Looking for an easy way to share photos with your GMail contacts? Adding the GPhotoSpace extension to your Firefox install provides you with a solution that's just as easy as using "send to: email recipient" in Windows.

Once you've installed the addon, you can open it by clicking the status bar icon. If you're like me and your status bar is hidden, you can also customize your main toolbar and dropping the included button (which is a little lo-fi) or bookmark chrome://gps/content/gpsMain.xul to access it.

The interface is extremely simple. Create a new album, describe it, add photos, and save it. The only adjustment you can make is the size of photos to share: 320/640/1024/1536 pixels. Make sure you change this setting if you want to upload full-size digital images, as it defaults to 640 pixels.

Remember that this is a GMail hack, so "sharing" an album actually just fires off an email to your recipient that contains your photos. Still, it's a much simpler way to send multiple images than using GMail's attachment button.

If you're simply in need of a good, free way to back up your photos, sign up for a new GMail account - the 7 gigs they provide will give you room for several thousand images.

Be aware that GPS currently only supports jpeg images. That shouldn't pose a problem for most users, but I'd like to see it at least support a couple other formats like png and psd.

GPhotoSpace is free, and currently only available for Windows - a Mac version is in the works.

[ via Life Rocks 2.0 ]

Fumpr is an image hosting site that claims to be "the world's fastest photo storage." It definitely has the simplest possible interface: a browse button to select the file you want to upload, and a "fump" button to share something. Fumpr falls into the unfortunate category of names that will probably never catch on because they're just awkward to say. "Hey, I fumped a picture of you earlier today!" might meet with some raised eyebrows, to say the least.

But is it fast? Sure. It's about as fast as Imageshack, Photobucket or Flickr. I didn't notice enough of a difference in speed to call it "the world's fastest," but if they're referring to the number of steps it takes to get something uploaded, then they could be right. It just seems to me that the way Fumpr wants to distinguish itself -- other than with the silliest possible name for a storage service -- is with speed, and there's not enough of a difference there to set it apart.

Memeo's new Share application is designed to make the process of sending high-resolution photos a little easier, by sending them directly to another users desktop or putting them in an RSS feed they can look at in iPhoto.

The application, which is currently in beta, isn't meant to be a substitute for any photo sharing application you might currently be using, although photos shared using Memeo Share can also automatically upload photos to your Facebook account. Share is instead designed for sharing high-resolution photos and video with small groups or family and friends without having to send individual emails containing each item due to their size. Those who receive your photos can then decide what photos they want, and print out pictures they like at a quality resolution.

Memeo Share is offering a free lifetime use for the first 1,000 people to sign up for the beta with the public preview limited to 10,000 total sign ups. Get yours here.

How do you do decide which photosharing site to go with? If free is your criteria, there are certainly many options to choose from. Most free photo sharing sites are ad supported and come with a certain GB capacity limit. If you upgrade to a pro account, which can run anywhere from $20-$25 per year, there are typically no limits and no advertisements.

We took a look at the most popular photosharing sites' features and did a comparison to help you decide which photo site is best suited for your needs. We compared Flickr, Photobucket and Zooomr and then test drove each of the sites to see how well they did. Check out our unscientific findings after the jump.

SimpleBucket is a promising new photo sharing site that has just emerged from a complete redesign and rebuild. The service is very promising, and offers a lot of nice features that might make it a big player in the days to come.

SimpleBucket's tagline reads "Real Simple Photo Hosting," and it shows. First off, SimpleBucket does not require registration. As in at all. Simply enter in any email address, select a photo (or number of photos) to upload, and away you go. HTML code for embedding your photo, a link to the photo page, and a link to the photo itself are all instantly generated.

Mixercast is a web based application currently in alpha that allows you to take video, photos, and sound off of your computer or websites like YouTube and Flickr and create embeddable players to display them.

Creating your Mizercast is done much like creating a DVD in iDVD. You upload images into the designer and then drag and drop them where you want them to be in your MIxercast. There are tons of pre-made templates to choose from with places built-in for your media to be added. For advanced users theres a deisgner option taht gives you a little more control over your Mixercast deisgn than you get with a typical template.

The site will currently allow you to upload off of your computer, download pictures from a stock photo site, and record a video with your webcam, as well as upload video from from YouTube, MySpace, and Flickr with support for others like Facebook, Shutterfly, and eBay on the way.

Once you're done creating your Mixercast you can email it to friends, post it directly to your MySpace Blogger or Meebo page, or take the embed code and embed it on your own webpage. If you have a lot of images to share this is a fun and easy way to do it.

[Via GigaOm]

Flickr has seen incredible progress since its inception only three short years ago, and IDG News Service sat down with co-founder and general manager Stewart Butterfield to talk about the website's growth and history, and future plans.

The photo sharing service has never strayed too far from its original purpose, even after entering the Yahoo! fold and through its explosion in popularity, with 7.2 million registered users and 23 million monthly unique visitors. Nevertheless, Butterfield chimes in with some thoughts on what we might expect (or not expect) down the line, including possibilities of news components, photo syndication opportunities, competition, and other relevant bits. But, I think the real question remains: when will Flickr transcend the Gamma phase?