Distribute event photos via email…automatically

We’d like to automate the distribution of photos to participants. Ideally, a participant would email us with some unique identifier in an email heading requesting a photo – last name or unique number. A simple program/process would read the header (number or name) and select a correspondingly (named or numbered) photo file and reply to the email with the photo attached. Any ideas if this is possible with Gmail.?

FYI – we’re not charging for the photos - they are free. This eliminates any transaction (nice), but prevents funding any project (plus its only an annual event). We could post to one of the many photo sharing sites but (as difficult as this is to believe) there is a patent that prevents posting photos of certain events with a participant number. We just want to share the photos.

 

Hello,
Gmail has something called canned response. You would then have to create the same number of canned responses with attachments as photos you wanted to send which is not very practical if there is a large number and I am not sure how many canned responses are allowed. You would then have to add a filter for each recepient you expected email from and then used the canned response for that person for the auto-reply.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-canned-responses.html

 

Yes, its a large number - 2600+. I do like the canned responses..but need to automate the matching of photos with incoming.