn, even mild. Granted, they're fetish videos, meant for an adult audience. After all, they're meant for arousal, at least among people who are into this sort of thing. But they're not porn. But no matter, I know you were just making a point about ISPs.

Clips are out of the question on ISP freespace, you either have to pay for it or bite the bandwidth bullet.

Yeah, I realize that I can't keep them on my website for free. The bandwidth use would definitely have my website host ask me for more money. Oh well.