Where is good place to post pictures

This may have come up before.

Where is a good place to post pictures, so that anyone can see them without the need for an account with a userid and password?

Facebook is out for sure. Not sure about Yahoo or Picasa or anywhere else.

I have family that would like to see pictures of some of our camping trips, but are not very computer literate.

I could go try a bunch of them, but being lazy I thought I would tap into the data bank of TMO first.

If I can't find such a place perhaps I will just fire up my web server at home again. But dealing with a dynamic IP address is just another problem to solve.

[ShrimpBurrito]

I use Phanfare.com. You will not find a service that provides a more polished presentation of your pictures, and I have looked.

Their key advantages:

• Upload your photos, and it automatically produces beautiful slideshows that pan and zoom. You can use their music, or upload your own.
• They retain you high-res files, and you can download them at will. That means the service doubles as a backup.
• They also will host video (including HD), and videos are included in the slideshows.
• They have an easy web interface, but also have both PC and Mac application interfaces that are a breeze to use, even for computer-newbies.
• You can customize the look of your albums, from layout to colors
• Visitor reports - you can tell how many visits your albums are getting.
• Viewing and management apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch
• Unlimted storage.
• Zero advertisements anywhere
• They have speedy email support; they also used to have phone support.....not sure if they still do.

The downside is that they are not free. But it's not expensive. $99/year gets you everything above. They just came out with a cheaper plan a few months ago -- $29/year gets you everything above EXCEPT the retention of high-res files.

This sample album is on their website:
http://picturesque.phanfare.com/3942466

The layout is clean, classy, and easy to navigate. Check out the slideshows.....I can't tell you how many compliments we've gotten on ours.

Dave

[Bill]

My advice is to be real careful of using one of these sites as a backup. Be sure you have another copy of your valuable pics, etc, stashed somewhere else. Some years ago, I discovered to my horror and embarassment that one of these on-line storage sites had died in the night, and everything I stashed there was permanently gone.

The fact that you pay a bit for Phanfare is probably some assurance that they will be around for a while. The free ones run on a different business model.

Bill

As a systems administrator (SYSPROG) for mainframe systems since 1974, I understand backups pretty well.

I also know that keeping two copies of pictures on two different hard drives is not adequate.

I know this because I was keeping two copies. Then I found a duplicate file finder application and it found numerous mismatches. I then used d'peg to do a side by side comparison and sure enough, they really were a mismatch. Sometimes it was obvious, where the bottom have lf the picture was either a weir color or right shifted a bit.

This is commonly called bit-rot.

It almost never happens on mainframe systems because they have a lo of CRC (error detection and correction stuff), but it takes up space and consumers don't like spending extra money for reliability. They only want capacity.

I wonder if 3 copies on 3 different hard drives would be adequate. Maybe I switch to RAID and enable striping.

Thanks for pointing out the backup issue. I understand it well, but some other readers may not be familiar with the issue.

After crashing a mainframe operating system, with inadequate backups around 1976, I learned that there is no such thing as too many backups.

[ShrimpBurrito]

I share Bill's concern, and so I have a third backup on an automated external network drive. But I am a photography buff, and even earn a few bucks doing it.

Phanfare backs up content on Amazon's S3 service, so there's alot of security there. And their primary data center also has generator back-up power. But of course, that doesn't help if Phanfare went out of business before they gave customers a chance to retrieve lost images. But they have been around for 7 years already, so I don't think they're going to disappear overnight.

Dave

[ShrimpBurrito]

Originally Posted by PopBeavers

I wonder if 3 copies on 3 different hard drives would be adequate. Maybe I switch to RAID and enable striping.

You could have 100 copies on 100 different hard drives, but if your house burns down, is flooded, or collapses in an earthquake, you likely won't be able to use any of them. Same thing if they get stolen -- to avoid the later calamity, you can install a network drive in an attic or basement.

I use a Synology network drive - they make models that can accommodate lots of drives. My brother has the same model, and we have configured them to automatically talk with each other. Each unit holds two 1 TB drives. One of those drives is a local backup. The other drive hosts an off-site backup my brother, and his does the same for me - a few times a week they talk to each other to backup the latest files. That gives each of us 1 local backup and 1 remote backup. All automatic, and no subscription fees.

This isn't hard to setup, but it isn't for a novice, either.

Dave

[MariaG]

Leaving out the question of backup just for sharing, I have used Shutterfly for years and like it quite a bit. Once uploaded, you can invite people to see your pics by email, or get a link to post. You can also order prints and have them mailed to you, or purchase a host of items with the pics on them - books, greeting cards, mugs, T-shirts, etc.

I like the free www.photobucket.com so far. They have added a slideshow feature.

"Free accounts include:
•Unlimited* storage for photos.
•Up to 500 videos permitted with up to 10 minutes in length per video.
•Maximum display size of photos is 2048x1536 pixels each.
•Maximum file size permitted is 5MB per photo and 300MB per video.
"
The address to your folder or single file is a little long to tell someone on the telephone, but in an email this should be good.
Sample: http://s849.photobucket.com/albums/a...ntry%20handle/


Keep copies of your photos because inactive accounts get shutdown after 6? months. (I'm still looking for the current rules on this point).



Also check www.flickr.com - I haven't tried this one yet.
"When you have a free Flickr account, you can upload 2 videos and 300MB worth of photos each calendar month.
While the 300MB bandwidth limit for photos is firm, we do allow a little leeway..."

.

[scrubjaysnest]

We do back ups a little different, Desktop, laptop, net book, and flash drives.
If the house goes that takes out the desktop and one set of flash drives but not the net book, laptop and second and third set of flash drives.

[Bill]

I have owned a PC since 1980 - remember the Commodore Vic-20? For most of that time, I have owned multiples - the count is now 5. In all that time, I have never had a hard drive crash, so I've gotten a little sloppy about backups.

Two weeks ago, it finally happened. In the end, I had the local pro put in a new hard drive, and do a data recovery on the crashed unit - they call it a "scrape", and it is expensive. A "scrape" doesn't even try for the applications - it is assumed that you can find a copy and reload them (anyone want to help me with an HP printer driver????). Instead, they try for the data files - documents, photos, etc. In my case, he got most, but not all. My last backup, a couple months ago, had the photos, but the big loss was my email, which is, in effect, a history file for a lot of issues and events.

The point of this sad story is not that backups are important - everyone knows that. But he told me two things. First, RAID is cheap these days. For less than the cost of the scrape, he would install a pair of identical disks - big disks - and a RAID controller. Voila, instant and complete backup, bit-for-bit. It won't help if your house burns down, but it is wonderful protection against a hard drive crash. For a bit over $100, you can't go wrong.

If I didn't want to go RAID for some reason (and there are some), he suggested I buy one of the Western Digital Elements Portable SE hard drives. They have capacities from 500 GB to 1 TB, for well under $100. They are small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, they are plug-and-play with a simple USB cable, and you use them just like any other hard drive - no special interface software is needed. In addition, they are powered by the USB cable, and so have no need for a docking station or wall wart. If you use one of these, backup is still a manual operation, but it is simple drag-and-drop at the file or folder level. I own one, and I love it.

I have to admit, I have been living in the past. I thought that BIG drives and ADVANCED technologies like RAID were still terribly expensive. Not so. I'm on board now.

Bill