Pixelpipe: Post Anything, Anywhere
Given the constantly growing number of micro-blogging, photo sharing, and video hosting sites, it is getting harder and harder to keep all these accounts updated. One of our favorite application to post media files to a variety of services is Pixelpipe. Pixelpipe takes care of the distribution of your files, so that you can simultaneously post a picture to flickr and Facebook, and send a message with a link to that picture to Twitter. Thanks to a large number of updates in the last few weeks, Pixelpipe has become even more versatile than ever before and now lets you share almost any kind of file.
While other services like Tubemogul or Ping.fm focus on specific media types, Pixelpipe works with audio and video files, photos, text messages, and now even supports most other types of documents.
Post to 60 Different Services
We first reviewed Pixelpipe last August when it was still in private beta, but by now, the site has opened up to the public and added a massive amount of new features. While the site itself still looks roughly the same, Pixelpipe has added support for dozens of new services since its launch. You can post images and videos to all the prominent video and photo sharing sites, including Youtube, Vimeo, kyte, SmugMug, flickr, Picasa, Facebook, and Photobucket. Pixelpipe also lets you post photos to most popular blogging platforms.
Post PDF Files to Twitter
Yesterday, Pixelpipe launched a new feature that lets you posts links to videos, photos, PDF files, or any other document to text-only micro-blogging service like Twitter, Rejaw, FriendFeed, or identi.ca. Pixelpipe will simply add a link to the document to your text messages and the files will be hosted on Pixelpipe's Amazon S3 storage.
Even if Pixelpipe's internal video player and document viewer isn't compatible with a file, it will still give you a link to download the document. The upload limit is 200 megabytes. Brett Butterfield, Pixelpipe's founder and CEO, tells us that he plans to add support for a few more micro-blogging services in the near future.
Post from Anywhere
One of our favorite features of Pixelpipe is that the company has developed plugins for almost every conceivable desktop application for Mac, Llinux, and Windows PCs. You can post videos from Windows Movie Maker, photos from iPhoto, Live Gallery, or Picasa, and when all else fails, you can also just email your media files to a your personal Pixelpipe address. For mobile use, Pixelpipe provides applications for the iPhone, Android, and Nokia N Series phones.
Power users can also create routing tags (think: @friendfeed or @picasa), which allow you to selectively send items to a specific service or a group of services.
Verdict
The latest round of updates have turned Pixelpipe into an even more versatile tool. Now, sharing a PDF file with your Twitter friends is as easy as emailing it to your secret Pixelpipe address. If you often send the same document to a variety of services (or if you just want to send a picture from your phone to Twitter, but also keep a copy on Flickr), Pixelpipe is definitely worth trying.
Comments
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This sounds like something that would be a great piece of client software for the new Palm Pre.
what's the point with a post-to-any service other than polluting the web with redundant content?
@thomas Maybe it's time to think of the web a bit differently. Movie theaters all over the country play the same movies because different people go to each one. The web is the same. People have preferences for where they get their information and entertainment. So should a movie premiere be the only place a movie is shown.
@thomas - here is how I use Pixelpipe almost every day: I take a picture on my iPhone that I want to share with my family on our family blog - but it's a cool picture, so I also want my FriendFeed friends to see it - and I like to keep a backup of all my photos on my self-hosted Gallery page. With Pixelpipe, I can do that with one click. With routing tags, I can also just choose to post it to FF and Twitter.
Unless Pixelpipe allows you to organize your uploads into albums, it seems like you would still have to go back to your respective accounts on facebook, flickr etc...to organize your uploads. And meanwhile facebook would show each individual photo that was uploaded in your friends' newsfeeds - instead of just saying that you uploaded a new album. Am I wrong about this?
Pixelpipe is misspelled in the headline of this post.
Does pixelpipe have the ability to post from twitter to delicious?
I've seen other solutions, but I want a way post only certain links from twitter not every single one.
Can't BELIEVE I never saw this. Thanks!!
The one dealbreaker for me is there is not bot that I can add to one of my IM accounts within Digsby (AIM, Google Talk) that will allow me update my status from the bot itself. Ping.fm has them beat in this regard. Updating multiple statuses is as easy as pinging the ping.fm bot. PixelPipe needs to add this functionality and I'm all in.
@stephan/frederic - the ultimate goal for every user is to be his/her own social network & content hub; in the end all those services "only" provide storage + meta data and to compare it with your cinematic example: you should watch the movie directly from the publisher without getting the reels shipped to every nearby cinema.
Thank you, Frederic. I had a quick look at Pixepipe previously, but after reading your post, I will give it a real try ;)
Thank you, Frederic. I had a quick look at Pixelpipe previously, but after reading your post, I will give it a real try ;)
The problem with Pixelpipe is that it's unreliable. Delivery of pictures isn't always working. One constantly has to keep an eye on pixelpipe.com and check the delivery reports. This made me stop using Pixelpipe for some weeks ago.
I appreciate this well written post about a good service, new to me. The article is clear and is helpful.
Best wishes,
Swamy
Author, Editor, Reader, Reviewer
how is pixelpipe differentiated from posterous? what makes it better/worse?