Ask YC: Help me review my new photo hosting startup

I noticed these problems on Firefox on Mac OS 10.5:

1) Upload form still asks for an email address even if I'm logged in.

2) No way to change my screen name or url (e.g. http://www.simplebucket.com/p/mdc1oa compared to http://flickr.com/photos/hoyhoy)

3) Page view counter doesn't recognize a session_id so reloads advance the counter even for myself

4) Have to enter in name, email, and CAPTCHA when commenting a picture even though I'm logged in

5) No interface to find tagged pictures

6) Tags aren't hyperlinked

7) Allowed me to add a note outside of the image on Firefox e.g. (http://involution.com/images/simplebucket.png)

8) Note text can overlap the image when a note is inside an image

9) Hit save multiple times on a single note and it made multiple copies of the same note all over the page.

10) HTML Embed link shows note text in the input box located under "Photo Options"

11) When clicked, the "Photo Widget" link shows note text in the input box located under "Photo Options"

12) Attempted uploading 5 images from the upload page, but only one uploaded

13) Added a comment with no text, no error message, and nothing was displayed

14) Added a large comment with 5K of text. Nothing was displayed and no error message was given. Can't you just limit the number of chars in the TEXTBOX?

15) Clicked "Add From Address Book" went to Plaxo, and then added myself, but the email showed up in what looked to be a message box. Why do you need to ask for my name and email again when it's already in "My Settings"? The email did arrive though.

16) Went back to upload, added two more images via browse, clicked "Let's go" and nothing happened.

17) Clicked "Add" then "Browse" on the upload page, and the nothing happened (Browse window not displayed)

18) Left an open table tag in a comment and totally busted the page layout.

Good to see this. I have a photo-sharing site myself, and the world needs more of them, as I wrote here: http://ourdoings.com/2007-12-19

Mine caters to people with tons of photos to share and little time to organize. Yours seems more for people dealing with individual photos to use on myspace, ebay, etc. Still there's overlap. A few tips:

When the upload starts, gray out the "Let's Go" button.

Learn about EXIF orientation information and make use of it.

Keep an eye on Disqus. It's not ready to replace your comment system yet, but when it is ready it will be a lot better than what you have.

Make it clear whether the 10-cent tip is going to simplebucket or to the photographer.

1) I tried it in Safari and the Browse and Add buttons are unclickable, unless you click in the left corner.

2) Uploading without entering an email sends me to a login page, although I obviously don't have a login.

3) 1020px is quite wide, especially when you don't make any good use of all that space.

4) I don't feel the very tiny labels with very large inputs.

5) You use 5 different fonts on the homepage.

6) The word "photos" is rather small, while the "upload share and organize" text is huge. Upload, share and organize what?

Just a few observations.

1.No explianation of what the secret URL is. I uploaded a photo and was unable to add tags straight away. Confused I went to My Photos but was told I needed to login "Hmm I don't have an account...", so I put my email addess into the forgotten section just to see what happens and got an email (In which the link wasn't clickable) from which I pasted in the URL. Then I was in "My Photos" and could edit and tag my existing stuff. But...

2.Users are able to upload photos under the guise of other users?!? Seems that even though I now have an "account", anyone can just use my email address and upload photos into my area. I opened up a different browser and could upload photos without it asking me to authenticate my "account".

3. Seens "My Photos" is just a link to the login section, until I specifically go to "My Settings" and set a password. No where is this clear.

I think it's getting there, but needs a lot more work when it comes to directing users with what to do next. A lot of people who would be using this service will have little clue as to what to do next.

Thanks for the great comments! It definitely gave me some ideas as to what I need to work on. Yea, it doesn't render ok with Safari and IE.. so far its only FF friendly.

I appreciate any feedback and suggestions for Simplebucket. Good or bad, anything ... I will take it.

Did you test it using ie? Doesn't look like it to me.

I'd love to give you feedback, but I'll wait until you get it to render properly in ie.