I thought Carousel was going to be a big success[1] but it didn't hit the mark like I suspected. Even if it did I doubt it would generate any meaningful revenue for them.
Google has figured out the consumer photo space with Google Photos. Their general approach was simply better than Carousel which was too focused on socializing. Even there they would have been outdone by Google Photos; not to mention the crazy AI which comes along with Google Photos.
Shameless plug for an open source EXIF-based photo workflow automation tool[2][3] I wrote and used with Dropbox but now use with Google Drive / Google Photos / Synology.
[3] http://github.com/jmathai/elodie
[2] https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-personal...
[1] https://medium.com/@jmathai/thoughts-on-dropbox-carousel-e5a...
Looking forward to adopting this as part of my workflow.
In all seriousness, the need for local, speedy, transparent and ubiquitous data redundancy is still there and if anything growing.
Consumers want a 'refrigerator' of data - be it documents, photos, etc. Buy, set and forget.
Huge opportunity there.
To work though it will require some exceptional simplification and product engineering.
Even given properly managed encryption one has to assume the system could get wiped which makes other backup regimes necessary. As you say, hard to get bulletproof. Not that most people are bulletproof today.
Synology comes close. Their current marketing strategy doesn't seem to be focused towards the 98% of consumers though.
The type of internet where anyone could host and interact freely with other parts of the internet are already past. People just haven't realized it. It'll be Internet TV.
Back when I was deciding on a service, I was down to Carousel and SmugMug. I liked the idea of paying Dropbox for space that would go beyond photos and I think Carousel was good at syncing photos from the iPhone, but I went with SmugMug for the reasons above and have not regretted it one bit.
SmugMug used to have bad limits to their videos a few years back. That was strike one before. I cancelled with them when support said I had to have my videos encoded in certain ways for some of them to get uploaded. This ended up being a massive annoyance. Even after encoding to their requirements, some videos still wouldn't upload.
Small note about pricing - if you want to be able to limit sharing of your photos/albums to different people, you have to get on the 2nd tier which is $70/year or $8/mo. Not a big difference. Personally, though I'm limited in money, my photo, image, and video collection are very important to me. I'd easily be willing to spend a few hundred a year for a rock solid platform, like say if I needed to spend $30/mo on average for Google Photos or Apple Photos in the future.
SmugMug's inspiration, Flickr is now a worry-some app to use with Verizon owning them. Their 1 GB limit for videos is way too restricted along with only allowing 3 minutes of playback. You have to download the video to see it in full.
All the apps and products mentioned also in my opinion are inferior to Picassa Desktop in its hay-day. I still miss it. Even though its organizing wasn't as good as I'd like.
- As far as I can tell, there's no RAW support (http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93278), admittedly this is the biggest problem for me, as all my photos are RAW.
- Video is extremely limited (20 min/3GB) and I expect to be able to store that too, as I treat it basically the same way I treat photos.
- Their privacy policy is that of a content publishing platform, not a place to store personal photos: They will access your information without your consent and without mandatory notification if "we believe your actions are inconsistent with the spirit or language of our user agreements or policies". That last one is the killer.
- Their ToS is that of a content publishing platform, not a place to store photos: They prohibit "User Content that, in the sole judgment of SmugMug, is objectionable, harmful or which restricts or inhibits any other person from using or enjoying the Services, or which may expose SmugMug or its users to any harm or liability of any nature." i.e. they can object to literally anything I put there. I don't want to have to think about whether my backup provider will deign to approve the photos I take.
I honestly prefer Google Photos to SmugMug. It has decent RAW support and with a $10/month Google Apps account you can get an unenforced 1TB quota (i.e. unlimited). And they don't police the stuff you backup, only what you share.
So there's an official 1 TB quota, but for now it's unenforced? Presumably, it'll be enforced at some point, no? If you're putting up raw files and/or videos that exceed their free tier, that can add up quickly.
The TOS and PP issues are bummers. Have just added on to why I don't want to use SmugMug.
I've been on Flickr forever. It still does the job for me but I'm not really dependent on them. Everything I have is in Lightroom locally and backed up in multiple ways.
Lightroom has always seemed daunting so I never took much of a look at it even though I pay for the Photoshop subscription that includes Lightroom.
I still can't get used to the fact that drop means release.
> The Photos page is changing on July 17, 2017, but your pictures will stay safe in your Dropbox account. After July 17, you’ll no longer be able to create or share albums on the web, or browse photos in the current timeline view.
So, Dropbox is dropping photos in the hot potato sense, not the build server artifact sense.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/drop
(verb) 5.4 (informal) Release (a musical recording). (noun) 3. (informal) A delivery.
https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6156103?co=GENIE.Pl...
I honestly don't get what they do as a company, and I love the product and have paid for years. They hold back basic features like search and now take away stuff like albums that freeware packages can do?
Logo animations when scrolling were introduced in order to be able to shrink the size of the header, to give more room for the content. But the header on this page does not shrink at all.
The funny thing is that this page, while following the norms of flat design, has managed to adopt skeuomorphism in the worst way. The shrinking logo had a use on pages that shrink the header, but here is remains as a pure decoration, with no functional purpose.
"The Photos page will be replaced with a new, streamlined photos experience that looks more like our redesigned Dropbox website. You’ll be able to access it by navigating to dropbox.com/photos or clicking on Photos in the left-hand menu of dropbox.com."
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/help/photos-videos/changes-photos
Dropbox' strength is sync and sharing, but they kneecap that by double-counting sharing capacity. I can't share a video with my wife (a non-subscriber) without paying again)
I need something like Dropbox and begrudgingly use the free tier interacting with my clients who use it, but I find myself trying to avoid paying for it or locking in on it. Something about it is just off-putting.
