When I first tried the photo sharing service Flickr back in July I was impressed [full Flickr review].

So impressed that we scheduled a radio show and talked about  and demoed it in depth (show #199, July 23, 2004). But since then I haven’t really used Flickr very much. I guess I need to be especially mindful of this rule:

Note: We will eventually delete Free Accounts if the user becomes inactive for 90 consecutive days.

Obviously, I’m in the minority as far as bloggers using Flickr goes, at least according to Wired who is reporting that bloggers are loving it.

Flickr enables users to post photos from nearly any camera phone or directly from a PC. It also allows users to post photos from their accounts or from their cameras to most widely used blog services. The result is that an increasing number of bloggers are regularly posting photos from their Flickr accounts. And because of the Flickr’s sharing features, often times those photos belong to photographers other than the blogger.

Where does this leave competitor and once goldenchild Textamerica.com? It appears the thunder really has been taken from them and their hardware upgrade photo bug issue didn’t seem to help. More than anything it’s the lack of continued innovation there though that’s the problem. These days, and it seems silly to say this, but if you aren’t constantly adding new things, your service — even if it free — starts to falter. I just went to Textamerica and it looks like the same site with the same hard to read small text that it was a year ago. So please somebody educate me that has been using Textamerica what cool new features (free or pay) has Textamerica added in the last year? I’m all ears, er, eyes.

I was looking back through my Textamerica photos from last Christmas and one cool thing about these photosites (Textamerica, Flickr, etc) is they allow you to sort of relive time through the photos.

I do miss that about not having a camera cellphone any more (actually I still have one, I just don’t have it connected). I think one of my New Year’s Resolution is going to be using the many different photosharing services available.

• Flickr.print = open;
• Textamerica hardware upgrade has some members wondering: where did our pictures go?
• Textamerica linkrot, going commercial only, closing accounts, redirecting links
• Memory mapping with Flickr, Google Maps and Keyhole
• CNET buys HeyPix photos-sharing site
• Review: Flickr - photo sharing, photoblogging, groups and more