I’ve said it previously: I love Share on Ovi, or Ovi Share, or whatever new name Nokia has decided to give their photo sharing service. I love the simplicity of the service, the integration with all my Nokia devices, the unlimited storage. Despite the fact that the site doesn’t open in Lebanon, and that I can’t rely on it to share pictures with my friends and family back home, I’ve been using it religiously for the past months, as a back up and an easy way to keep all my images in one place. I use Facebook, Flickr or Picasa to share pics with people back home.
But recently, it seems that Ovi Share has been doing all it can to drive me away from it. Remember the album email fiasco? Well, after integrating with Nokia user accounts and changing those upload emails without any notice, Ovi Share was redesigned. Sure it looks graphically better, but it (let me press the capslock so I can really show how important this is) TAKES AWAY ALL THAT I LOVED ABOUT THE SERVICE.
Where is the easy multiple selection?
One of the things I really loved about Share was that I didn’t have to go to a separate Organise mode in order to select multiple images, I just selected them like I do in any window on my computer: click, drag across, release. There is NO way of doing that on the new site.
How am I supposed to move several images from one album to another?
This one is a complete, total, utter, mega, super, DISASTER. After doing multiple selection of images and video on the old site, I was able to click on a very visible “Move to another channel” (or something like that) text, and be instantly and easily able to move all my selected media to another album. Where is that functionality now? Gone. I had to, yes you guessed it, manually open each and every picture, and then scroll down, find a text that says “Add to an album”, click it, wait for the popup, select the album, and click Add. Then I had to go back to first album, and repeat the same steps with the second picture, the third picture, the fourth picture… you get the idea.
That was until I finally noticed that there was an Add option in the dropdown, when you highlight an image. Dear Share, “add” means adding a new picture as far as my english allows me to understand, and not “move” to an album. If you meant “add to an album”, then you should have written “add to an album”, not “add”. Silly. Oh, and still, since there is no multiple select, I still have to do this manually for each picture.
Filter is not Sort
Another english language disaster: I was looking for a way to sort my pictures by the date they were originally taken at, but I couldn’t find that. Turns out it’s inside the “Filter” icon on top. Correct me if I’m wrong, but “filtering” removes stuff, that’s the definition of a filter by default. It’s good to have a “filter” option to only display images between two specific dates in an album, but not to sort images by date or name. Sorting is not Filtering.
Where are the easy to read options?
The main reason I fell in love with Share was that everything I needed to do was there, under my nose, with a text and a link. Select an image, and I can rotate, delete, move, embed somewhere. Select several images and I can make a slideshow, share, delete… All those options were in the right column on the Share site, and I had the certainty that if an action was feasible, it must be in the right column. Share was easy to use, simple, unlike Flickr for example, that needed me to dedicate a certain amount of time before finding a feature.
Now? There are icons, drop downs, texts, and they are on top, on the bottom… and my beloved right column is unused, standing there taking space and doing nothing. I HATE IT.
And my Exif?
There is no way to view Exif data on pictures, no way to know which camera they were taken with, what is the resolution, the aperture, the date, and all that other info that Exif holds.
I’m giving it 2 weeks
I can’t see any real benefit behind the new Share site design, any, what-so-ever. They were happy about it, about the new bigger image display and the new graphics. Woodidoo! I don’t care. Usability has gone way backward, and it has taken away all that I loved about it. Previously, Share was the only service I could look at and think “if only all your services Nokia were this intuitive and easy to use”. Now, it’s unintuitive and scattered. It’s basically everything that Nokia knows how to do well: CHAOS.
I’m giving the Ovi Share team 2 weeks (that’s 14 days) to realize the mess they have done, and fix it. Add multiple selection, rename those odd Filter and Add options, and bring back the easy to use right column. My pictures are already on Facebook (where I get a ton more comments anyway), and I’m debating whether to buy a license for Picasa or Flickr (so I can share pictures with my family). If in 2 weeks this mess isn’t fixed, then I’m off Share. One less site to care about.
