Flickr

It’s rare that I find an online service that I really get sunk into right off the bat, but Flickr.com has me totally roped in.
Some friends of mine have been using it for general picture sharing, and although I knew a bit about it, my experience with other picture sites (Shutterfly, some others) has really left me cold. They try to be a whole-experienc-happy-javascript-flash site, when all I really want to do is post and share pictures.
Flickr has hit the right balance of photo database services, community, and technical features. Not only do they allow quick browsing of your own and other people’s pictures, but they also provide tools to link your picture sets into external pages and blogs. I’ve added links to my Flickr photos in the sidebar on the blog now. Pictures I’m looking to share will definately be posted into Flickr from now on.
Flickr Fun
Here’s a neat thing I’ve found fascinating to do with Flickr. Go to the main page, and click on ‘Everyones Photos’. This is a constant stream of the photos being uploaded to Flickr by every user. Refresh it every 5-10 seconds. It’s like an around-the-world window into dozens of peoples lives. I probably watched it for almost 2 hours.