While looking around and researching other things, I came upon this website, pickle.com, that surprisingly (and probably accidently) are doing something very different with online video and photos. Once you register, you are given an email address where you and your friends and family can email video and photos to (in addition to the traditional uploading tools, including a flickr type desktop uploader). You can chose the email address (provided its not taken by another user). You can also create 'pickle boxes' (yes, I laughed at the name for a moment) that each have their own unique email addresses. Each box, and your particular profile, have their own unique url on the pickle server and their appearance can be modified slightly with configured layouts (imagine if they opened it up to include CSS editing like myspace). The most interesting part of the limited control a user has over the look of their profile or 'pickle box' is that you can reorder your media through drag and drop, rather then only being able to sort via date taken or date uploaded

The idea of enabling email posting/uploading is not a particularily new one, although advertising it so boldly one their site as a major feature is somewhat unique. What I find interesting about this site is that, inadvertently perhaps, a user or a anyone who has the particular email address of someone's profile or pickle box can send posts via their mobile phone. I tested it with a Nextel i860 and it worked, although in the description of the photo there was an incredible load of garbage sent as default by Nextel (which is why I doubt the site's developers necessarily intended this functionality). I also found it very interesting that the site offers multiple layers of privacy control. You can open up your email address (either for your profile or your pickle boxes) to everyone, only pickle contacts or only people from certain email addresses. You can also restrict the viewing of your profile or your pickle boxes to only pickle users, only your contacts with an invitation code or you can make the page password protected! I am very interested. The site seems to be addressing two major issues, allowing multiple people to post photos and videos to a particular page whose privacy settings can be user controlled and making automatic posting easy for everyone (most people who can take digital pictures know how to send an email). The interface could use a little bit of work but it wasn't hard to figure it out. Given that my first pickle box url is www.pickle.com/cat/102, I wonder how many people know about or are using the site. Check it out. Find me on the site. Or send video and photos to cat.firsttest@pickle.com. I would love to see how the messages come through from different mobile carriers.