AOL Announces Collaboration with Leading Websites to Enhance BlueString Service

Aggregation with Photobucket, Google’s Picasa Web Albums and Webshots Will Offer Users Immediate Access to Personal Media Assets Stored on the Web

Integration with Eye-Fi Will Give Online Application Wireless Capabilities

San Francisco, CA-- (April 23, 2008) -- AOL today announced that it is integrating with Photobucket, Google’s Picasa Web Albums and Webshots to give BlueString users the ability to easily access photo and video assets stored on these sites and use them to share, create and collaborate with friends on multimedia shows within the BlueString application (www.bluestring.com).  In addition, an agreement with Eye-Fi will allow users to automatically upload photos from their cameras to their BlueString accounts using wireless networks.

“Collaboration that enables consumers to easily access their favorite sites using our products is a critical part of our new product strategy and crucial to delivering a great user experience,” said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President, AOL. “By integrating some of the best third party sites on the Web into BlueString, we are making it easy for consumers to use this application no matter where they store their digital media.”

BlueString is an all-in-one online destination that offers users a single location to preserve, access, and create with photos, videos and music for free.  Over the next few weeks, separate Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums and Webshots tabs will appear within the BlueString application, and give users immediate access to personal media stored on those sites.  Users will be able to easily drag and drop photos and videos from those sites into their BlueString accounts to create multimedia shows, without uploading the files a second time. 

Additionally, BlueString will work with Eye-Fi, makers of a wireless memory card for digital cameras.  The Eye-Fi Card allows users to wirelessly send photos from their camera to their BlueString accounts, using their home Wi-Fi network.

“These enhancements mark a major milestone in BlueString’s development,” said David Liu, Senior Vice President, Social Media and Messaging, AOL. “Our goal with this product is to make it easy for people to access their personal media no matter where it resides on the Web or even in a camera.  These collaborative efforts will enable us to fully demonstrate that ability.”

Aggregation with the Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums and Webshots services was made possible using each company’s respective APIs to enable AOL to give users access to digital media stored on those sites within BlueString.  Using the open Xdrive APIs, Eye-Fi will automatically send photos to the user’s  BlueString account over a wireless network.  Xdrive, a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL, is a leading Internet storage provider, offering BlueString users storage for their media assets. Additionally:

**The Photobucket API enables developers to give users access to their Photobucket content from places beyond Photobucket.com, including other Web sites, Web applications, desktop applications, browser plug-ins, mobile phones, home-entertainment systems, digital photo frames and cameras.

**The Picasa Web Albums Data API allows client applications to access and update Picasa Web Albums content in the form of Google Data API feeds.  The API allows developers to include public photos in Web pages, write plugins to manage photos from a desktop or mobile phone, and create custom screensavers that use Picasa Web Albums photos.

**Webshots APIs give partner communities the ability to offer their cutting edge technology and experience to Webshots users. These capabilities help users to get the most out of their personal photo sharing experience.  Webshots APIs provide the community with access to over 450 million photos for use in various applications for websites, desktop applications, mobile phones, digital cameras, and photo frames.

**The Eye-Fi Card, a wireless memory card for your digital camera, will allow users to automatically and wirelessly send photos from their digital camera to BlueString, and to their home computer.  The 2GB Eye-Fi Card is available at major online retailers.  More information can be found at www.eye.fi.

AOL at Web 2.0

AOL will be demonstrating BlueString in the AOL booth (# 301) as well as in the Photobucket booth (#735), at Web 2.0 on April 23 -25, 2008 in Moscone West in San Francisco.   

Other AOL products that will be demonstrated during the show include: Open AIM, MapQuest Free Edition, Yourminis and Truveo.  

**AOL Technology Fellow, Edwin Aoki, will deliver a keynote presentation on “What AIM Knows,” on Wednesday, April 23 at 5:35 pm in the third-level ballroom.

**Robert Blatt, Vice President and General Manager, AOL Personal Media, will participate in a session with Adobe on Thursday, April 24 at 3:50 PM in Room 2014. 

**Alex Bard, President and CEO of Goowy Media, a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL, will participate in a panel discussion on “Widgets Growing Up,” on Friday, April 25 at 11:00 am in Room 2014. 

About AOL

AOL is a global Web services company that operates some of the most popular Web destinations, offers a comprehensive suite of free software and services, runs one of the largest Internet access businesses in the U.S., and provides a full set of advertising solutions. A majority-owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., AOL LLC and its subsidiaries have operations in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Asia. Learn more at AOL.com.

Supporting Partner Quotes for BlueString:

Photobucket:  “The Photobucket API makes it possible to experience photos and videos from Photobucket in entirely new ways, said Alex Welch, President, Photobucket. “We’re excited that BlueString expands users’ ability to enjoy their digital content and illustrate their lives.”      

Picasa Web Albums: “We want our users to be able to easily access their Picasa photo collections wherever they’d like,” said Mike Horowitz, Product manager for Picasa Web Albums at Google.  “We created the Picasa Web Albums API to encourage this kind of integration and we’re happy to see it being put to use this way.”  

Webshots: "We are thrilled to be continuing and expanding our longstanding relationship with AOL through Webshots," said Sally Babcock, Senior Vice President of marketing for the digital photography division of AG Interactive. "BlueString represents a great opportunity to offer consumers additional opportunities and convenience in their digital photo sharing."

Eye-Fi:  “With Eye-Fi, users can effortlessly share photos with each other on BlueString when the memories are still fresh,” said Ziv Gillat, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Eye-Fi.  “We’re excited to add BlueString to our roster of online sharing sites, and make it even easier for users to share photos.”