For those of you who are not familiar with it, Radar.net is a sort of picture (and video) based, private Twitter. The basic principle is that a picture says more than 140 characters, making it more fun to show your friends what you’re doing than to just tell them. It’s a mix of elements from Twitter, Qik and Flickr, all of which unfortunately pretty much dwarf it. Which is why the new Flickr Integration is probably a really smart move.

There are many users who post images on Flickr daily, and thus effectively use it the way Radar was designed to be used. You can now add their streams to your Radar and post comments directly to Flickr. This will give you a twitter-like list of updates from your friends from both systems. Pretty cool.

What I also like about Radar is the clean user interface. It’s really intuitive and easy to use. And you get excellent control over what you want to keep private (share just with your friends) and what you want the world to see. Radar can also post your public updates to Twitter, so you can use it instead of Twitpic if you like.

What I don’t like is how you’ll need to upload your images. When you sign up for an account you’ll be handed an email address to post the images to. I use the mobile Gmail application on my phone and can not send attachments. The mobile Radar app for Symbian doesn’t interface with either of my phone’s cameras, and thus doesn’t allow me to take snaphots and post them from within the comfort of that application. When on the go I’m stuck using MMS, and at half a euro a pop that can get expensive really fast.

Another possible issue is security. As far as I can tell, if anyone guesses your account’s email address there’s nothing keeping them from posting images to your account. And although random, the addresses aren’t all that hard to guess.

The new iPhone app does apparently allow you to post images directly. Apparently even to Flickr. And then notify people through Twitter. Can anyone with an iPhone confirm this? That would make Radar the perfect tool for all the twittering photographers out there. And if they can lure a few personal friends into opening Radar accounts there’s a lot of private fun to be had too. Hmmm… that didn’t come out the way I wanted… oh well…

1. Picasa2 vs. Flickr, apples and oranges
2. WP-Cumulus for Flickr anyone?
3. My Flickr widget will make your photostream fly…
4. Why I’m not following you back on Twitter
5. Gravity adds some sexiness to Symbian