One of the nice things about the testing of online services is that sometimes they really come in handy during you test them. In recent weeks, I had some friends in the city of Germany. They were so captivated by the California they easily filled the 2GB of storage on the memory card from their camera before their trip was half done. I offered to let them put photos on my Mac, then we would burn them to CD.
Only it was not quite like that. There were cable cars to catch and cocktails to be had. We got photos saved on the Mac, but never quite got burned CD. Later, with our friends back in Germany, and the pictures still in San Francisco, we needed an ingenious solution that did not include four CDs and Deutsche Post. It came in the form of SugarSync online backup provider.
I downloaded the client SugarSync home (although I could have used the web interface). I was dragging photos to the appropriate folder. Once the photos have been uploaded I have chosen to share the folder. I was given a unique URL for the location of the photos I sent them to my friends in Germany. They can now download them at will. And I did the last two steps on my iPhone, waiting for the bus.
SugarSync is the only service we reviewed that allows online sharing. You can read our reviews and see our comparison here.