Photobucket opens well for pix sharers

Horizons broadened today for some 40 million users of Photobucket, one of the largest photo sharinig sites on the Internet., as the service introduced new technology that allows images and videos stored at its site to be accessed from a wide spectrum of places--places such as Web sites, Web applications, desktop applications, browser plug-ins, mobile phones, home-entertainment systems, digital photo frames and directly from cameras.

The technology called anAPI, Application Programming Interface, empowers developers to create applications that permit Photobucket users to

• Securely log into Photobucket accounts
• Create, edit and access albums
• Upload new content to their albums
• Share content from albums via email
• Search through publicly available content on Photobucket and
• Access and update metadata (titles, descriptions, tags, etc.)

Following the Photobucket announcement, a number of developers launched applications using the new API.

Flektor, a unit of Fox Interactive Media, trumpeted a new slideshow creation tool made exclusively for Photobucket that lets its members create MySpace addons like slideshows, polls, surveys and quizzes with customizable skins, sound and interactivity that are all updated in real time.

Intercasting Corp. introduced a tool for seamlessly moving photos from mobile phones to anywhere within Photobucket.

Another player in the mobile space, Ontela, says it has adapted its PhotoCopter service to automatically upload images from mophos to the 'bucket.

Personal book publisher Blurb revealed that it has incorporated the new API into its BookSmart software so Photobucket users can "slurp"" pix from the service into Blurb's program where they can be used to create photo books.

Another tome maker, Albumoprinter, has embraced the API, which can be used to drag-and-drop images from Photobucket into the company's online personal photo book system.

The API is also being used by Tapatap to allow Photobucket members to meld their images into the social photo game maker's mobile offerings.

And Picnik, an innovator in online photo editing, is using the API to link its editing tools with Photobucket. Picnik users can work on their Photobucket images from within the editing service. and when they're finished working on a photo, it can be sent back to Photobucket without leavinig Picnik.

No doubt these are just a few of the applications we'll see cropping up in the coming months as developers warm up to the new API.