Photoblogging Software
My brother would like to do a blog, but isn’t impressed with Movable Type since he wants to focus on photos and slideshows.
So, off to Google in search of a tool that might be worth of his priase… and use.
JAlbum
My first hit was a tool called JAlbum. My first guess is that it’s written in Java. I think prefixing “J” to your Java program name is pretty lame. But no more lame than appending .NET to your .NET program. But it’s trendy so who am I to judge?
The installer uses InstallAnywhere by ZeroG. It too must be written in Java because the UI sucks ass. Take a look at the laughable directory selection dialog:
Oh man. That shit gives me a headache. I don’t understand how Sun has survived this long producing that kind of crap. Anyway, the album isn’t so bad. Check out this default album I created:
http://www.primordia.com/blog/archive/jalbum/album/index.html
That’s one skin of many. Lord knows why they chose to emulate the Windows XP explorer. The next album was created using the “CameraGeek” skin. Notice the yellow text, that’s a comment I was able to add.
http://www.primordia.com/blog/archive/jalbum/album2/index.html
Notice in the screenshot above that you get an option to “Write to Image”. That got me thinking. Can I add comments to JPEG files? When I clicked on it, though, the image didn’t get any comments. I verified this by looking at the “Summary” properties for both the source JPEG image and the copy that was created for the album.
However, Windows Explorer allowed me to modify the comment as you can see in this screenshot:
Holy EXIF Batman! Now I can add tags via explorer and perhaps wrote an app that reads the tags and organizes my photos. My current organization scheme is by directory name only.
In this screen shot, you can see how JAlbum allows you to FTP your files to a website if you have one. Too bad they don’t support WebDAV.
In a nutshell, JAlbum is ideal for people who are satisfied with generating static slideshows. It even works on a Mac, and Linux for that matter. The slideshows are pretty nice and are a definite improvement over the slideshows generated by Photoshop. Perhaps my brother would like to check this out.
Personally, I still prefer a more blog-like tool. I’m still pretty happy with my Flickr and Movable Type combo.
It’s late now but I’ll try and continue my reviews of photo album and photblogging software soon.
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