We're giving free unlimited lifetime accounts to victims of Hurricane Sandy
openphoto.me
openphoto.me
Edit: Also pretty sure this is a little to late for victims of hurricane sandy who lost thier computers.
Either way, looks like a nice gesture, but one that's ultimately meaningless since I doubt a lot of the victims care about your service. It's rather useless compared to actual help.
> It's rather useless compared to actual help.
Arguments against helping in ways that have specific impact (providing food, assisting with relocation, etc) are a straw man. It's not better to do nothing than something of small value.
I have plenty of photo albums in my closet and if those somehow got lost or destroyed then I'd be devastated (more than any other physical object in my house).
> If you're still charging them $.01 a year, that's still charging them something. You ought to fix that.
Really? If we get more feedback like that then we're happy to change or give refunds. We're set up for subscriptions so it's the easiest way to do address verification. If a penny a year is too much, we'll gladly fix it.
My argument isn't to do nothing - again, this looks like a nice gesture - but that you should do more. Maybe take all your earnings for a month and donate them to help the victims. You can evidently afford to give out almost-free accounts, can you do anything better?
> I have plenty of photo albums in my closet and if those somehow got lost or destroyed then I'd be devastated (more than any other physical object in my house).
Then scan them and throw them on Dropbox. Your service actively costs the victims money, Dropbox does not, so which helps more?
> Really? If we get more feedback like that then we're happy to change or give refunds. We're set up for subscriptions so it's the easiest way to do address verification. If a penny a year is too much, we'll gladly fix it.
These are people who are already financially strained by the hurricane. They may not even have a penny anymore. Did you consider this?
Difficult question to answer as a company. As a company we felt a free account was a good start. We are also a startup.
Personally supporting the cause is another story but they're separate.
> Then scan them and throw them on Dropbox. Your service actively costs the victims money, Dropbox does not, so which helps more?
In case you're unfamiliar with the project it's an open source photo platform. We support Dropbox (and Box.com, S3, DreamObjects, CX, etc) as the place your photos get stored.
Dropbox isn't really free, for photo backup anyway. You'll hit your limits pretty quickly.
> These are people who are already financially strained by the hurricane. They may not even have a penny anymore. Did you consider this?
I have not. But it's a valid point. The subsequent penny each year could be avoided but we're doing it to verify that the person does live in an affected area. I appreciate you bringing this up and we'll see what options we have.
Apparently our database of zip codes isn't big enough though and we're adding them as they arrive.
Why should they do more? They already open source a lot of their software (https://github.com/photo) and they are giving free lifetime accounts. Should they also send blankets? Or is that not enough, pillows too (Emmanuel Levinas would take your side).
The penny is their verification method (this has issues I will be emailing them about).
Yes they are seeking some publicity for it, but I'd say that's a fair trade (their site has links to a Scoble video and a Techcrunch writeup so this isn't exactly how they are launching).
I'm not a user of their product yet, but since I am in an affected area (and evaluating options for storing baby photos) I might give it a whirl.
Email support@openphoto.me with issues and we'll get them sorted out.
Also the argument that its a token effort that doesn't really practically help people can also be applied your downer comment. Complaining about this offer isn't helping the victims either.
By decoupling the application from the photo storage you essentially increase the options you have for keeping your photos for a longer time.
If Yahoo! shuts down Flickr you have to figure out what to do. Download a zip file of a few thousand photos? Then what? Upload them somewhere else?
Our approach is multi-fold (hence us working on the messaging).
If Dropbox shuts down or increases their price or you find someone else you like better then you can use our tools to migrate your photos from Dropbox to BetterDropbox while retaining albums, tags, comments, etc. Your mobile apps will continue to work how they always have. it's 100% transparent for you.
If we shut down you can still have the same benefits. Everything we've done has always been open source[1]. That important because anyone can take the torch and run with it. Not so if Flickr dies.
So as far as we can tell, this is the most effective way (yet) to ensure you don't lose your photos in the long run.
It sounds like your target audience is people who don't ever put their photos in one central location under their control (say, an iPhoto library), don't back up that location, and care a lot about preserving not just their photos but the online comments received on those photos?
When you say "Your mobile apps will continue to work how they always have. it's 100% transparent for you" - Um, what problem is it that you're solving here? What sort of "mobile apps" are you expecting would fail when dropbox or flickr shuts down?
I believe it's an OR, not an AND. If you don't have one spot where you keep all your photos then we help you do that. Not sure if you're married or not but my wife's photos are not on my Mac and not in my iPhoto.
> Um, what problem is it that you're solving here? What sort of "mobile apps" are you expecting would fail when dropbox or flickr shuts down?
Your Flickr or Dropbox app.
(Note that I'm not doubting your sincerity, just your motivation.)
The motivation was that it seemed to be a good fit. Hopefully we get a lot of users taking us up on the offer and hopefully we get some paying users as well.
This is part of an exercise in seeing how we could effect change for the overall good of society. Sounds altruistic, sure. But we're funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation, not a bunch of VCs looking to make a buck[2].
[2] Not that there's anything wrong with that