Sharpcast Photos iPhoto uploader is an ideal solution for people who use both a Mac and a PC; Delivers a completely new way to back up and share photo albums online

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Dec. 12 -- Sharpcast today introduced a completely new and effortless way for Mac owners to back up and share their iPhoto albums online and to view their iPhoto albums on a mobile phone or Windows-based PC. With the Sharpcast Photos iPhoto uploader, Mac owners can export iPhoto albums directly from their Macs into their Sharpcast Photos Web albums in just a few clicks, where they are backed up, easy to share and automatically synced all the way down to the person's mobile phone and PC desktop. Sharpcast's iPhoto uploader is available as a free download at http://www.sharpcast.com/download.

Sharpcast Photos is the debut service built on the company's patent-pending universal "push" synchronization platform, which marks the first instance where Blackberry-like push synchronization capability is available to the average consumer, outside of an enterprise setting. It automatically backs up photo collections online organizes them into web albums and keeps the collection constantly up to date across all of a person's mobile phone, all their PCs and the web. Sharpcast eliminates the every-day hassles of manual uploading, tedious sharing processes, forgotten backups and sync cables so people can get on with creating and enjoying their media.

Until today, Sharpcast Photos was only available to Mac users through a web browser. The iPhoto uploader is the first step toward complete availability of the Sharpcast user experience -- which includes "push" synchronization across all of a user's devices, seamless online backup and recovery and powerful sharing and collaboration capabilities all in one solution -- on the Mac OS. The company recently previewed the full Sharpcast experience for the Mac for all media files and documents at the Web 2.0 conference with its upcoming product, code-named Hummingbird. A publicly available version of Hummingbird is expected in the first half of 2007. Those interested can sign-up for the Hummingbird "alpha" tester program at http://www.sharpcast.com/products/hummingbird.

"Sharpcast is focused on giving people the simplest way to access and enjoy their media and files from anywhere, regardless of what type of device or computer platform they happen to be using and whether they are online or offline," said Gibu Thomas, chief executive officer of Sharpcast. "For the multitudes of people who use a Mac at home and a PC at work, there are too many complexities to deal with to just get files back and forth and make them universally accessible and useful. Sharpcast is solving that problem one step at a time and our iPhoto uploader gives a small preview of the seamless cross-platform experience that will be available to Mac owners in the future to have full access to their information from anywhere."

Sharpcast Photos is unlike any other photo service due to its continuous multi-way synchronization which keeps a person's PC in perfect sync with the web and with their mobile phone. For example, when photos are edited in one location such as a home PC, the change is made everywhere else instantaneously and automatically on the person's other PCs and in their online web albums. If photos are added through a web browser while away from home, those photos automatically appear on the person's home PC and on their mobile phone. Sharpcast Photos mobile edition currently supports Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphones, with more mainstream phone platforms supported in 2007.

Because Sharpcast Photos includes the option of having powerful desktop software and doesn't rely solely on web access like most services, people can have access to their entire photo collection from anywhere even when they don't have web access. Changes made to a collection while offline, for example on an airplane, automatically synchronize the next time the person connects to the Internet.