Babson student co-creates min.us, a super simple online photo sharing service

A Babson College student and an ex-Microsoft engineer have joined forces to simplify the process of sharing photos online with a free new web service called min.us.

You simply go to the site – now in beta — and then drag pictures onto the page from your computer’s photo files. You name your gallery/slideshow and are given two short URLs: one you can send to others to let them view your masterpieces via email or a social network site like Twitter or Facebook, and the other you can bookmark in case you want to edit your gallery. The service works with most popular web browsers, though works best with the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer (you really should upgrade if you haven’t…). A fuller tech explanation and company profile here from Network World.

The service keeps your identity anonymous, though min.us does keep track of IP addresses so that it can report you if you’re using the service to do something really nasty.

Min.us is easier to use than popular services like Flickr, though doesn’t offer a lot of the management and other features of a more established service like that.

Here’s an example of a slideshow of  swell Wellesley pictures I literally created in less than 1 minute.

John Xie, who expects to graduate from Babson in May, is going to make most of you feel pretty lazy. He’s in his early 20s now, but at age 13 started a Web hosting company.

“We truly believe we can do it all [with min.us]. We want to start with just images. Then move onto url shortening, then documents and then audio/video,” says Xie.

He and partner Carl Hu are kicking around ideas to make money, but don’t have plans to implement anything in the near term. Min.us is self funded for now, though Xie says he’s open to venture funding down the road.