Digital Chaos Control

Tag: sync

  • Photo Sharing

    CameraIn this age of digital photography, we generate tons of photos – our families, pets, vacations, school field trips, concerts, parties; the list goes on and on. The old days of getting our photos printed and into binders and scrapbooks are largely gone. It used to be fun to pull out the old photo albums and sit down with family and friends to laugh at crazy poses and faces, and to experience a shared emotion and memory of those who have passed on.

    We still have our photo albums, but they’re on our computers. And fortunately, there’s lot of ways to share our digital photo albums.

    The closest things that we have to our old binders that we can sit down and share are our portable devices – our smart phones, tablets, and laptops. It is possible to duplicate your entire photo library on a portable device if you have enough storage, but for most of us, there are just too many photos to fit. We have to manage our photo albums on our devices.

    When I travel to visit family, I go through my computer photo albums, and I pick which albums I want to bring with me. The next step to to sync those albums with my device. There are several ways to do this:

    1. Copy files – You can copy the files from the albums that you choose to your devices through USB, or to a memory card or flash drive that you move to the portable device. This is an easy option if you’re comfortable with computers and peripheral devices.

    2. USB Sync – You can use software to sync specific albums to your device. If you connect your iPhone or ipad, for example, through USB, you can use iTunes to select and sync albums. This is a great option if you use Apple devices and you’re familiar with iTunes.

    3. Cloud Sync – You can use a cloud sync service such as Dropbox or Sugar Sync to select and sync specific photo albums. These cloud services are very easy to use. You’ll have to have the software installed on both your computer and your portable device.

    4. Cloud Photo Sharing – You can use a cloud photo sharing service such as Flickr or Shutterfly to upload and share specific photo albums. Once you’ve created an account on Flickr, you can connect with it through iPhoto or Windows Live Photo Gallery and easily upload photos. You can install a Flickr app on your portable device and you’ll be able to view your albums and display slide shows whenever you have internet connectivity. You can also share the link with friends and family.

    5. Social Networks – You can use a social network such as Facebook or Google+ to upload and share specific photo albums. Your photos on Facebook won’t be full resolution, but this is a great option to show photos if you’re comfortable with Facebook and want to share only with your Facebook friends. You can also tag people in your photos.

    If you need help organizing and tagging photos, syncing with your devices, and/or setting up cloud services, Digital Chaos Control can help! Contact us today.

  • Do You Need a Cloud Service?

    Do You Need a Cloud Service?

    Cloud Storage

    You may have heard of “The Cloud”. It’s a term that basically just means Internet storage.

    Your email, for example, is a cloud service. Your email is stored on an email server, and delivered to your device(s) over the Internet. If your PC dies, or you lose your laptop, your email goes on accumulating on the server, and you can download all of the new email as well as all of the previous email, when you get back on-line.

    So that’s pretty convenient, right? Why not offer a service that does that for all of your documents, and your photos too? That way you get backup and easy retrieval when you need it. Hey, maybe you can even sync all of that data on your desktop, your laptop, and your iPad too. Wouldn’t that be cool?

    Happily, there are many cloud back-up services available that will do just that. They will automatically backup your designated data and sync that data with your other devices.

    So which cloud service to use?

    The first step in choosing a cloud service is to determine is how much storage you need. If you only want to store your important documents then a free service will be fine for you, but if you have tons of music files that you ripped from your CDs and also thousands of digital photos, then you may need a good deal of storage.

    You also want a service with the right features for you. For example, you may want to put everything in one designated folder and have it automatically backed up, or you may want a service that can sync your existing folder structure. And the software needs to be compatible with all of your devices.

    Here’s a summary of some of the cloud services. All of these services support Mac, PC, and iOS, and all except iCloud support Android.

     

    iCloudiCloud:

    Storage: 5GB free; $9.99/month for 1TB

    Features: automatic backup of iPhone and iPad; automatic sync of calendars, notes, and contacts; automatic sync of all content stored on iCloud Drive; automatic sync of all photos stored in iCloud Photo Library

     

    Google Drive Cloud StorageGoogle Drive:

    Storage: 15GB free; $9.99/month for 1TB

    Features: Automatic sync of all content stored on Google Drive; automatic upload for mobile photos

     

    Microsoft OneDrive Cloud StorageMicrosoft OneDrive:

    Storage: 5GB free, $1.99/month for 50GB; $6.99/month for 1TB of personal storage when subscribing to Office 365

    Features: Automatic sync of all content stored on OneDrive; automatic upload for mobile photos

     

    Dropbox Cloud StorageDropbox:

    Storage: 2GB free; $9.99/month for 1TB

    Features: Automatic sync of all content stored in the Dropbox folder; automatic upload for mobile photos

     

     

    SugarSync Cloud StorageSugarSync:

    Storage: 5GB free; $9.99/month for 250GB

    Features: Automatic sync of all content in designated folders; automatic upload for mobile photos

     

     

    There are also dedicated services for music and photos if you don’t want to pay for an all-in-one service. I’ll be writing about those services in an upcoming post, so check back soon!

    Need help with cloud services? Contact me.