If you have clients or family who want to share digital photos quickly over the Internet and chat about them at the same time, look into Hello, a free application from Picasa. Using its peer-to-peer connection, Hello lets you send low-resolution JPEG image files almost instantly. You simply send an invitation to download Hello, and your invitee joins your private network.
Hello is designed as a companion to Picasa's $30 photo-management package, and it works best with Picasa 1.6. If you use that version, you'll find it easy to send images to Hello from Picasa or to click a button within Hello to import images from Picasa's albums. From there, it's only a click or two before your recipients can see the photos on their PC. You don't need Picasa software to use Hello; but without it, photos are imported via a clunkier Browse command.
By clicking and scrolling through Hello's filmstrip, I could control what my friend viewed--in what order, and at what speed--and sending big bundles of images was a snap. The lag time between sending and receiving up to 20 images was at most 15 to 20 seconds.
Hello circumvents the problems with file sharing that can occur on other chat clients when one of the users is behind a router or has a firewall (it won't work through a proxy server, however). If you are using Hello with Picasa, all of the pictures that you share with another Picasa user are saved in albums automatically, as sorted by the sender.
Other nifty Hello features include the ability to set up a prepaid printing account so that users you designate--for example, grandparents--may, with one click, order prints of sent photos. High-resolution pictures are automatically requested and retrieved when you want to print an image that has been shared with you in low resolution.
Using Hello is a lot of fun, once you get used to viewing photos and chatting at the same time. I predict that a lot of people will be hooked.
Easy peer-to-peer photo sharing with instant chat and other fun and useful features.
Free download
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