Christopher Gersbo-Moller wrote yesterday 5 reasons he thinks Share on Ovi is a great service. Gersbo, as he likes to call himself, explained that although owned by Nokia, Share on Ovi is open to anyone and everyone with a computer; that it is flexible in terms of uploading processes and possibilities as well as the file formats that can be published (media, office,…); that it’s integrated with the handset through the Share Online application and also has a mobile friendly interface that allows viewing pictures and videos on the mobile.
I had been meaning to write a post about Share on Ovi for a while, but was having some issues with the service in Lebanon, issues that seem to be fixed now. To tell you the truth, Gersbo mirrored every opinion I have about Share on Ovi, but there’s still some more that he didn’t mention, and I’ll tackle them in this post.
Before I start, I’ll give you the background. You all know Flickr, don’t you? Flickr is, I think, the most popular image sharing service, but despite that, I had never really used it. Image sharing hasn’t yet blossomed in the Lebanese society, I guess. I only recently opened my own account, and to tell you the truth, I don’t feel like I missed on much. So, being a newcomer to both Flickr and Share on Ovi, I decided to see which service I liked better, in an unbiased way. I am a Nokia fan, there’s no doubt about it, but this has nothing to do with the fact that I love Share on Ovi and can’t stand Flickr. As Gersbo said it, Share on Ovi is a “kick-ass service!”.
Now, here is my list of 5 more reasons that make Share on Ovi and Share Online stand out from the competition.
Share on Ovi is SIMPLE
For a first-time user of both services, I took a look at the home page I am presented with, and there’s just something about seeing all the options laid down in front of you that makes you love Share on Ovi. Drop down menus on Flickr are so old-school, and the service could seriously use a whole UI overhaul. Long-time users of Flickr might disagree, but that’s just due to the fact that they have become accustomed to browsing through Flickr. Share on Ovi has a great interface that just screams simplicity and usability. There’s always an “Actions for this page” pane on the upper right of each page, giving you a series of links to all actions that you can perform on this particular page.
Share on Ovi is EASILY MANAGEABLE
When you open a channel on Share on Ovi, you can easily select a couple of the media there, hold down CTRL to add other items or remove the ones you added by mistake, you can rotate pictures, add them to other channels, re-arrange them, drap-and-drop, batch edit, all from the channel page, without going anywhere else, it couldn’t be any more intuitive!
Share on Ovi is ALL ABOUT THE “SHARE”
My biggest biggest complain with Flickr was when I had to embed a slideshow of pictures I had in one of my sets. I had to google it to find out there was a code, that I manually edited, in order to insert this. Now there may be an easier way to do this, but I still haven’t discovered it. With Share on Ovi, the moment I open a channel or a media item, I am instantly presented with an “embed” link or pane on the right, with the code already prepared. It’s a blast to display pictures on your site, and it even presents different embedding formats: slideshow, ticker and grid.
Three other great sharing features of Share on Ovi is that first, you can upload your media via email directly to one of your channels, something that Flickr doesn’t allow (or it does and it’s buried somewhere not to be found), second, you can pick your own channel address so that it is possible to share it without scaring people (honeslty Flickr, when was a “34858576485394856″ in an address easy to remember or to differentiate?) , and third when you send a channel to your friends by email, they can see the items and not just a link to the set.
Share on Ovi is HELP FRIENDLY
I admit it, I am not afraid of hitting “help” when I need to perform a certain action and I can’t find it. With Share on Ovi, even if I didn’t even need to hit help, I was amazed by the fact that there was always a tip box on the lower part of the right pane, showing links to different help items concerning the page you’re navigating. Their Help section is also very well thought with questions and answers, detailed how-to as well as images to explain it all.
Share Online is THE PERFECT COMPANION
Ricky has explained the reasons why he thinks Share Online isn’t mature enough now, and although I agree with a couple of his points, I still believe that Share Online is one of the greatest companions to Share on Ovi. The standby plugin is great to have, it doesn’t remain running in the background the whole time like Shozu, it offers very simple options to upload as well as view media. I personally don’t care if I can’t uninstall it since I know that I won’t.
Honestly, after using both Share on Ovi, as well as Flickr and Blip for a while now, I am seriously attracted by Nokia’s solution. It offers simplicity without giving up on the important features. It’s one of the rare things that Nokia has done completely right, in my own opinion, and I have yet to find one mistake in the whole offer.
The overall best feature, is the support for different file types. This by itself makes Share on Ovi a killer for me personally. There is a chance that next year I will be moving to France, and I want to keep my parents, family, friends and colleagues in contact with me. I don’t think that giving them one site to check photos, another to check videos, another for sounds, and yet another for documents is going to make things easy. With Share on Ovi, I can give them one easy to remember address and leave without worrying about the way I can keep in contact: chat + Share on Ovi = ideal solution.
After trying Share on Ovi, I am seriously excited to see the whole Ovi package come together because I know that there is a great future for this service. For now, I will keep my accounts on the other sites, just to make sure that Share on Ovi is consistently available in Lebanon, and then it’s bye-bye other solutions!
