Google Picasa

I have quite a few photos stored on my Windows Home Server at my house. I decided a while back that it was about time I stored these online also, for backup purposes.

I have uploaded a fair few of these to Facebook, but I don’t want them all on there and anyway, Facebook doesn’t store the photo as is, so I will lose the original version if something happened to my computers.

The obvious answers were Flickr and Google Picasa. As part of my broadband contract I get access to a Flickr Pro account, which means I have ample space to store all my photos. My problem with Flickr is that I don’t like the way the upload process works. I need to look for a better tool than just the Flickr upload tool (I use it from Google Picasa application). I want to be able to organise them locally and sync them as they are, which doesn’t seem possible with Flickr. I might have to get to work on a C# tool for this…

Google Picasa impressed me with its sync feature. I do all the sorting locally and tell the album to sync. I don’t know if this works the other way around (i.e. I can sync an uploaded album back to a computer – I don’t see why it couldn’t work).

My problem with Google Picasa is the amount they charge for extra storage. They give you 1GB free, but to upgrade to a usable amount is rather expensive and is a yearly cost!



My email account has 8.33GB (currently) but I am only using 0.11GB to store my mail…. can this not be shared now… it gets shared once I pay!

So it looks like I will have to stick to Flickr for now. :(

UPDATE:

It seems either Google read my complaint or they decided to change the storage options anyway (by coincidence!). I don’t think we need to guess which of the two it was!!

Anyway, as I said, Google have changed the pricing of their storage upgrades and I have upgraded my account now to 200GB for only £35/year. That works out less than the 40GB option I complained about above!! All my photos will now be stored with Google’s Picasa service. Sweet!



I might still sync them with Flickr too though, just as a second backup!

:D

ANOTHER UPDATE:

Google are now giving a way a free eye-fi card with upgraded storage purchases… so not fair!! Going to email them and ask if they will back date it! :(