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Hi, 1) At the moment we only support jpg and png. So a copy of your 1000s of avg 10MB (max worst case global image size average, probably lower). Which is fine

by supo 14y ago

Hi, 1) At the moment we only support jpg and png. So a copy of your 1000s of avg 10MB (max worst case global image size average, probably lower). Which is fine. 2+3) Our motivation with single tier was simplicity. Simplicity of the homepage, simplicity of thinking while you read something before you hit that 'Try' button.. I am not sure if a general user thinks about our margins and I can be wrong, but I think we should try to match the value he gets + position ourselves regarding to competition. If somebody cares about margins the S3 prices are a pretty good general storage reference point ;-) To be completely transparent, we currently think that with an unlimited account we shouldn't get much more than ~40GB of jpegs from a user over his lifetime ON AVERAGE. Once this is amortized across big enough number of users I doubt it will get much more than that. zenfolio.com has been around for many many years and they have an unlimited account for $50/year and cater to professionals with huge files (think a wedding photographer who uploads couple GBs each other weekend). Our average target user is not a pro (we are not aspiring to be a portfolio website at the moment) but has photography as a hobby and wants a clean no-bulshit way to upload and share his photos across online and offline personas. 4) All server side, with aggressive caching and on-the-fly scaling. No scaling on the client. 5) Just a jpeg and png to simplify the pipeline in MVP, if we see an interest in other formats we will investigate. Would you like to see a support for jpeg2000? For upload or also for serving? At the moment, the browser support seems still weak.

e12e 14y ago
Thanks for your clear answers :-) I absolutely see the simplicity argument. Personally I'm not sure if 8/month is too high though. I'll have to think about it -- with the (very swift) scaling on the server, I see more what you offer -- not sure if you really fit my use case though. But you're much nicer IMNHO than flickr/picasa. I recently priced some storage and found that Amazon/Rackspace are at around 10 cents/GB/Month (without transfer...) and a cheap dedicated server would end up around 3 cents/GB/Month (with limited transfer -- free in, 5000GB/Month out) -- but this is for ~2TB of usable storage. With overhead (all kinds, people, hosting, transfer) -- I suspect it's not very realistic (or rather, attractive) to compete with Amazon on price. I certainly don't need 2TB "in the cloud" right now... and can't quite justify paying for it... yet ;-) As for formats, I see a use for jpeg2000/webp (yeah, looks like jpeg2000 is pretty much dead for web...) - and for DNG. But DNG would (for now) be for archival storage. Which may or may not be a use case you want to cover.
- supo 14y ago
  Thanks for the compliment :) The focus of the service has to do with the focus of the interface, that is why community based services (500px, flickr, social networks as such) will always have a polluted interface (comment widgets, buttons etc) because they need to generate engagement around user content. I could be wrong here about the extent to which this pollution actually matters for users. With dofsome we are trying to separate the photo presentation into a stand-alone service and allow the user to use their social services as distribution channels for their content. Yeah, no point in competing with S3, better focus on a product built on top of it ;-) At the moment I am thinking about just doing imports from online backup solutions and really focus on the presentation. For a viable storage MVP you definitely need device specific uploaders..
  - e12e 14y ago
    The reason I mention DNG is because it can be used as "superset" archiving format. It should be feasible to accept pretty much any kind of RAW in, archive a copy of the raw in the DNG (or just trust the conversion) -- and so let the users have an original on your servers. Again, not sure if you want to be a backup/archive for images, or just a point of publication (for me that is all that jpeg/png will ever be -- and it's not really something I am interested in paying for -- I would still have to deal with the headache of "publishing" from my Digital Negatives -- and maintaining that collection). As camera technology continue to improve and storage continue dropping in price (at least on the camera end, flash cards etc) I suspect more and more low end cameras will support some form of DNG-format.
vhf 14y ago
Good questions and great answers ! About 5), (and possibly last paragraph of 2+3)), I would like to see all RAW files supported. You mentionned DNG, I guess you're a Nikon user. I'm not. And I'm right your target user : (I'm Swiss,) not a pro, not looking for an on-line portfolio, but former photographer now doing it as a hobby. When not shooting film I only shoot RAW, and mine are .cr2, not .dng. Long-term archiving of my digital pictures (be it png, jpg, cr2, png, scanner raw format) has been a concern for quite a long time. I have been a paying flickr user for a few years now but it doesn't fit my needs as I cannot store there my RAW files. I would definately pay 8$/m to have a safe backup somewhere, and your display / scaling / serving service would be a huge +. :)

by supo 14y ago

e12e 14y ago

Thanks for your clear answers :-) I absolutely see the simplicity argument. Personally I'm not sure if 8/month is too high though. I'll have to think about it -- with the (very swift) scaling on the server, I see more what you offer -- not sure if you really fit my use case though. But you're much nicer IMNHO than flickr/picasa. I recently priced some storage and found that Amazon/Rackspace are at around 10 cents/GB/Month (without transfer...) and a cheap dedicated server would end up around 3 cents/GB/Month (with limited transfer -- free in, 5000GB/Month out) -- but this is for ~2TB of usable storage. With overhead (all kinds, people, hosting, transfer) -- I suspect it's not very realistic (or rather, attractive) to compete with Amazon on price. I certainly don't need 2TB "in the cloud" right now... and can't quite justify paying for it... yet ;-) As for formats, I see a use for jpeg2000/webp (yeah, looks like jpeg2000 is pretty much dead for web...) - and for DNG. But DNG would (for now) be for archival storage. Which may or may not be a use case you want to cover.

supo 14y ago
Thanks for the compliment :) The focus of the service has to do with the focus of the interface, that is why community based services (500px, flickr, social networks as such) will always have a polluted interface (comment widgets, buttons etc) because they need to generate engagement around user content. I could be wrong here about the extent to which this pollution actually matters for users. With dofsome we are trying to separate the photo presentation into a stand-alone service and allow the user to use their social services as distribution channels for their content. Yeah, no point in competing with S3, better focus on a product built on top of it ;-) At the moment I am thinking about just doing imports from online backup solutions and really focus on the presentation. For a viable storage MVP you definitely need device specific uploaders..
- e12e 14y ago
  The reason I mention DNG is because it can be used as "superset" archiving format. It should be feasible to accept pretty much any kind of RAW in, archive a copy of the raw in the DNG (or just trust the conversion) -- and so let the users have an original on your servers. Again, not sure if you want to be a backup/archive for images, or just a point of publication (for me that is all that jpeg/png will ever be -- and it's not really something I am interested in paying for -- I would still have to deal with the headache of "publishing" from my Digital Negatives -- and maintaining that collection). As camera technology continue to improve and storage continue dropping in price (at least on the camera end, flash cards etc) I suspect more and more low end cameras will support some form of DNG-format.

vhf 14y ago

Good questions and great answers ! About 5), (and possibly last paragraph of 2+3)), I would like to see all RAW files supported. You mentionned DNG, I guess you're a Nikon user. I'm not. And I'm right your target user : (I'm Swiss,) not a pro, not looking for an on-line portfolio, but former photographer now doing it as a hobby. When not shooting film I only shoot RAW, and mine are .cr2, not .dng. Long-term archiving of my digital pictures (be it png, jpg, cr2, png, scanner raw format) has been a concern for quite a long time. I have been a paying flickr user for a few years now but it doesn't fit my needs as I cannot store there my RAW files. I would definately pay 8$/m to have a safe backup somewhere, and your display / scaling / serving service would be a huge +. :)