Digital Photo Data Stores

WIRED -- Like many others who own a digital camera, I snap and save hundreds of images a month. However, I cannot always find them once I've archived them. So it comes as a welcome relief to read how others are cutting a low-cost digital photo archive solution.

• Making an image file name out of words describing the context helps X1 and the Google Desktop find those images.
• Picasa notes which photos you print, which you email and which you look at most often. It then ranks those images higher in searches you perform.
• Microsoft's Business Contact Manager can be programmed to serve you images you have sent or shared with contacts in Outlook.
• Adobe Photoshop Album can "find by color similarity with this photo."

Weinberger raises an interesting point. "Private snaps are migrating to the Web as well as to closed social networks such as Fllickr where they belong as much to their subjects as the person wielding the camera .... (a)nd this may be the key to the future of photo management: Rather than locking pictures away, we'll make them public. Technology will imbue our images with a broader, deeper sense of shared memory."

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David Weinberger -- "Point. Shoot. Kiss It Good-bye" in Wired, October 2004.
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