A simplified media sharing service, BlueString, opened its virtual doors to people looking for an easy way to make rich media available online.
Doesn’t everyone have an account at Flickr and YouTube these days? Even if they do, there may be demand for putting photos, videos, and audio on one site in a straightforward way.
Enter BlueString, which is debuting as CES 2008 rolls out the goodies in Las Vegas. AOL operates BlueString, as it does the forthcoming beta of yet another version of their Xdrive online storage service.
BlueString shows how far we have come since the days when one actually had to understand how to do FTP from the command line. Web hosting services like the venerable Geocities and probably every other one in existence offers a graphical interface for moving springbreakgurllz.png from the desktop to the server.
This is the 21st Century and the modern Internetter doesn’t need to understand things like directory structures or file permissions. Through the use of Adobe Flex and AIR, AOL has a rich Internet application that makes those of us who wrote HTML in vi feel positively ancient.
BlueString permits drag and drop adding of content. Free accounts on Bluestring offer 5GB of storage, and an AutoCopy feature for Windows XP or Vista can pull copies of one’s rich media to the Bluestring account. The account owner controls the sharing and can grant or revoke access to any content.
While it is an interesting implementation, we wonder if it is a necessary one. BlueString has an ease of use that should be appreciated. The controlled sharing option is a point of difference, but is it enough of one to pull someone away from one of the many choices they are likely using already?
