Suggestions for JPG Software for Personal Cloud

[rk911]

for the last several years I have been diligently scanning and organizing old family photos from both my wife's and my family. they are currently residing in Picasa3 on my local hard drive. i'd like to copy some of these photos to my Western Digital personal cloud drive to make them available to the rest of our family members.

I thought about simply moving the Picasa install from my local hard drive to the cloud drive but I don't think Picasa will allow me to assign different rights to different folders. I don't want to share all of our photos, just some of them. I also don't want to pay for DropBox storage...I have a ton of photos.

Looking for suggestions as to which software to use on the cloud drive in that would facilitate sharing these photos. the idea is that a family member could browse the photos and download the image to their PC.

[Sifter]

Any flash drive or USB harddrive can be plugged into this and it creates your own cloud locally. It will also serve as your wifi to wan connection at the same time. You can stream pics, movies, music from it to multiple users.

HooToo TripMate Elite

[Gdetrailer]

rk911 wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:
...What the OP is proposing is not a good idea, in a nutshell I gather the OP wants to be able to share ALL photos (so the OP does not have to "edit" the content) and then make it look like a "photo album"..

not true. as I wrote in the original post..." I don't want to share all of our photos, just some of them". and these are old, old family photos, some dating back to the 1870's. I doubt an identify thief is going to get much use from my great, great grandpa's photo as a boy.

posting these photos in some sort of 'ready-to-view' format seems, to be anyway, the only reasonable way to share them with other family members. the picasa web album may be an option since they provide 15gb of free space and it may mate up with my picasa database more easily and i will be looking at that but dropbox, at $60 per year, and similar for-profit databases are not an option.

I maintain a hardware and software firewall, practice good browsing/e-mail/internet habits, and use a layered defense when it comes to anti-spyware/malware/AV, etc. because I believe that no single security suite can possibly detect and defend against all of the nasties. I am under no illusions that my data is 100% safe but I am doing what I can. the only way to be 100% secure is not to be online. too late.

I truly appreciate all of the responses.

thanks.

I stand corrected.

Then why do you want to put them out in this way?

Personally instead of the hassle of tossing your files out into the wobbly web just for your family to view, why don't you simply burn them to CDs or if it is very large qty of files to Data DVDs?

Burn all the files that you want to share then hand them out as Christmas gifts.

Make one "master" disc, then simply copy that master...

Then everyone in the family who may have an interest in the old photos can each have their own copies..

If you don't want to make and distribute the copies you can simply make a "ISO" image file of the CD or DVD which you upload to a online storage and each family member can download the ISO file and burn their own copy..

Everyone wins.

[rk911]

Gdetrailer wrote:
...What the OP is proposing is not a good idea, in a nutshell I gather the OP wants to be able to share ALL photos (so the OP does not have to "edit" the content) and then make it look like a "photo album"..

not true. as I wrote in the original post..." I don't want to share all of our photos, just some of them". and these are old, old family photos, some dating back to the 1870's. I doubt an identify thief is going to get much use from my great, great grandpa's photo as a boy.

posting these photos in some sort of 'ready-to-view' format seems, to be anyway, the only reasonable way to share them with other family members. the picasa web album may be an option since they provide 15gb of free space and it may mate up with my picasa database more easily and i will be looking at that but dropbox, at $60 per year, and similar for-profit databases are not an option.

I maintain a hardware and software firewall, practice good browsing/e-mail/internet habits, and use a layered defense when it comes to anti-spyware/malware/AV, etc. because I believe that no single security suite can possibly detect and defend against all of the nasties. I am under no illusions that my data is 100% safe but I am doing what I can. the only way to be 100% secure is not to be online. too late.

I truly appreciate all of the responses.

thanks.

[1775]

I am not really following what the need for special software is to see these photos if accessed from your "personal cloud" hard drive. If you give Uncle Joe the password to access the personal cloud drive folder the way that you would remotely and Uncle Joe gets to your drive he will see folders just like on any computer. He opens the folder and sees the files - clicks on one and it opens on his PC with whatever default jpg software he has on the PC, tablet, or smartphone and he sees it. If your cloud drive is set up with the ability to access only folders you specify and you can make the files in those folders read only so that they cannot be deleted or overwritten, it should all just work. Special software should not be necessary. The other way to do this so that photos cannot be altered is to put your photos into a slideshow - many free programs to do this and when the slideshow file is clicked it self-plays. Then if someone wants a copy of a photo they can ask you for it and you email it to them.

[rwbradley]

Gdetrailer wrote:

mich800 wrote:

rwbradley wrote:
I have not used the My Cloud service on my WD My Cloud in a while and I forget what options there are, I will fire it up and take a look. Being in Network Security I am always wearing my "insanely paranoid hat" so storing things in someone else's cloud is not on the top of my to do list.
However just thinking outside the box, there is one other option that may not be exactly what you want, but if you want to keep all the files where you can control them, take a look at Bittorrent Sync. NOTE this is not the same thing as Bittorrent, which is used to download (and sometimes pirate) movies, music etc. Bittorrent Sync is based on the underlying technology used for the P2P file sharing that the company Bittorrent created, the similarities end there. Bittorrent Sync is a good way to share files between people without using an intermediary cloud service, it is secure, encrypted, private and involves no middle man. You simply install Bittorrent Sync on a PC, Mac, phone, tablet etc where you have your media stored (this can include a PC that had a drive mapped to a WD My Cloud drive). You than create a share ie your pictures directory, choose if it is read or read/write and share by email to another person. They install Bittorrent Sync, accept your invitation, than you confirm and presto they can see everything in the share you made and they can use whatever photo viewing tool they choose. It is worth noting that it is best to do at home on a high speed internet connection and it is a good idea to share smaller folders (not your entire picture library), as the sync process will make a copy of all the files on the other person's computer, doing this on a MIFI while on the road could easily blow your monthly bandwidth.

But for those without that background; would you recommend using a cloud based option to store non critical documents like pictures to share or have them local and run the risk of your entire home network?

"Sharing" ANYTHING directly from your PC or "home network" server is a recipe for disaster unless you really know and understand just how to lock down the share plus hide behind a fire wall.. And even then there is some risk involved.

Folks also flippantly post photos of themselves openly on the net, this IS basically giving possible identity thieves an easy way to fraudulently use your likeness on a new photo ID.. Photos of vehicles, trailers, homes and other personal property are often "lifted" by scammers to use on Craigslist and even Ebay as part of their scams..

I don't care just how supposedly "secure" a online storage site is purported to be, it only takes a small piece of malware getting on the host server and bam.. your data is no longer in your control.

What the OP is proposing is not a good idea, in a nutshell I gather the OP wants to be able to share ALL photos (so the OP does not have to "edit" the content) and then make it look like a "photo album"..

The best way is to "edit" the photos and only POST the ones you want to share to an online storage. Some of the online storage will give you Private (only you can view/edit), share with "invite" (folks need a password to access) or "open share" AKA Public share (anyone can access via web).

Some online storage sites will have a built in viewer which will open on the PC. I have a Google Drive since I have an Gmail address, if I post a PDF on the Google drive to make public anyone accessing it their PC will use Google's own PDF viewer to open it.

You can see that when you open up my PDF HERE

Something else to consider, take your photos you wish to share and put them into a document like my link above. I simply made a Word doc then created a PDF from that document.

Yes, editing takes time but if you do this you can create much more interesting photo album that folks will not have to wade through hundreds or even thousands of boring or multiple copies of one photo..

I simply would not recommend anyone opening up their own home PC as a open share to the world..

Place only the files you want to share on an online storage and all other files stay safely out of harms way on your PC..

I also do not recommend opening your computer up to the world, however with that said, as an expert in IT security recognized by numerous courts as such, I can say with no doubt in my mind that Bittorrent Sync is not as described in the previous post. It is simply not possible to accidentally open up your computer simply by using this app, it is designed to prevent what is discussed above, it is immensely safer than Google drive or any other cloud based sharing system. The risk of malware is no greater or lower than when using a cloud based solution, as when you install the PC version of Google Drive, Onedrive, Dropbox etc, you are effectively mapping a drive from your trusted PC to the Cloud and an infected PC can directly open itself up, along with any cloud services attached to it. You are also not at risk of due to theft of password files, which has happened with Dropbox and Evernote (along with many other cloud services) recently. Every share is based on a unique encryption key which only you and the person you send it to have access to. Further to that, even an intercepted key is no good to 3rd party as you still have to approve once the person connects with the unique encryption key. There are far more attack vectors on a cloud based solution than Bittorrent Sync. It is designed to be secure from government hacking (think Great Firewall of China and N S A).

Please do not make your decision based on ignorance or misinformation, please google "Bittorrent Sync", read the reviews, read the security reports, don't take my word for it, decide for yourself. Right now my opinion is, it is simply the most secure and private way to share files between your remote PC and home PC or between your home PC and a friend/family member.

I will agree it is not the easiest solution, but if you are moderately comfortable with installing programs on your PC, you can manage to use it and you simply cannot screw it up and accidentally share your whole computer to the internet.

[Gdetrailer]

mich800 wrote:

rwbradley wrote:
I have not used the My Cloud service on my WD My Cloud in a while and I forget what options there are, I will fire it up and take a look. Being in Network Security I am always wearing my "insanely paranoid hat" so storing things in someone else's cloud is not on the top of my to do list.
However just thinking outside the box, there is one other option that may not be exactly what you want, but if you want to keep all the files where you can control them, take a look at Bittorrent Sync. NOTE this is not the same thing as Bittorrent, which is used to download (and sometimes pirate) movies, music etc. Bittorrent Sync is based on the underlying technology used for the P2P file sharing that the company Bittorrent created, the similarities end there. Bittorrent Sync is a good way to share files between people without using an intermediary cloud service, it is secure, encrypted, private and involves no middle man. You simply install Bittorrent Sync on a PC, Mac, phone, tablet etc where you have your media stored (this can include a PC that had a drive mapped to a WD My Cloud drive). You than create a share ie your pictures directory, choose if it is read or read/write and share by email to another person. They install Bittorrent Sync, accept your invitation, than you confirm and presto they can see everything in the share you made and they can use whatever photo viewing tool they choose. It is worth noting that it is best to do at home on a high speed internet connection and it is a good idea to share smaller folders (not your entire picture library), as the sync process will make a copy of all the files on the other person's computer, doing this on a MIFI while on the road could easily blow your monthly bandwidth.

But for those without that background; would you recommend using a cloud based option to store non critical documents like pictures to share or have them local and run the risk of your entire home network?

"Sharing" ANYTHING directly from your PC or "home network" server is a recipe for disaster unless you really know and understand just how to lock down the share plus hide behind a fire wall.. And even then there is some risk involved.

Folks also flippantly post photos of themselves openly on the net, this IS basically giving possible identity thieves an easy way to fraudulently use your likeness on a new photo ID.. Photos of vehicles, trailers, homes and other personal property are often "lifted" by scammers to use on Craigslist and even Ebay as part of their scams..

I don't care just how supposedly "secure" a online storage site is purported to be, it only takes a small piece of malware getting on the host server and bam.. your data is no longer in your control.

What the OP is proposing is not a good idea, in a nutshell I gather the OP wants to be able to share ALL photos (so the OP does not have to "edit" the content) and then make it look like a "photo album"..

The best way is to "edit" the photos and only POST the ones you want to share to an online storage. Some of the online storage will give you Private (only you can view/edit), share with "invite" (folks need a password to access) or "open share" AKA Public share (anyone can access via web).

Some online storage sites will have a built in viewer which will open on the PC. I have a Google Drive since I have an Gmail address, if I post a PDF on the Google drive to make public anyone accessing it their PC will use Google's own PDF viewer to open it.

You can see that when you open up my PDF HERE

Something else to consider, take your photos you wish to share and put them into a document like my link above. I simply made a Word doc then created a PDF from that document.

Yes, editing takes time but if you do this you can create much more interesting photo album that folks will not have to wade through hundreds or even thousands of boring or multiple copies of one photo..

I simply would not recommend anyone opening up their own home PC as a open share to the world..

Place only the files you want to share on an online storage and all other files stay safely out of harms way on your PC..

[rwbradley]

mich800 wrote:

rwbradley wrote:
I have not used the My Cloud service on my WD My Cloud in a while and I forget what options there are, I will fire it up and take a look. Being in Network Security I am always wearing my "insanely paranoid hat" so storing things in someone else's cloud is not on the top of my to do list.
However just thinking outside the box, there is one other option that may not be exactly what you want, but if you want to keep all the files where you can control them, take a look at Bittorrent Sync. NOTE this is not the same thing as Bittorrent, which is used to download (and sometimes pirate) movies, music etc. Bittorrent Sync is based on the underlying technology used for the P2P file sharing that the company Bittorrent created, the similarities end there. Bittorrent Sync is a good way to share files between people without using an intermediary cloud service, it is secure, encrypted, private and involves no middle man. You simply install Bittorrent Sync on a PC, Mac, phone, tablet etc where you have your media stored (this can include a PC that had a drive mapped to a WD My Cloud drive). You than create a share ie your pictures directory, choose if it is read or read/write and share by email to another person. They install Bittorrent Sync, accept your invitation, than you confirm and presto they can see everything in the share you made and they can use whatever photo viewing tool they choose. It is worth noting that it is best to do at home on a high speed internet connection and it is a good idea to share smaller folders (not your entire picture library), as the sync process will make a copy of all the files on the other person's computer, doing this on a MIFI while on the road could easily blow your monthly bandwidth.

But for those without that background; would you recommend using a cloud based option to store non critical documents like pictures to share or have them local and run the risk of your entire home network?

I will admit, cloud services like Onedrive, Google drive, Dropbox and Box are solutions that anyone can easily share files. Despite frequent news about sites getting hacked or passwords stolen they are still reasonably secure. I do in fact use them from time to time but have a few rules of thumb:
1) use them for short term storage
2) do not store anything sensitive on them
3) make sure you have a strong password that you do not use for other services
4) consider setting up 2 factor authentication. This means that whenever you log into your account on a new device the first time, you will get a text on your phone with a PIN number that you have to enter after the login and password, thus you must know the password and have your phone in your possession to login.

[mich800]

rwbradley wrote:
I have not used the My Cloud service on my WD My Cloud in a while and I forget what options there are, I will fire it up and take a look. Being in Network Security I am always wearing my "insanely paranoid hat" so storing things in someone else's cloud is not on the top of my to do list.
However just thinking outside the box, there is one other option that may not be exactly what you want, but if you want to keep all the files where you can control them, take a look at Bittorrent Sync. NOTE this is not the same thing as Bittorrent, which is used to download (and sometimes pirate) movies, music etc. Bittorrent Sync is based on the underlying technology used for the P2P file sharing that the company Bittorrent created, the similarities end there. Bittorrent Sync is a good way to share files between people without using an intermediary cloud service, it is secure, encrypted, private and involves no middle man. You simply install Bittorrent Sync on a PC, Mac, phone, tablet etc where you have your media stored (this can include a PC that had a drive mapped to a WD My Cloud drive). You than create a share ie your pictures directory, choose if it is read or read/write and share by email to another person. They install Bittorrent Sync, accept your invitation, than you confirm and presto they can see everything in the share you made and they can use whatever photo viewing tool they choose. It is worth noting that it is best to do at home on a high speed internet connection and it is a good idea to share smaller folders (not your entire picture library), as the sync process will make a copy of all the files on the other person's computer, doing this on a MIFI while on the road could easily blow your monthly bandwidth.

But for those without that background; would you recommend using a cloud based option to store non critical documents like pictures to share or have them local and run the risk of your entire home network?

[rk911]

rwbradley wrote:
I think there are lots of options out there for you, from Free to Big$$$. If you and your friends and family are on the Windows platform try the free Windows Photo Gallery. There are no real editing options in the app, but for straight viewing, it is Free (as well as AD free), made by Microsoft, and reasonably intuitive for just flipping thru photos.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows-live/photo-gallery

thanks, i'll check it out.

[MrWizard]

I think you have a problem... conflict there
You are trying to combine two separate things
The access and the way they are viewed

I'm unfamiliar with the personal cloud
Can it act as an independent server, can it run it's own software programs, serve up it's own web pages?

To control how the viewer sees the pictures you need to be serving up them up like a web page

Or the viewer needs to be running specified software that access your "cloud" and displays it in that manner

[rwbradley]

I think there are lots of options out there for you, from Free to Big$$$. If you and your friends and family are on the Windows platform try the free Windows Photo Gallery. There are no real editing options in the app, but for straight viewing, it is Free (as well as AD free), made by Microsoft, and reasonably intuitive for just flipping thru photos.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows-live/photo-gallery

[rk911]

rwbradley wrote:
I have not used the My Cloud service on my WD My Cloud in a while and I forget what options there are, I will fire it up and take a look. Being in Network Security I am always wearing my "insanely paranoid hat" so storing things in someone else's cloud is not on the top of my to do list.
However just thinking outside the box, there is one other option that may not be exactly what you want, but if you want to keep all the files where you can control them, take a look at Bittorrent Sync. NOTE this is not the same thing as Bittorrent, which is used to download (and sometimes pirate) movies, music etc. Bittorrent Sync is based on the underlying technology used for the P2P file sharing that the company Bittorrent created, the similarities end there. Bittorrent Sync is a good way to share files between people without using an intermediary cloud service, it is secure, encrypted, private and involves no middle man. You simply install Bittorrent Sync on a PC, Mac, phone, tablet etc where you have your media stored (this can include a PC that had a drive mapped to a WD My Cloud drive). You than create a share ie your pictures directory, choose if it is read or read/write and share by email to another person. They install Bittorrent Sync, accept your invitation, than you confirm and presto they can see everything in the share you made and they can use whatever photo viewing tool they choose. It is worth noting that it is best to do at home on a high speed internet connection and it is a good idea to share smaller folders (not your entire picture library), as the sync process will make a copy of all the files on the other person's computer, doing this on a MIFI while on the road could easily blow your monthly bandwidth.

thanks...precisely what I was planning to do. I understand how the WD my cloud is set up and works (at least in theory since this will be my first attempt). what I am seeking is a way to display the photos to the family members who will be given permission to view them. my preference would be to have them pop up much the same way that you'd see them if you were leafing thru a photo album.

[rwbradley]

I have not used the My Cloud service on my WD My Cloud in a while and I forget what options there are, I will fire it up and take a look. Being in Network Security I am always wearing my "insanely paranoid hat" so storing things in someone else's cloud is not on the top of my to do list.
However just thinking outside the box, there is one other option that may not be exactly what you want, but if you want to keep all the files where you can control them, take a look at Bittorrent Sync. NOTE this is not the same thing as Bittorrent, which is used to download (and sometimes pirate) movies, music etc. Bittorrent Sync is based on the underlying technology used for the P2P file sharing that the company Bittorrent created, the similarities end there. Bittorrent Sync is a good way to share files between people without using an intermediary cloud service, it is secure, encrypted, private and involves no middle man. You simply install Bittorrent Sync on a PC, Mac, phone, tablet etc where you have your media stored (this can include a PC that had a drive mapped to a WD My Cloud drive). You than create a share ie your pictures directory, choose if it is read or read/write and share by email to another person. They install Bittorrent Sync, accept your invitation, than you confirm and presto they can see everything in the share you made and they can use whatever photo viewing tool they choose. It is worth noting that it is best to do at home on a high speed internet connection and it is a good idea to share smaller folders (not your entire picture library), as the sync process will make a copy of all the files on the other person's computer, doing this on a MIFI while on the road could easily blow your monthly bandwidth.

[Not_a_Clue]

Dutch_12078 wrote:

rk911 wrote:

Dutch_12078 wrote:
Have you looked at Picasa Web Albums? Google gives you 15GB free, and the web albums will integrate nicely with your local Picasa installation for updating and synchronizing. You can set access by the album or even the individual photos, private, link only, or public.

I was wanting to not upload the photos to a server but rather keep them local.

That's one of the reasons I like Picasa Web Albums. I have my photos secured locally, as well as backed up on the web where I can make them available to others. Since we move our RV frequently, using a limited bandwidth data plan, I can't easily provide web access to my own local server for others to access.

Picasa also has a nice app for viewing on your phone. I really like using the Web Albums for my blog. You can keep the access public of keep it private based on whether or not you want to share the album.