Phanfare, S3 and Google Apps

I'm looking very seriously at moving to Phanfare as a replacement for Flickr and YouTube for my photos and videos. Their video quality is much better, and I can use it for video archival as well as display. My friends and family can even download the videos at DVD quality and play them offline or even burn them to DVD. Now that's cool.

The cost: $59 a month. Worth it in my book, and since I'm paying up front I'm pretty sure I don't have to worry about advertising polluting my content. Hey, waddya know, a different business model than free-with-ads, which I am so tired of.

I also like it that they're on S3.

They also have a good blog. I particularly liked their analysis of the benefits of the Amazon Web Services over Google Apps. I think they provide a great testimonial for the value of following open standards - something Sun has always believed in.