After reading GigaOm's announcement about PicApp's new photo service, I decide to give it a try.

As Om explains, the site gives publishers access to copyrighted stock photography and news photos. Publishers, including bloggers, are free to republish the photos on their own sites using PickApp's embed code. The code delivers both the image and advertisements.

I searched for photos tagged "Minneapolis" and found this image from Getty taken a few blocks from my home.

picApp_publisherId = 1269;picApp_imageId = 6841;picApp_imageWidth = 420;picApp_imageHeight = 273;picApp_configUrl = "http://pis.picapp.com/IamProd/FlashSite/GetConfig.aspx";picApp_Picview="http://pis.picapp.com/IamProd/FlashSite/en/picviewerv1_1.swf";picapp_numberOfLine=1;ImageServe();

The photo includes tags for: Building, Skyline, City, Horizontal, Urban Scene, USA, River, Minnesota, Minneapolis, Mississippi River, Office Building, Skyscraper, Color Image, Downtown District, No People, Photography, Morning, Twin Cities

Strangely, it doesn't include information on when it was taken. I can assure you it wasn't recently since we're still in the middle of winter here in Minneapolis. My guess would be September of some previous year.

It will be interesting to see whether this site gains traction. I think my first source for discovering bloggable images will continue to be Flickr. That site has a ton of unique and fairly well tagged photos available for publication. And ad free.

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