SCOTTSDALE, the United States, Feb. 17 (Xinhuanet) -- With more and more people owning digital cameras, sharing digital photos hasbecome a burden to many because of the cumbersome work of sending photos in e-mails.

    But many US companies have come to help, as shown at the two-day DEMO 2004 conference ending here Tuesday, which demonstrated the latest IT innovations and products, with digital photo-sharingturning up the heat.

    At least three companies unveiled their online digital photo-sharing service, aimed at making money from saving the customers' trouble of sending pictures.

    The US company OurPictures, Inc. demonstrated the first consumer digital photo network designed to make it easier for people to share digital pictures with friends and family members and even print them through retail photo finishers.

    OurPictures' service features a new, unique way to move pictures from point to point, which eliminates the hassle of sharing pictures through e-mail or a website, and makes it easier to get them printed.

    Members of the OurPictures Network automatically receive photosin their OurPictures desktop software, while non-members receive an e-mail with a link to the OurPictures website where, without registering or logging in, they can view high quality images for download and printing.

    OurPictures' is also the first consumer service to fully embrace and integrate retail photo-finishers. With the introduction of OurPictures Photofinisher Retail Program (PRP), consumers benefit by having the ability to easily find the retailer that provides the services they want.

    Another company, It's The Content Inc., also provides a similarly easy desktop-to-desktop digital photo sharing service.

    With its ShareAlot software, the customer does not need to hassle with massive e-mails or uploading pictures to a website that may or may not keep your photos safe and secure over the time.The only job the customer needs to do is simply providing the e-mail address of the intended recipient.

    The Homestead Technologies Inc. company also announced a PhotoSite To Go program, a new service that enables users to e-mail photos from any computer or mobile device and have them instantly published to their personal, permanent PhotoSite.

    By using the new PhotoSite Inbox feature, PhotoSite customers, their friends and family members can publish photos directly to a PhotoSite by using a regular e-mail account and camera phone.

    PhotoSite To Go also optimizes the viewing of PhotoSites on anymobile device with a feature called PhotoSite Mobile Viewing.

    All the companies' services include the most popular editing features, such as red-eye reduction, cropping and brightness adjustment, which are accessed through a simple user interface.

    The companies are taking advantage of the rapid growth of digital photo sharing and the expanded sales of digital cameras.

    According to the International Digital Corporation, host of theDEMO 2004, 2003 marked the year that digital cameras surpassed thesales of traditional cameras and digital camera phones outsold digital cameras.

    Statistics showed 50 million digital camera phones were sold in2003. Enditem