How about option 3: "Items" and "Photos"? Unless of course you have to differentiate between "Mine" and "Everyone Elses"
For example, Microsoft abandoned the "My" prefix in Vista for Documents, Pictures, etc. in the UI.
And then they brought it back in 7. I guess people complained.
I agree that omitting the "My" or "Your" where possible is the right way to go. If the overall context of the web page or application doesn't make it clear whose items are in question, adding "My" isn't always going to help much, or at all.
Consider Facebook, for example. Look at a friend's page. It probably has a "Photos" link. Would "My Photos" be clearer? Would "My Photos" refer to photos belonging to the logged-in user or photos belonging to the person depicted above the link?
It's the context in which the "Photos" link appears that makes its purpose and meaning clear, and that is usually the case.
Mea culpa. I haven't used 7 very much =)
Speaking of context, though, I've also heard "don't use My" as a recommendation for mobile UIs, because they don't have that much space to spend on the word to begin with...
Regarding Facebook, everything is shared to some degree so I am not sure it is an apt example.
Me too, but I believe that's a context problem, not a phrasing problem.
Also, Win7 did not add the "My" prefix back to computer, documents, pictures, or anything.
Well then somebody has some explaining to do.
In fairness, there are aliases of some kind set up such that "John\Documents" and "John\My Documents" are synonyms. But the GUI very much puts "My" front and center for me.