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Ask HN: How do you privately share pictures and video with family and friends?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you privately share pictures and video with family and friends?

#51

Post by aacook »

aheckler wrote: post #48

We use a private Facebook group, since most of our older relatives are on FB already. There are some privacy concerns, but frankly, the ease-of-use for us and our relatives just outweighs that. For relatives who don't have Internet access (just one at the moment), we use NanaGram.co for sending a monthly batch of photos by mail.

Are some of your older relatives not on FB? I've been looking at a way to subscribe people to a digital delivery of photos — we have a loose version of this via a weekly Saturday morning email you can subscribe yourself to (to see what siblings are uploading). It seems like it'd be nice to subscribe additional recipients to emails like these (weekly, monthly) maybe with a way to order their own prints. Do you think that's something you'd sign someone up for?

Re: Ask HN: How do you privately share pictures and video with family and friends?

#53

Post by aacook »

yarinr wrote: post #18

Google Photos with shared albums, works great for my family & friends. It used to be impossible for everyone to get all the photos after a vacation / trip / event. Now we just create a shared album and everyone upload everything. Edit: WhatsApp biggest flaw is the aggressive compression. It takes pictures down to an unacceptable qualify.

Didn't know that about WhatsApp. How far down to they downsize? I've been testing the new Twilio/WhatsApp integration and when I last checked like 6 months ago it looked like the images were full resolution.

Re: Ask HN: How do you privately share pictures and video with family and friends?

#54

Post by aacook »

dyeje wrote: post #31

SMS. Ruins the quality but they don't know or care. I'll ask them to email it to me if I really need the high res.

Yes, they're just good enough to print on a 4x6. If you send 1-3 photos at a time, the resolution tends to be better. If the sender is on an economy cell carrier, they also tend to be more aggressive with downsizing. iCloud sharing albums are decent but there's an upload lag.

Re: Ask HN: How do you privately share pictures and video with family and friends?

#55

Post by stevenicr »

jobigoud wrote: post #40
stevenicr wrote: post #37

I burn pics to cds and hand them over in person. It's nice to also be giving them a backup imho. I used to use firefox send but that's gone now I think. I have used a self hosted buddypress - upload and only share with "friends" and with that user account the only "friends" are one or two people. I've considered trying to deploy a buddypress with added plugins to harden it and offer it as a SaaS hosting for family ci…

Do you mean USB drives? Who has CD drives anymore?

I try to only use usb drives if they are brand new, and have never been inserted into another system.

I actually do mean burn CDs / DVDs.. I know they are not the best backup medium.. but they are better than trusting 'the cloud' imho.

You are right that more and more systems are coming without cd / dvd drives... I have a couple of cd readers (that I think are also burners) that attach via USB - I happily lend or give one away and get another, they are like $25... to use for importing and accessing hard media backups which can be priceless, with bonus privacy.

Re: Ask HN: How do you privately share pictures and video with family and friends?

#56

Post by aheckler »

aacook wrote: post #51
aheckler wrote: post #48

We use a private Facebook group, since most of our older relatives are on FB already. There are some privacy concerns, but frankly, the ease-of-use for us and our relatives just outweighs that. For relatives who don't have Internet access (just one at the moment), we use NanaGram.co for sending a monthly batch of photos by mail.

Are some of your older relatives not on FB? I've been looking at a way to subscribe people to a digital delivery of photos — we have a loose version of this via a weekly Saturday morning email you can subscribe yourself to (to see what siblings are uploading). It seems like it'd be nice to subscribe additional recipients to emails like these (weekly, monthly) maybe with a way to order their own prints. Do you think t…

Sorry, missed this comment somehow!

> Are some of your older relatives not on FB?

Just one right now: my elderly grandfather who's 90-something now and losing his eyesight. He's the one we use NanaGram for. Digital delivery would not really work for him, since he doesn't own a computer.

For relatives that are on FB, that's how they get their photos. They don't request prints too often, but when they do, my wife usually uses Nations Photo Lab.

Re: Ask HN: How do you privately share pictures and video with family and friends?

#57

Post by yarinr »

aacook wrote: post #53
yarinr wrote: post #18

Google Photos with shared albums, works great for my family & friends. It used to be impossible for everyone to get all the photos after a vacation / trip / event. Now we just create a shared album and everyone upload everything. Edit: WhatsApp biggest flaw is the aggressive compression. It takes pictures down to an unacceptable qualify.

Didn't know that about WhatsApp. How far down to they downsize? I've been testing the new Twilio/WhatsApp integration and when I last checked like 6 months ago it looked like the images were full resolution.

Not sure if it answers you question, but WhatsApp takes most full-size photos down to 200-250kb~

Re: Ask HN: How do you privately share pictures and video with family and friends?

#58

Post by yarinr »

harshitaneja wrote: post #43
yarinr wrote: post #18

Google Photos with shared albums, works great for my family & friends. It used to be impossible for everyone to get all the photos after a vacation / trip / event. Now we just create a shared album and everyone upload everything. Edit: WhatsApp biggest flaw is the aggressive compression. It takes pictures down to an unacceptable qualify.

You can attach images as documents in whatsapp in which case it would just send the image unaltered.

That's correct. I use it occasionally, but it's pretty inconvenient for more than a single photo. Also, since we're talking about sharing, this requires 'educating' the people you're sharing with.
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