The Great Photograph Preservation Project
Like most families, we have tons of photographs (contrary to hte popular belief among my friends that I can’t be photographed). Although we all live much closer to each other geographically these days, its still not like we can stroll over and flip through this album or that at a whim. Digitizing and tagging all of them is not a problem. I’ve scanned small and large collections many times in my personal and professional life. You get into a sort of zen of it after a while. Sharing and centralization on the other hand might have been a problem. I’m not crazy about handing over high resolution images to a 3rd party host, however. Then came my PogoPlug.
If you aren’t familiar with the device, basically its a small device about the size of a notebook computer’s power adapter. You plug one end into an Ethernet port on your router and plug practically any USB storage device into it. A quick registration later and you have transformed a mundane USB storage device into a Network Attached Storage device (NAS). On top of the usual benefits of a NAS (personal access to files from any computer on your local network or remotely & securely from any internet connection), you can also easily choose to share specific folders with individuals by email address. You can even grant them upload prileges on a folder by folder basis. Finally, several files types are supported by the built in preview feature (photo gallery, in this case).
So that’s my game plan. I’m going to set a goal of scanning and adding a few pics every day, then coordinating with family members to make sure they are filed and labeled correctly. I think it’ll be fun and maybe it’ll even pry some of the rarer photos out of certain hands for inclusion in the project. 🙂
Note: The PogoPlug is certainly not limited to sharing pictures. ANY file type can be stored and shared in this way. So it will be doing HEAVY double duty in my freelance work and for backups/archiving.
Your approach sounds interesting. However, with so many places to easily upload and share family images for free online, there are probably easier solutions to get other family members involved in consolidating and sharing images. Shutterfly’s free Share Site service is pretty powerful and free, and could be easier for other family members who may not be as techno-savvy. Prints are also then pretty inexpensive and of a consistent quality.
You make a very valid point for many users, Rick. I wonder if the PogoPlug OS or web interface could be modified to still store images locally but also support one of the internet photo printing services, like Shutterfly. I recall some self-installed, self-hosted web galleries that did something like that.
your sister has all of my old photo’s and i do mean all.