A week ago, Nokia’s Share Online 3.0 was graduated from the Beta Labs, and personally, I think it was premature, as there are some glaring issues which I don’t think are resolved (and apparently don’t intend to be). If you’re not familiar with it, Share Online is an application that allows you to quickly upload your photos and videos to different online services. Currently, Share Online v3.0 only supports Vox, Flickr, and Share on Ovi. Personally, I’d like to at least see an email option added, so you could quickly email your photos wherever you want. If you’ve setup Flickr and Share on Ovi, you’ll receive notifications on your phone when others comment on your photos, and you can respond and the like.

As I said, there are several issues that I think should have been addressed before Share Online v3.0 was allowed to ‘graduate’ out of Beta Labs. It is now being offered to the general public on Nokia’s official Sharing and Blogging website, which is a mistake. The version I currently have on my N95-3 is v3.0.07.51.

The first issue is that Share Online v3.0 cannot be removed from your handset without a hard reset. The first problem with this is obvious - you should NEVER offer an application that cannot be uninstalled. The second problem is that it requires a hard reset. Most S60 owners, I would imagine, do not know how to hard reset their handset (you do it by typing in *#7370# on the main screen, and the security code is 12345). The ones that do (which now includes you), likely are not aware that it will completely wipe your handset clean, including erasing ALL personal data such as contacts, calendar entries, etc. It’s not something you should be encouraging users to do.

The second major issue with Share Online v3.0 is that, on most handsets, it places a plugin on your Active Standby screen that shows your subscribed services and whether or not you have new comments on any photos in those services. Unfortunately, N95-3 users, who have obviously purchased the red-headed stepchild of the N95 product line, aren’t able to enjoy this feature, since our firmware doesn’t support it. Also unfortunate is that this plugin cannot be disabled. Thus, people who are annoyed by it, cannot remove it from their screen. This is really bad for people who installed Share Online v3.0 ‘just to see’. They now have information on their Active Standby screen that they do not want, and an application that they cannot get rid of, save for erasing everything on their handset and starting over.

The third issue that I have with Share Online v3.0 is that it is advertised as ‘one-click’ uploading, which it clearly is not. When I take a picture, I have to wait for the preview to show up, then press ‘Send’, then scroll to ‘Post to Web’. If I have both Flickr and Share on Ovi setup, I have to choose between the two (there’s no ‘both’ option). If I choose Share on Ovi, I then am asked which Channel I want to upload to. THEN I’m taken to a screen where I can change the image name, and add tags or captions. From this screen I can press ‘Options -> Post to web’. That’s a minimum of 7 clicks before the image is actually uploaded. Not exactly ‘user friendly’ or ‘one click’.

I’m also quite miffed that there is no option to simply upload every picture that I take, automatically. So how do I get my media online? ShoZu. While I’ve had a love-hate relationship with ShoZu, it was mainly limited to the N95-1. I’ve since used it on both the N95 8GB and N95-3 with zero issues. With ShoZu, you really DO get one-click upload, in the form of a small popup box after every picture/video, asking if you want to upload the image. That’s it. Once you click ‘Ok’, it does its thing entirely in the background. You can also set this, like me, to simply automatically send every photo that the phone takes up into the ether. No muss, no fuss.

Since it’s a user-configurable option, you can quickly and easily toggle the popup or automatic upload on and off, depending on the situation. I’m also able to easily post to numerous places simultaneously, thanks to ShoZu’s ‘CC’ option. Flickr is my main upload, but I’ve also added the email address of my Share on Ovi public channel, so everything is copied there, too.

I think that Nokia’s Share Online v3.0 has added several cool new features, don’t get me wrong. It’s really nice to have it integrated so well into the handset, but I just can’t get behind the decision to ‘graduate’ it out of the Beta Labs, not with these issues withstanding.

Categories: Applications, Personal Rants
Tags: features, Flickr, Ovi, share online, shozu