In fact, that's precisely what we do. It's easy to see how you might have gotten the wrong impression, since our front page is deliberately light on technical details.

We're trying to bridge the gap between tech-savvy photo sharing -- using web pages and not clogging up people's inboxes -- and the vast majority of people who don't understand URLs and just want to see the pictures.

Our tool creates a web page that's under the user's control, just like you say, and it simply sends out an email that links to the page. But in an HTML-capable mail reader, you also get a nice grid of image links to the photo thumbnails. (Click a thumb goes to the larger version on the web.)

Hopefully, it's the best of both worlds. My mom (she's not a focus group) gets to see the pictures, and she doesn't need to remember a URL to go to or tell other people about. On the other hand, I don't have to wait five minutes for gnus to download her enormous photo attachments.

Yes, it's the best of both worlds. I implemented it on http://ourdoings.com/ in November, 2004. It has been one of the most exciting features.

You mom should totally be in your focus group.

Can't tell if you're kidding, but in case you didn't know I was ... :-)

http://www.vcwear.com/your-mom-is-not-a-valid-test-market/

http://www.startable.com/2008/07/10/before-starting-a-new-bu...

I wasn't kidding. :) The advice in that blog post is fine if users like your mom are not going to be part of your target audience, or if she'll use it just because she's your mom. But if you send her to the homepage and she can't figure it out, I think thats a great focus group. If she's not technical (obviously, I don't know your mom) and she thinks its a breeze, you've done an incredible job. I won't say more, since having conversations about people's mothers never seem to turn out good, but in this case, I think it would be great to see how your mom uses it. Note that I said "how she uses it," not if she likes it. Of course your mom will like it :) Er, hopefully.