AVNRWORLD

Freelance photographer Claude Renault is looking for a tool to share pictures with friends and family directly from his computer's hard drive without uploading them on a public photo-sharing website or sending them as email attachments.

Some of you may recall PurpleNova that turns your desktop into a website - every file or folder on your computer (that you decide to share) is automatically assigned a web address and your friends can view the pictures from your computer onto their desktops. No uploads required.

Another good alternative (to PurpleNova) for sharing photos and music from your computer is Dekoh Desktop - it runs inside your web browser (as a small Java applet) and works the same on Windows, Mac or Linux computers. [PurpleNova was Windows-only]

Getting started with Dekoh is simple. Create an account with your email address and the Dekoh software will seamlessly install in your web browser. Select the Dekoh Photos and add the picture folders that you like to share privately with your contacts.

Send them an invite via Dekoh desktop itself and they'll be able to view your photos from anywhere in the world. The pictures will stream live from your desktop so if you go offline, the sharing stops automatically.

Your friends can view the photos you shared as thumbnails, individual pictures, or in a slideshow.

The look-n-feel of the Dekoh Desktop is pretty impressive and though I had some issues installing it on my main computer (due to conflicting JRE versions), Dekoh worked like a snap on another computer.

They have just launch another application called Dekoh Music which scans your chosen folders for MP3 audio files and and you can listen to your music collection from any other computer.