A large number of people that I talk to the most precious files on their computer are their digital photos. They have embraced digital photography and take hundreds of photos of their kids, family, vacations and their life. While they have embraced digital photography they are often sent into a state of shock when they turn on their computer one day and it does not boot up. Often they lose all of their photos or are faced with trying to have the data recovered off of their dead hard drive.
For many of these people continuous online backup like Mozy, Backblaze, Carbonite and the majority of the services I talk about here are beyond what they want. While these online backup services would save their precious photos, they are still to complicated or are simply unwanted. Many of these people already use a tool such as Picasa and want to use it to many their backup of their photos. Some people will upload them to Picasa Web though Picasa, others will upload some to Flickr. Both Picasa Web and Flickr let you upgrade the accounts to allow for more space. Google is more expensive at 10GB for $20.00/year, while Flickr is better at $24.95 for a year with unlimited uploads.
If you do not really like either of those options, I recently came across another site that you can use to backup your precious photos. It is called Smugmug and it is as easy to use as Picasa or Flickr and offers more options to protect your photos from unwanted copying, while still making it easy to share your your photos with family and friends. It also allows more customization that either Picasa or Flickr. Take a look at their quickstart guide video.
I have been trying them out for about a week, and while I do not think I will use them personally, since I do backup all my photos to an online backup service, I know of several people that would appreciate this service. Price wise they are a little more than a Flickr Pro account, with Smugmug costing $39.95/year. To save some money you can use the coupon code “flickr” to save yourself 50% on your first year. They also offer a 14 day free trial, which I have been using, so if you want to give them a try check out the free trial. They might be the perfect solution for you to protect your precious photos.
Leave a Reply