I figured, in putting Windows Live Writer 2009 through its paces, that I’d try one of these newly-touted features, which is an instant upload of a photo album.  The above photos were some shots taken at Washington Park Zoo, and around Beaverton, Oregon, picked randomly from my local hard disk.   While the instant-collage that it makes is pretty spiffy, the only upload option then is to upload them to Windows Live’s photo gallery, so they can be displayed there.

This was my first exposure to their on-line photo gallery product, and being a long-term Flickr user, that left a little bit to be desired.  It actually now begs for a side-by-side comparison with the other leading photo services, but my initial comparison to Flickr is:

  1. Photos look terrible:  ‘Kay, I’m not talking about my framing or my choice of lighting or whatnot, I’m talking about the fact that Flickr very obviously does some sharpening and some brightness/contrast to the uploaded photos to make them look sharp.  The same photos uploaded to Flickr and to Windows Live look decidedly better on Flickr. 

    As an example, here’s a side-by-side comparo with Flickr and Live.

  2. Stats?  Well, perhaps it’s because I used to work for WebTrends, but I’m a total junkie for stats.  Even the free Flickr account will let you see how many views your individual photos are getting, and the pro acct will let you get all manner of analytics on your photos.  I searched and can find no such option on Windows Live. 
  3. Full Image Download: A point in Microsoft’s favour is the generous helping if disk space you get right off the bat.  Flickr lets you upload 100MB/mo, but my free Microsoft account gave me 25GB to play with, and the instant ability to upload full-rez images.  That’s pretty nice for sharing full-quality images with family across the country.
  4. Geo-Tagging:  Okay, and maybe it’s also because I’m a total map junkie and am addicted hopelessly to Google Earth, but I really dig Flickr’s ability to geo-tag photos.  For example, in terms of presentation, I was able to very easily just put together a map of my recent train trip up from Los Angeles to Portland Oregon, and display it as a map on Flickr:

    image

    Perhaps that’s not a real big feature for some people, but I find it a very powerful way to present photos, and an intriguing way to browse the photos of others, or a place I’d like to travel to.

In any case, I appreciate the work that went into making the instant-collage feature for Windows Live Writer 2009.  I now just think that a little bit of tweaking to the Live Photo Gallery product could make it a real winner and a genuine competitor to Flickr.