Eye-Fi expands to offer online image storage and syncing

[photo.net_industry_news]

<p><a href="http://pmanewsline.com/2012/12/04/eye-fi-expands-to-offer-online-image-storage-and-syncing/circ-main/" rel="attachment wp-att-58364"><img title="circ main" src="http://pmanewsline.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/circ-main.png" alt="" width="525" height="355" /></a><br>

Eye-Fi was the pioneer in connected cameras, providing storage cards that also added WiFi to off-the-shelf cameras from major manufacturers. But as more of us take photos with already-connected phones, the company needed to seek new territory — and now it has, with Circ, a storage and syncing service.<br>

“Circ was created for anyone looking to easily access photos and videos anytime, anywhere, using their favorite devices,” the company says. “With every photo & video on every device, your best stories and favorite memories are ready to share anytime — not trapped on your computer at home or spouse’s phone. Storytelling has never been this fun.”<br>

The “completely new photo service” has an app for Windows, iPhone and Android that collects photos and videos from your devices, automatically organizes them, and uses the cloud to keep everything in sync. Storage in the cloud is free and unlimited, and your photos are kept in original resolution. And, your content is available anywhere, without huge memory or performance demands on your devices.<br>

“Original resolution” isn’t quite the case if you’re thinking unaltered image capture files — but Eye-Fi is promoting its compression as highly efficient and all-but lossless. “Circ’s intelligent recompression safeguards photos & videos in original resolution, yet delivers a smaller file size for faster, more efficient upload and sync,” the company says. “Original resolution means you can confidently print a recompressed image and won’t notice any difference to a print from the original file.” This image show a 5MB vs. a 1MB image.<br>

<a href="http://pmanewsline.com/2012/12/04/eye-fi-expands-to-offer-online-image-storage-and-syncing/circ-compression-comparison/" rel="attachment wp-att-58365"><img title="circ compression comparison" src="http://pmanewsline.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/circ-compression-comparison.png" alt="" width="525" height="341" /></a><br>

“It’s been five years since we launched our first Eye-Fi wireless SD card,” <a href="http://www.eye.fi/company/blog/eye-fi-fans-join-the-fun-become-a-beta-tester-for-circ">CEO Yuval Koren says</a>. Since that time, “one of the fundamental changes we’ve all experienced is the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, and other devices we rely on to capture, view and share our memories.”<br>

Circ is free for two devices; $50/year for up to 20.<br>

Source:<a href="http://pmanewsline.com/2012/12/04/eye-fi-expands-to-offer-online-image-storage-and-syncing/">http://pmanewsline.com/2012/12/04/eye-fi-expands-to-offer-online-image-storage-and-syncing/</a></p>

[Member69643]

<p>What Eye-fi needs to do is launch a SD or CF card that can use 3G or 4G networking for file upload. Wifi is nice, but limited. It misguided thinking that devotes time and energy to yet another cloud-based "solution" to image storage.</p>

[johncrosley]

<p>Anyone trusting their images to 'cloud' storage had best remember what happened to the storage and sales site known as 'Digital Railroad', a site touted and used as displaying some fine work of fine photographers, both for storage and for sale, and used by many as a sole repository for some of their best, high resolution files.</p>

<p>A well-known and highly skilled member here recommended that site highly to me to store and exhibit my photos but I passed; I foresaw problems.</p>

<p>Well, hard financial times came in spite of pretty good service and an excellent reputation, and soon Digital Railroad, despite legions of advocates, was forced to declare bankruptcy.</p>

<p>Digital Railroad filed for bankruptcy, and a bankruptcy judge later ordered that they try to notify their subscribers that their images were in jeopardy of being wiped on their hard drives which were slated for being sold. The drives could not be sold with images on them, so the solution was to wipe the drives after a reasonable attempt was made to notify owners to download their photographs.</p>

<p>Some lucky subscribers were able to rescue their images, but in many cases subscribers did not get the notices, maybe because of moves, e-mail changes, traveling, etc., and their images were wiped clean. </p>

<p>The hard drives, on order from the bankruptcy judge, were wiped clean and sold. Unbacked up images were lost forever!</p>

<p>This is an important series of lessons for anyone who intends to rely on 'cloud storage'</p>

<p>Remember also an early 'cloud' storage provider which took full resolution photos for storage and then without telling anyone suddenly 'downsized (by an order of 10x? or so by compression) all the files uploaded to it. There was no recourse; those photo files were ruined as full resolution files forever. </p>

<p>Some executive probably got a 'bonus' for saving storage space and thereby cutting costs; he/she probably also was not a fine art photographer who realized the havoc he/she caused.</p>

<p>When you entrust your only photographs to others, especially corporations or companies, and they are your only form of safekeeping, they can do anything they want with your images when business necessity dictates or a bankruptcy judge orders them to if they fall on hard times.</p>

<p>They may promise 'free lifetime storage' but unless they have the financing and the business model to provide such a service and it's guaranteed by funds that are guaranteed, say by a bank and/or insurance company of high financial standing, then if the business fails, your images are in jeopardy.</p>

<p>Remember, Eastman Kodak just declared bankruptcy and it was a stalwart of the Fortune 500.</p>

<p>Suppose they had supplied a 'cloud storage' that was 'guaranteed' for life? Whose life? Yours? Theirs as a corporation free of bankruptcy?</p>

<p>Lesson: If you entrust images to a 'cloud' storage service, be sure you have single and/or duplicate image storage yourself. </p>

<p>The 'cloud' is fine for portability, but for guarantees, despite what you're promised, the service may be limited in its ability to fulfill its promises, or it may fail in the execution.</p>

<p>A disgruntled employee may delete all your (and others') images some day; a faulty switch may cause all images to be erased, backups may not be available for the site, flooding or natural disaster may erase your images and/or their site backups, etc.</p>

<p>There is no better safeguard than redundancy. If you use 'cloud' storage' also keep two or three copies of your own. I recently found 3 tb hard drives are selling for $100 if you use price match and time your purchase properly at Best Buy. How many photos can you store on one 3 tb drive? How about 3 such drives spread among relatives/friends, bank safe deposits?</p>

<p>It takes forever to upload just one gigabyte of photos to a cloud even over a high speed Internet line unless you have 50 mps or so. </p>

<p>Even so when you're talking about terabytes, of photos as I have, it becomes an enormous, time-consuming burden just to upload, let alone to download. Uploading just one day's shooting could be a full time job.</p>

<p>Moreover, I am not sure of any 'cloud' service that lets you upload more than JPEGS or GIFS, and not the 'raw' files that everyone works from nowadays, which means you either must shoot dual jpeg/raw or jpeg only, or only upload files that have been 'worked on' to jpegs' by image editing.</p>

<p>(the last point may be open to debate, as I have not fully explored the cloud market, however, it takes forever to upload just one 24" jpeg, and think how long a 'raw' or NEF file of the same image with so much more data will take to upload then think about uploading a 16 gig card . . . . )</p>

<p>I uploaded 2,500 images, 24-inch jpegs, to a service, and it took me weeks, stretching over months, to do so, mostly over a high-speed service, at a place where I had to go specially, as Internet available to me was far too low-speed to even consider, so I just sat there and surfed or read for hours, and hours and days and days. Gads!</p>

<p>Uploading also, in my experience, is not trouble free. If there is a slight break in the connection, one has to 'browse' one's files, then 'browse' the 'cloud' files to determine where to reconnect the transmission -- as in general it does not automatically start up again.</p>

<p>If you're on metered Internet service and plan on uploading lots of gigbytes of photos, plan on exhausting a month's supply of gigabytes almost at once if you're doing much uploading at all. . . . . . this applies especially to those uploading by 3G and 4G metered service or services where they 'throttle' your service if you are a heavy user.</p>

<p>The cloud is far from a trouble-free process . . . . . Compare to the safety of a $100 copied hard drive of 3 tb stored with a trusted one far away from regional natural disasters which can be stored almost for free . . . . and it can also be encrypted in case you are worried about snooping. The hard drive can be added to and reused as well and if stored safe and dry has a very long life expectancy.</p>

<p>The more copies floating around (encrypted if you wish to maintain control), the better your chances of never losing your precious images.</p>

<p>Be sure you leave the encryption key and the location of the drives with someone trusted and with more than one person/entity if you want your photos to outlive you . . . and not just in a will - lawyers die and sometimes safes full of wills are thrown away that they have kept for storage, or heirs are never found to connect with those wills, or wills are never connected with deaths far later.</p>

<p>These are just a few thoughts from my own experience and guesswork. I am sure there are many more considerations.</p>

<p>john</p>

<p>John (Crosley)</p>

<p> </p>