Photobucket

[jruley]

Has anyone else got an e-mail from them demanding money if we want our posted images to become visible?  Photo hosting sites must be losing money, so the free ride is over.

Does anyone have suggestions on a better free image hosting service?

[Greger]

Haven't used these photo sites for years. Had troubles with them and stopped using them.

It seems like, by now, personal harddrives connected to home networks and internet one could use one's personal harddrive. That way it is in the person's control. I bought some years ago a harddrive to connected to the home network where I could set it up for outside use. I could download or upload from any internet connection anywhere in the world. It had its own http adress. I probably could have sectioned off part of it and used it like Photobucket.

Markets change and the gravy chain is over for some of the commercial storages.

[Schneiderfrei]

Yes JRuley I have. 

Great advice greger.

I have a lot of images stored on photobucket.  I will see what I can do.

Graham

[Greger]

I used to have Comcast, which is always on line. I have a printer that also can have a http address. It too, can be used from any computer around the world. There have been times when it would have been nice to print a copy at home from any computer elsewhere. Never hooked either up with http, though I had planned to do so. Cell phones can carry a lot of information. If my system was online all the time again I'd certainly would have them set up for use away from home.

With all of this "Don't need paper" I had a hard boiled egg method on phone and tablet. Somehow most of it got deleted on one, which got updated on the other. Other didn't work as backup if something went wrong with the other. Should have asked me if I wanted the change. One reason or another paper backup is necessary sometimes. Digital is certainly better than none. But, still not fool proof yet.

[hutch--]

For storing your own data, nothing beats your own local hard disk and they are getting cheaper over time. I need big storage on an equally big computer and the current box I built about 18 months ago has about 14 terabytes of storage. The last couple of disks I replaced smaller ones with were 4 TB and in Australia where I live, they cost me about $160.00 AUD which is about $40.00 AU for each terabyte.

You need a PC or some gadget that can read from a USB connection but you can buy 4tb external drives for reasonable costs these days and unless you are bashing out high resolution video, its really hard to fill a disk of this size. With your own hard disk you can forget the cloud, no risks in security terms and if you are not using it, you just turn it off. They never wear out if they are only ever run occasionally.

[Schneiderfrei]

Hi Hutch, what steps do you need to take to get the images on line?

[hutch--]

A location where you can post them online, the rest is an upload done by a normal web browser. If its video you can create a Youtube account and post the links but I am not up to date with image storage sites as I have never used them.

[Schneiderfrei]

It seems like every site that used to allow 3rd party hosting has collapsed into a paid for service. Photobucket wants to charge exorbitant prices.  I am currently putting together a website for my professional interests, I will be looking at a private website also and will try to post my images from there.

[jeffrey]

I completely forgot that I have images on flickr.com and I don't think that they charge.

[Schneiderfrei]

Pfaff260 has successfully used PostImage.  Is that a paid for site?

[spookietoo]

I looked it up, it seems to be free and should remain free due to its ".org" extension - it is not a ".com".

Reading the fine print "user agreement" - it seems that you give Postimage free use of your images to use as they see fit - unless you have a legal copywrite to the image. There's also something about how to post third party links in order for them to pay their bills.

I could be wrong about any/all of this - but the "fine print" definitely deserves a good close read.

[Tailleuse]

With your own hard disk you can forget the cloud, no risks in security terms and if you are not using it, you just turn it off. They never wear out if they are only ever run occasionally.

But if you have a fire, flood, or robbery your images are gone.

[Schneiderfrei]

I do appreciate that Tailleuse, although the "Cloud" has always bothered me immensely. More and more I believe we will be reminded that the Cloud is not a beautiful shimmering nuage but is in fact - Someone else's computer.

G

[hutch--]

I have a solution to at least one of the problems that Tailleuse has mentioned, most of my computers are so heavy that no-one would try and steal them. The next problem for the thief is they are so big internally that they could not find anything on it. The type of people who try and steal computers grab at things like laptops and smartphones as they are portable.

The area I live in is flood free and the chances of a fire in an old double brick house are very slim. You are still vulnerable to nuclear attacks, meteor strikes and other cataclysmic events but you would not be worried about a hard disk in that context. Local storage is cheap, fast and secure, does not depend on internet connections and can't be hacked unless you do something really stupid.

Cloud is a con, a way to sell you something and then have full access to you data so if you are a high end designer of anything valuable, the last place you would put sensitive data is at a remote computer that someone else controls.

[Greger]

Can see the cloud being useful for some things. But, like everything else it's not dependable. Read of one company that lost maybe millions of people data that those people put on that cloud. It is said to have data stored two different places. And data needs to be updated regularly, because, programs change. Important photos need to be printed and probably stored in a metal file cabinet.