Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Photo Sharing Services
Numerous services provide
unlimited
storage for your digital photos,
along with complete control over which ones are shared and with
whom, sometimes for as little as zero dollars! Beyond the basics of
photo storage and sharing, such services differ in the selection of
features they offer. Most offer prints of your digital photos for a fee;
some will send you CDs or DVDs with backups of your photos, too.
In earlier editions of this topic, I listed a number of photo sharing
services here as examples, but because the choices (and details such
as prices and storage space) change so frequently, I've moved that
information to the
Online Appendixes
where I can more easily keep
it up to date.
Considering that you can back up
all
your photos at little or no cost
using sites of this sort, it's almost a no-brainer. In fact, even if you
ignore all the other advice in this topic, please take the easy step of
backing up your photos with one of these services. Although you may
already include your photos in your duplicates and versioned backups,
another offsite backup never hurts—and you'll get easy photo sharing
as a bonus. The only people who might want to be circumspect about
these services are those without broadband Internet connections:
uploading photos over a slow connection can take a long, long time.
Dealing with Huge Volumes of Data
Some kinds of data are inherently quite voluminous, and therefore
have special implications when it comes to backup. I'm thinking
primarily of video, audio, and high-resolution photo data.
Video files consume an enormous amount of disk space, and when
you're editing a large video project or producing DVDs, the file sizes
can become truly staggering. Add HD video content to the mix, and
the file sizes balloon even further. Because of the sheer quantity of
data you may generate, conventional duplicates and versioned backups
may not make the most sense. You're also likely to create numerous
