Recently I've been thinking about ease of use of interfaces. As you may know,
I've a Flickr_ account where I post my photographs; I also have a deviantART_
account for the same purpose.
.. _Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/benjaminalee/
.. _deviantART: http://ben-alee.deviantart.com/
Generally, when I take pictures, I post any that are reasonably good to Flickr
without even thinking about it. I can use the web form and upload five at a
time, or I can mail them in; I have my own script for mailing them that I may
post at some point.
Uploading to deviantART requires me to use the web form and upload one at a
time, and go through a lot of rigmarole that's not necessary with Flickr --- for
example, Flickr lets you set a default CC_ licence for your pictures; deviantART
does allow you to specify one, but you must do it individually for each picture;
it's not possible to set a default.
.. _CC: http://creativecommons.org/
I didn't really consciously think about it; I just uploaded them to Flickr
because it's easy.
It's also easy to do things with them; Flickr, like any good Web 2.0 site, `has
an API`_ that I've hardly even begun to look at, but it means I can follow my
friends' activity from the comfort of my mail client, and any new photos get
shown on my Facebook profile. deviantART `has RSS feeds`_, but most of them are
so well-hidden as to be completely useless.
.. _`has an API`: http://www.flickr.com/services/api/
.. _`has RSS feeds`: http://nico1.deviantart.com/journal/16986571/
Something to think about for my final-year project, or any other web stuff I
happen to write in the future --- multiple access methods for data, both
incoming and outgoing.