ProtectMyPhotos launches very easy online media storage

While it looks good on the surface, places like http://www.zenfolio.com or http://www.smugmug.com offer true unlimited backups (the fine print for protectmyphotos says its not truly unlimited, but unlimited for they consider the “Casual” user) along with many other options like sharing, portfolio views, etc.

hahaha. Way to go man! Copy the links and f the world. Later lecture the
blogosphere on ethics.

“Online consumer media storage is a relatively crowded market (probably not one I would get into)”

“As consumer demand for this type of service continues to grow rapidly, there will likely be room for lots of players in this vertical”

My question is - is there any evidence to suggest consumer demand is growing for online file storage? And rapidly? I’m really curious about this. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of sites offering online file storage, but who is actually using it? Are real live people actually using it? Are businesses using it? Are they paying real money for it and getting real value out of it? I would love to hear any thoughts on this matter.

Have a good weekend,

T-bone 6000

alright. i am either over/under the age demographic or uncool or maybe i don’t take enough pictures, but i guess i never saw the real appeal for sites along this line. I use photo bucket.com once in a while when I want to share something and need it easily (like ebay stuff I might be selling) but other than that, my desktop or a back up drive seems to do the trick for me.

i know it’s growing, so somebody uses it. *shrugs* i just feel little interest for it.

Man, couldn’t they find a longer name for their company name!! Need to come up with a shorter name or just make up a name. Shows that they lack creativity.

Webshots also lets you pull down all photos via their client. But another player just went into the market and they have some very cool technology

http://www.sharpcast.com

The devil is in the wording! Read thru the FAQ and it doesn’t mention anything about ‘downgrading’ your photos. But go to sign up for the free account and you see…. “Completely free, unlimited photos! View your photos from anywhere. Low-res protection, JPEG only”

Exactly what do they mean by LOW-RES PROTECTION? There’s nothing in the FAQ about it. I assume it to mean they’ll take my nice 1600×1200 snaps and reduce them to 1024×768 or something!

The ability to sync images is a big advantage over sites like Smugmug. Granted, Smugmug has some advantages as has been pointed out already.

Tony

“I use photo bucket.com once in a while when I want to share something and need it easily (like ebay stuff I might be selling) but other than that, my desktop or a back up drive seems to do the trick for me.”

I agree, local backups are your first, best option. But what happens if there is a burglary, fire or whatever? Yes, you can maintain backups off site, but very few of us actually go to the trouble consistently.

My Mom loves taking digital pictures but is not very computer savvy. An automatic, off-site backup is perfect for her.

Tony

^ I know what you mean, Tony. For me, few of my photos are important enough to really protect them, but that makes perfect sense!

I should get my mom turned onto something like this. She drives me CRAZY with how she can store her pictures - I just figured I’d never be able to migrate her to something like this. Was it easy for your mom?

I have suggested it to her, but she is the ultimate procrastinator. It looks super easy, but I have not actually tried it. I have read some pretty good feedback about the service so far from around the web. Who knows, maybe that was all from paid bloggers.

Tony

^ maybe we can partner on a photo storing/sharing sites for mature adults - easier interface, easier tutorials, target all the mom and parent magazines….

“^ maybe we can partner on a photo storing/sharing sites for mature adults - easier interface, easier tutorials, target all the mom and parent magazines…. ;)”

I agree, I think there is a definite need for that type of service, and the older adults that need it certainly aren’t going to be reading about it on Techcrunch.

Tony

^ well and also it’s a good way to carve a niche. so much of the web right now is targeting the young, because they have nothing else going on and will hang out for hours, but i think there’s a lot of other demographics that use it (my dad, for heaven’s sake, is on ebay all the time) and I do believe they can be moved to use technology as much as anybody. It’s maybe not as easy and not as big of an audience, but it’d be targeted and can grow.

I still don’t see what these sites get out of this in the long run. The “free” sites will monetize your photos without kicking back anything to the photo owner and the ones that stay free have to bring in some money somehow which generally means going pay at some point.
What happens to your photos when the company goes belly-up? Welcome to the ether.

ProtectMyPhotos is $40 a year.

Looks like a nice and surely important service and niche, yet their FAQ is a bit awkward or tricky.
What if I want to back up photos that are not on my computer? What if I have things divided on various computers of mine?
Why do they try to scare me by speak about viruses and jpgs? Are viruses that attack jpgs are so common… ?

Marshall, I assume you just guessed it’s 40 GB… (see the quote bellow) … 40 what? And if they say unlimited… how is it coincides with the very limited number of “40”?

“Unlimited Storage
ProtectMyPhotos was designed to not have limits for everyday digital camera users. Our Terms of Service states that if your storage needs exceed much more than those of the average user, we ask you to move up to a different pricing plan. Currently, based on the average storage needs of our users, 40 (approximately 40,000 photos) is the limit of our standard pricing plan. If you aren’t sure how many photos you have, chances are that your storage needs are well within our fair usage policy. Fewer than 1% of our users have more than 40 of photos.
If you begin to use more than 40, we will send you an email…”

Also regarding their name… photos do need protection… but from being stolen, and I sure would like to hear more about services like that on techcrunch, (but protectmyphotos service is a storage not protection…)

http://www.eyalos.com/1.html

To throw out another example of a company in this space, I use Phanfare (www.phanfare.com) which offers unlimited photo and video(length restriction) storage and viewing for $55/year. It doesn’t sync to things like flickr or phones, but the PC to server syncing and management tools are outstanding. Not sure why they dont get as much attention as some other services.

I don’t get it, if AMD offers 25GB free online storage why would people shell out $40yr or another 15GB…

The “free plan” doesn’t allow restoration of backed up photos. What is the point of having a “free plan” then?

I just uploaded some photos under the “free plan” and all it does is reduce their quality (to 640×480) and allow you to view them on the web from any computer. Not exactly what I would “protection”. The windows client is rather simple and nicely designed though.

Here’s what it says when you try to restore photos from a “free plan” account:

“The free version uploads reduced quality versions of your files so there is no option to restore without having a payed account. By becoming a subscriber, you can enjoy full protection of your photos, videos, music, and documents. Click here to sign up now!”

Something makes me think that Google’s Picasa Web Albums will eventually do this AND will be free. Right now they have 250Meg free or 6Gig for $25/year.

Yousay it can be used to backup any files - that’s not quite right, it will back up a number of ‘office’ type files, finacial files (quicken etc.) and audio files, but that does leave out some files that I would like to backup.

So no go for me. I’m looking at Carbonite at the moment, but wished it would support network drives as we will probably add some NAS at some point.

Sharpcast seems to be a (much) better product than this. I’ve been using it since beta 1.

The service sounds cool but I really do not see any demand of it. If a person is a heavy photo taker, syncing photos every time you start your computer will increase bandwidth costs. Also does Techcrunch have actual data on whether or not people actually use online file storage services on a regular basis.

It’s only for Windows! I don’t use Windows!

Flickr works great for me.

I upload all the photos using the Flickr uploader or using the iPhoto flickr export plugin.

With flickr, you can share photos with others, manage photos way better, order prints etc. And its cheaper too–$25 a year for unlimited storage.

I’m not seeing the point of this protectmyphotos site and its $40 backup plan.

If you need 2 way syncing, use any of the dozens of other companies that offer backups. Why limit yourself to just photos with protectmyphoto.com?

The BIGGEST problem with services like these is that they only sync/backup what’s on YOUR computer, so if you delete a photo from your computer, so will it get deleted from theirs.

By contrast, places like Flickr, smugmug, etc. will upload your photo and then it stays there, even if you delete it from your computer, which is what I really need. I don’t keep tons of photos on my own computer obviously as it fills it up and want a place other than DVD’s to store them.

Um. Why can’t you back up to a DVD and send it to your family on the other side of the country??

Note that Flickr does *not* archive the original image! I signed up for a pro account and was very disappointed to find out that when I clicked “Download the original image”, what downloads is an image that is the same resolution, but dramatically-increased compression. My photos on Flickr clearly show compression artifacts where the originals do not, and the file size of the one downloaded from Flickr is under a 1MB when the original was over 3MB. This is not what I expected when I paid for a “professional” account, and it makes it completely unviable as a true backup/safe storage solution.

Phanfare is the way to go.

Blueray is the way to go. XD

Well seriously, everyone has been trying hard to stand out of the “jungle”, yet no one has done significantly better than others…besides it would take quite long (a few years, who knows) to start to make profit….

I am gonna try something else out if I’d ever start a company…

Pickle (www.pickle.com) lets you retrieve your original photo files as well. Plus, you can keep your photos and videos in the same space rather than splitting your media collection between two websites.

I use IBackup for Windows (www.ibackup.com/ibwin_new.htm) to backup and restore all my important files and folders, including photos. You can perform interactive and scheduled backup operations of your important files and folders to your online IBackup account. You can securely store your photos and access them from anywhere and view them as thumbnails or as an animated slide show using the ‘Image Gallery’ feature.

If you have GIF/JPG/TIFF images in a folder, IBackup’s browser-based application ‘Webmanager’ automatically senses the presence of these images and displays the ‘Image Gallery’ option when you login to your IBackup account. You can click on the ‘Image Gallery’ option to view thumbnails of these images. You can also share your photos with friends and family by creating sharable links and emailing these to friends and partners for collaboration.

IDrive (www.ibackup.com/IBDrive_new.htm’>IDrive) is an application that maps your online IBackup account as a network drive on your computer. You can then drag and drop files to the IBackup account from the Windows explorer. It also allows you to open and save files stored in their IBackup online backup/ storage accounts directly from their associated applications like Microsoft Office.

I like what I hear about ProtectMyPhotos, but have heard nothing about them since October 2006. It’s now late Feb ‘07. Are they still in business? Will tey be a year from now? Five years? Does anyone know anything about them?