To answer some of your questions:
Question: Why not just save the image to the local drive? It’s static content and doesn’t need to be bookmarked.
Answer: The bennefit of an image social bookmarking site is for you to share your findings with others. You can’t do that if you save it locally.

Question: Why not allow people to upload their own images?
Answer: Social bookmarking sites are basically for bookmarking. They are not image hosting company. What’s the point of re-inventing the wheel if others are doing it so well (ex: flickr, youtube, etc…).

Just my personal point of view.

At the moment, 80% of our traffic is probably Techcrunch readers, but we do need to have a better arrangement to “converse” with users and let them see how we are doing, in particular with closing gaps that they point out. That is the one thing I would advise someone who takes the “let’s release early” route, after learning from being Techcrunched

The questions asked here are not limited to the tech/web2.0 crowd. A lot of photography professionals & enthusiasts have similar ones, so it is worth addressing for us.

Himanshu- You might consider addressing those points on the “What is Pixrat?” page, or adding a separate FAQ. Unless you think the only users who know enough to ask are reading TechCrunch, which is entirely possible.

On a broader note, I like Writely’s “Beta Meter” idea. It lets the users know that the developers know that there’s still work to be done. I wonder why more sites haven’t adopted it.

On RSS & API, yes, point well taken. They are coming soon.

Re: Douglas’ point about releasing before having all the features that are “de rigeur on information categorizing sites”… Till the time we get from 80% to 100% done, we felt it was better to have a somewhat incomplete demonstration rather than a box saying “Give us your email and we’ll get back to you”.

Parcourant les dernières billets de TechCrunch US, le meilleur blog pour décrypter ce fameux Web 2.0, je découvre aujourd’hui un nouveau site : Pixrat. A la manière d’un del.icio.us (et bientôt de Favolink !) mais version image, Pixrat permet à…

[RK, #12] “I’m sure your feature requests provide great feedback, but your additional ‘why’ comment is retarded.”

RK,

Mike is pointing out that these features, or ones very like them, are rapidly becoming de rigeur on information categorizing sites like del.ic.ious and Flikr. The developers at Pixrat must know that, so why wait for users to point it out?

Sure, feature development takes time. Let it. Assuming that the whole point of beta testing is to have users point out flaws that you hadn’t yet recognized, Pixrat has dropped the ball by not inluding near-necessary features before inviting people to use their product.

Heh, I’m bored.

Couldn’t have said it better myself – this “bookmarking images” idea seems a bit extraneous to me.