XMG Image Review
Mikey 15 comments
Flickr getting you down? You are not alone. I am admittedly not a heavy Flickr user but have used it because, well only for lack of a better alternative. If you are looking to give Flickr the 'flick', then read on.
XMG Image, is a free, relatively new image hosting service that despite being a Beta still seems to have the goods. Let's take a closer look, in brief.
Large web 2.0 style icons adorn the intuitive interface so everything is easy to find. Photos are easily uploaded either individually or in groups.
All images and galleries have a URL associated with them and you can use the Share option to send to an email recipient. The best part is people do not have to login or sign-up to view large versions of your images.
You can go there right now and create your free account, which will afford you 200mb of disc space and 10gb of web traffic. When logged in your bandwidth stats are available in the left pane.
I would not hesitate to purchase a pro license if it were available right now, at only $14.95 per year according to their web site. That's not too bad for 10gb of images with no limit on bandwidth. With that sort of space you could easily use it as nothing more than a backup service.
For a first impression, XMG Image does not disappoint. Bear in mind it is still a Beta, but my guess is they are working hard to iron out the bugs before slapping a 1.0 label into the logo.
Go get a free account now.
Update, 13th Feb 2007: The XMG guys have been hard at work. The bug I mentioned in this article regarding the missing thumbnails when previewing this gallery has been squashed.
Amba
Tuesday 13th February 2007 | 04:40 PMSorry just noticed the update! Squashed bugs huh? :-P
aaron
Tuesday 13th February 2007 | 08:21 PMpro is down to 5GB when it gets launched
5gb is still pretty good considering the price.
Comparatively, my ISP (bigpond) have a storage hosting service and charge $12.95/month for a lousy 800mb.
They have a 'professional' plan for $24.95/month and that gets you 2gb LOL. And and any bandwidth used is accumulated onto your own monthly quota!
So XMG Image's service is a pretty sweet deal, even at 5gb. I optimise my photos and shrink the dimensions down to 1280 wide. Each image is between 350 and 500k, so worst case scenario and I can still store around 10,000 images online. Can't complain about that :-) I would dare suggest they may even offer bigger plans in the future.
Jasmin
Tuesday 13th February 2007 | 11:26 PMThanks for that. I use imageshack (free) but it doesn't come close to what you describe in this review and its slow. Checking it out now.
Aldo
Tuesday 13th February 2007 | 11:35 PMPro accounts are only (only?) 5gb not 10 as you mentioned. Thats still cool. It would be cooler if I could import all my flickr stuff :-(
I think one challenge will be convincing people who have already spent endless hours tagging and organising images on other image host servers to move to a new service. Im fed up with flickr but have dedicated a lot of energy into it and it's pretty much the only reason I dont move. But then those screen shots look delicious and the Pro feature set might be awesome...Sorry but I need something more to push me!
andrew
Wednesday 14th February 2007 | 06:37 PM"Getting Started
If you're new to XMG Image, or just need to reference. Check out these helpful screencasts," this is when u press the support tab i was assuming that the quick time video they have there was for help but when i clicked on it, it sent me back to my previous page.
Good spotting Andrew. I can clearly see why to when looking at the source code. The paths to the screencasts are relative to the domain, so when I am logged in for example the links point to http://michael.xmgimage.com/screencast/1 and 2 respectively - neither of which actually exist.
Luckily the homepage working links. Click for http://www.xmgimage.com/index/screencast/1">Screencast 1 or http://www.xmgimage.com/index/screencast/1">Screencast 2.
You can report problems like this and any other bugs you find to ">
Necromantici
Thursday 15th February 2007 | 05:03 AMHi there!
Can you please provide again the Vista Wallpapers??? RARHost is no longer the rar host file hosting service page. Its now a personal blog.
Please, and thanks in advance.
Hi Necromantici. It seems RARHost is working fine. Maybe they were down for maintenance.
andrew
Thursday 15th February 2007 | 07:43 PMspotted another problem with xmg, multiple uploads..i tried it and only one pic uploaded. possibly pics were to big??
Hey guys, just a little plugging, but Eric released the Pro Account feature today!
Check it out @ http://xmgimage.com/blog/2007/2/21/pro-accounts-have-arrived
Jasmin
Thursday 22nd February 2007 | 08:26 AMPro at last ! thank you for the update Tyler XMG-Tyler
Oh cool! I will check it out today!
Trezna
Thursday 22nd February 2007 | 11:10 PMFanx for the update - looking good 2 me.
Amba
Tuesday 13th February 2007 | 04:39 PMThis looks great and I have wanted to use flickr but it looks unuserfriendly. That gallery works for me BTW.