Pixamid: A cure for disorganized photographers

Snap-happy iPhone users have a myriad of apps at their disposal to take better shots but often the photos just get lumped together and forgotten.

Yesterday we got a peek at Color, a new photo-sharing app that focuses on your location enabling users within 150 feet to collectively contribute to a public photo album organized by events. And, it also just picked up 41 million in funding.

This hot trend in location-based photo sharing can now add another app to the genre however this next one cares more about your privacy.

Pixamid

Pixamid organizes your images based on “where you are”. The concept is to share an experience through photography based on a specific event or location. Using Pixamid users can upload and share photos or discover images being taken by their friends nearby. It’s all cleverly categorized within a timeline that divides the images by the events or places you’ve been.

How it works:

After firing up the app you’ll first need to create an event by choosing from a list of nearby places to “join”. It’s similar to “checking-in” and will tell Pixamid where you are. This will additionally prompt Pixamid to search for any of your friends at the same location by identifying their locations via Foursquare and Facebook places.

The app is able to determine which of your Facebook friends is at your location but has features for manually adding them to an event by tagging them. By default, when an image is taken it’s published to a private Facebook album viewable by only you. On Facebook, any friend tagged/added to an event will receive a discrete post with a link to the album. It’s a nice touch and helps you avoid cluttering up your Facebook wall.

Pixamid brings users numerous ways to share and can pull in your images from other social networks as well. Foursquare, Instagram, Flickr and Picasa photos can be added by setting up account links from Pixamid’s site. The developer did assure us they’re working on integrating your friend’s photos from these services.

Sharing controls:

Aside from the Facebook sharing options we’ve mentioned within Pixamid users can choose who will see the images.

Friends Here: The “friends here” option includes any Facebook friend at the location, any friend you’ve tagged/add or any friend using Pixamid nearby will be able to view the images.

Everyone Here: Selecting “everyone here” shows your pics to all Pixamid users at the location. The developer shared with us that Instagram photos are currently being aggregated into the “everyone” timeline and they plan on adding more networks soon.

The World: There hasn’t been much done with this feature yet and doesn’t enable you to see images shared from “the world” unless you’re at the specific venue.

Here’s the plan: In the future, if you share with “the world” it will create a public record of your images based on location and users won’t actually need to be there to see the photos, according to the developer. Each venue will get its own page, and you can browse through time” and he added that it’s great for “ballgames, protests, and other communal experiences”. These features didn’t make it in this time around. Pixamid is also entertaining the idea of showing the closest shared images within “the world”.

The Bottom Line:

Pixamid is a cure for disorganized photographers. Photos are quickly and instantly uploaded without much effort — all you need to do is set your place and start snapping. Its ability to control ‘where’ and ‘who‘ views your images is another huge benefit.

One drawback with the app is there’s not much to discover unless your friends are using Pixamid and adding you to events. Of course if you’re at an event you’d see that too. But, with “the world” feature lacking functionality it limits the amount of stuff you can browse at home.

The startup behind the app, Cartomapic AB was founded by Bart Denny who had previously partnered with Google to develop for Google Maps in Stockholm. He told is in 2010 he left Google and founded Cartomapic. Denny said Pixamid puts an “end to the pain of organizing your photos”.

All in all, it’s definitely worth a download and it’s a cool new way to capture memories. Pixamid is available for free in Apple’s app store.