A number of different websites let you post your photos on the web, so that others (particularly your family and friends) can see them.

This lesson will use Flickr as its example, as that's probaly the most popular photo sharing site. Others work similarly to Flickr.

Flickr is a Yahoo! company, so if you have a Yahoo! account, you can sign straight in to Flickr. If not, just go to Yahoo.com and create a free account.

So, if you go to Flickr.com, you'll see a few prominent links on the right-hand side of the page.

• Upload Photos lets you post the photos on your computer to Flickr.
• Your Photostream shows you the photos you've already posted to Flickr, if any.
• Find your friends lets you search for people on Flickr (or import an address book) who you already know, so you can view their photos.

If you've already added some friends, you'll see some different links:

• From your Contacts shows four photos recently posted by your friends.
• Everyone's Uploads shows four photos recently posted by random people on Flickr.
• Your Groups are shared-interest groups of people on Flickr.

To upload a photo, click the "Upload Photos" link on your homepage. Click the "Choose photos" link, and an Open window will appear. This will let you navigate on your computer. If you're on Windows, go to your My Pictures area, and find a neat photo. Click the "Open" button.

You can then set a privacy level. By default, any photo you upload is public--viewable by anyone. You can set a photo so that it's only visible to your friends or your family. Once you're satisfied with the privacy level, click the "Upload Photos" button and wait for the photo to be transferred from your computer to the Flickr server. This may take a while.

Once it's uploaded, click the "add a description" link to enter an optional title, description, and tags (key words) to the photo, and click the "SAVE" button.

Once you've uploaded some photos, they'll appear underneath the "Your Photostream" link on your homepage.

Without getting into a completel tutorial of everything you can do on Flickr--that would take many, many pages--here's an overview of major features:

• You can create photo sets, which group your photos into an online photo book.
• You can link your photos to a world map, indicating where each photo was taken.
• You can add tags to your photos, key words which let people (and you!) search for certain kinds of photos ("cat", "garden").
• You can join groups of other Flickr users, organized by physical location or area of interest.
• And, of course, you can browse the photos on Flickr, and even mark some as favorites.