New York’s netomat, Inc. has optimized its free netomat hub service for Flickr photo streams, enabling users to receive updates to Flickr photosets on their mobile phones with both images and text. netomat’s hubs attempt to integrate services between mobile phones and PCs, including text messaging with presence indicators, RSS syndication, trusted social networking, alerts, and photo storage.
Via a netomat hub, new content posted to a Flickr group is automatically resized for mobile phones and transmitted to netomat subscribers, complete with any associated text. The new service also enables netomat subscribers to invite friends to their hub to chat about the images.
“Flickr is a great way to browse and share photos,” said Alan Gershenfeld,netomat CEO. “netomat takes the experience one step further by allowingFlickr users to get, share and chat about Flickr images on their phones.”
To receive Flickr updates, users must sign up with netomat (for free); once subscribed, members can choose the netomat Flickr news feed, or start their own hub with any RSS 2.0 or Atom feed link, like the RSS links displayed with every Flickr group page. While netomat hubs are free, mobile providers may charge for data services, depending on a user’s service plan.
Jill Aldort, senior consultant at InfoTrends, said, “We believe the next lucrative stage for digital photography vendors comes in the form of facilitating access to personal photos from anywhere at anytime on any device. Compatible photo sharing and messaging services, like netomat and Flickr, facilitate such a community by connecting consumers using tools like camera phones, instant messaging and web portals.”