There has been a bit of buzz recently over the new site picapp.com which has just started a public beta - I was mailed an invite to check it out. The aim of PicApp is to make professional images from the likes of Getty Images and Corbis free for use by bloggers using an ad supported system.
Instead of inserting a straight image you get a code snippet to add to your post which provides the image in a flash widget which displays ads when you mouse over the image; a good idea but I personally don't think it's ready to go prime time.
Size and scope
At present I see two main stumbling blocks for PicApp:
- the sizes of images offered, and
- the variety of images
Whilst many of the images can be used in a choice of sizes (normally two or three alternatives) I feel that even the smallest is too large for many blogs - approximately 350x210 for landscape and 210x320 for portrait. This just seems to take up to much space in a post and, in my opinion, looks as though you are using it for padding. Understandably, the image size needs to be large enough to support the included ads so I don't think that we'll be going much smaller than this.
This being early days the images available appear to be limited but this may improve over time as more sources become available. If you want images relating to current affairs you will be fine as most appear to fall in to this area - again, this is understandable when you consider their source.
I think that PicApp will be one to watch as it grows but only time will tell if it becomes a worthy resource that any blogger can dip in to and get something worthwhile out.
Do you use PicApp? What do you think of it?