Gadgetory

I spent a good portion of my life trying to figure out the best way to store my photos it all started with shoeboxes and then I moved to hard drives and then it all went to the cloud now we're lucky enough to live in a time where there's so many options when it comes to storing our photos online but on the other hand some of the options out there how do you pick the right one I'm going to give you some advice on choosing the right cloud photo storage solution that works for you first off you want to think long term the reason so many companies offer you free storage for your photos is because they know how difficult it can be to switch services down the line so you want to think about a company that's gonna be around for the next 10 20 50 years but if this is gonna be my main backup for a lifetime of photos I don't trust the young guys won't go under in the next 10 years or be sold to another company so that leaves us with the big boys you got Google Apple Amazon Microsoft Yahoo and to some extent Dropbox though I have a hard time believing they won't get snatched up eventually let's boot out Apple and Amazon right off the bat iCloud only works with Apple devices and it doesn't handle video so boo and then Amazon's Cloud Drive is just too basic so let's go through the rest Google's photo service is called Google+ photos you get 15 gigs of free storage though you have to share those gigabytes with your gmail and your google drive it also works with your browser or you can auto upload from the Android or iOS app now if you need more storage you can pay for it up to 16 terabytes downside is is tied to google plus Google's answer to Facebook you can set photos to private but ultimately Google is dangling the service out there to get people to use their social network in share photos more people more photos more stuff to sell ads around which is really what Google is all about for something a little more cut-and-dry you can try Microsoft onedrive formerly Microsoft SkyDrive it works with Android and iOS and also windows and windows phone comes with 15 gigs of free storage plus you can buy more it's a clean layout includes detailed information on your photos include the exif data my only worry here is as the recent name change implies is that I don't feel Microsoft is totally I hang out I mean Microsoft as a company is going to be around a long time but I feel like maybe this time next year Microsoft will call this thing super xbox live photos or something else I mean it's still a great solid option especially if your Windows user you have a Windows Phone but if you're not there's some other options to explore next up dropbox almost identical to one drive it's an online file locker with a very clean look and apps for every platform including windows they have a mobile app called carousel that does an excellent job of letting you quickly browse through your photo collection with a timeline bar at the bottom of the app the downside here is that you only get five gigs of free storage but we have to start paying unlike Microsoft or Google online storage is drop boxes entire business and they don't make up the difference on online advertising finally there's flickr by yahoo and full disclosure I've used flickr for years so I'm a little biased it works on every platform you can windows phone there are useful privacy controls is a huge community of users and the best part is there's one terabyte of free storage you'll get some ads but a full terabyte should be enough to back up your average photo library also video support is limited to one gigabyte per video so you have to back up longer clips to youtube or do the world a favor and shoot shorter vacation videos so there you go that's my best advice for where to go to store your photos in the clouds