Image Exchange – Anonymous Image Hosting for Websites
Image hosting is undeniably one of the most overstuffed niches on the Web. Every conceivable reason to put an image online to share it on websites, blogs, social networking sites, etc. has been used as yet another web app solution. What’s missing?
Anonymity, that’s what. This is where Image Exchange (imgxc.com) comes in. This is an online storage facility for anonymously hosting images that you can access from elsewhere to embed into pages, message board posts, etc. The service is extremely easy to use and has yet to be overrun by porn or other mis-uses. No signup is required to host an image there.
To begin with, you are presented with the image upload screen right off the bat. Choose your image, ad some information such as a deletion code (five letters/numbers that act as a PIN for deleting the image later), and hit upload and search tags.
When the image is finished uploading, you’re given a screen with a thumbnail of it, HTML and forum embed codes, and a box to enter your deletion code into to remove the image. At this point, you should bookmark the page or give the site your email address to have the information sent to you for later use.
Another nice feature is tracking. The page shows how often the image has been viewed, it’s dimensions and size, etc. The embed code works to do this on a web page:
Anyone who views the image directly on Image Exchange can flag it as inappropriate, which may help curb the wrongful uses of this site. Sharing buttons for popular social networks are also on the image’s page so you can easily upload an image and post it to Twitter or Digg.
Image Exchange is very simple, nicely done, and useful. Anonymous uploaders like this don’t tend to have a very long life span online, however. Image Exchange limits file sizes to 2MB and ZIP files to 10MB. Uploaded files are kept until flagged as inappropriate, removed by the delete key, or if 12 months without activity on the image have passed.
