ImageStation

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ImageStation was Sony's official online photo sharing and photo print service. ImageStation generated revenue by selling high quality digital prints, as well as photo-related gifts such as photo books, mugs, calendars, greeting cards, and T-shirts. There were also several levels of membership available at different prices. The free basic account was only available to residents of the US or Canada.

ImageStation's back-end was powered by the following technologies:

• Apache Web Server
• mod perl for core application logic
• HTML::Mason Template Engine
• ImageMagick for image processing
• Oracle database with EMC storage and Relational Interface System for other DBMS
• Isilon for image storage (replacing old Rackable boxes)

As of February 1, 2008 the ImageStation online service is permanently closed. The announcement of the closure was issued on September 4, 2007. The reason for closure was listed on the Sony ImageStation web site as:

"Sony Electronics has decided to close ImageStation, its photo sharing service, in order to focus on the company’s core businesses, products, and services."

"In the early days of digital photography Sony realized the need to provide an online photo service to support their digital camera customers. In the years since, many capable online photo services have become available and our customers now have a broad range of options for storing, sharing, printing and creating photo gifts."

There is an automatic photo transfer offered to members at photo site Shutterfly.

E-mail addresses associated with ImageStation accounts have been verified to have been distributed to 3rd parties since the closure of ImageStation.