Online photo sharing has been around since the advent of the digital age. Polaroids stored in hard-cover albums have been replaced by digital pictures stored in photo sharing websites, blogs, and social networks. It can be hard to keep up with all the new features web applications such as Flickr, Photobucket, and PicsOrLinks provide. Here are 5 NEW things you can do with your uploaded pictures. Some of these features are advanced feats of development and others are clever uses of existing concepts. Some are well known, others are not.

Photosynth – Synth: Photosynth is a well loved new tool from Microsoft used to map a 3D environment with a group of pictures from several different sources. Photosynth uses your pictures to construct the actual object in a 3D render. You can click your way through every corner of the Eiffel Tower and contribute your own pictures to the “synth” for the world to see. Photosynth has even been showcased on some television shows and used to solve fake crimes. It’s an incredible way to bring a sense of life to your pictures.

PicsOrLinks – Embed Multiple Pics (EMP): This a practical but powerful feature for heavy forum users. It allows you to forgo the tedious work of individually embedding a group of your pictures on your favorite forums/message boards. EMP also gives you the option to add a caption above each picture to tell a tale or provide descriptions. PicsOrLinks makes it really simple to share multiple pics from an event with your favorite communities. All the code is generated for you with the click of a button and you’re ready to share.

Flickr – Geotagging: Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to pictures and other media. Several new digital cameras on the market come with geotagging functionality. It is a well known feature but its applications have improved greatly in the past year. Flickr now uses this technology to make maps from a user’s set of geotagged pictures. This allows users to browse through pics based on location instead of just album groupings. Users can also make intuitive displays of their journeys and view their pictures in a geographical context.

Photobucket & PicsOrLinks – Group/Event Albums: How many times have you been at a special event or gathering with several people taking pictures? It’s usually a pain to gather all the pictures in one place. Photobucket and PicsOrLinks make it simple with Group/Event Albums. They are basically albums with shared access for invited friends and family. Everyone can contribute pics to one huge pool for everyone to delight in. It’s a fantastic way to capture everything that happens at huge events like birthday parties and weddings.

Apple iPhoto – Faces: iPhoto is an endlessly useful tool every Mac user should try. iPhoto ‘09 was released recently with a new feature called Faces. Faces questions you to assign names to the people in your pics and uses facial recognition technology to detect and categorize those people for simple viewing. Faces and the rest of iPhoto ‘09 is seamlessly integrated with Facebook to make organization and sharing even simpler. Brilliant.

What other features would you like to see in the future?