Photos of our children and sharing...

People have asked why I took down my Picasaweb Album. The answer is simple; I just didn't feel comfortable posting pictures for all the world to see. Working in administration for a school district has caused me to hear stories that, as my girls get older, I don't want to hear and I sure as hell don't want to live through. Up until two months ago, I had a very public presence on the internet and because of some family problems, it has taught me to re-think my position on sharing, both with 'family' and strangers. Besides scaling back on how much information I share publicly, the main thing I have done is removed pictures from sites where I have no control over their use. This includes personal sites and sites where others have posted pictures of my children.

Although Google provides a great free service with Picasa(and I use most of them personally & professionally), they don't provide a great access control scheme for locking uninvited people out. However, Flickr does provide different levels of security for albums or streams, and that is where I decided to move to.

The only issue that I have so far is batch uploading. With Picasa, nothing could be easier; tag the photos you want to upload and click one button. Flickr wasn't that great when I first tried them out a few years back, but they have gotten a bit better. As a matter of fact, someone has written a batch uploader that works with Picasa. When Google gets their act together and catches up with Flickr in terms of security, I'll happily jump back. I prefer having the main online services come from one provider.