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I haven't really tried iPhoto personally for photos taken with my phone, since I have an Android. And my girlfriend has an iPhone, but with a Windows computer,

I haven't really tried iPhoto personally for photos taken with my phone, since I have an Android. And my girlfriend has an iPhone, but with a Windows computer, so she hasn't either. Because of that, the whole iPhoto ecosystem (and photostream) have never been an option for either of us anyway. I had gone on the search for a similar service to what he describes, but with the added requirement that I want to own my cloud copy of my photos and not give up my photos to some unknown 3rd party (I'd have no problem letting Apple or Amazon keep a copy of my photos, but other than that, I'd be cautious). I found the Open Photo Project (http://theopenphotoproject.org/ http://theopenphotoproject.org/), and it seems pretty cool so far. It's an open source app to store your photos on your own S3, Dropbox, Box.net, or DreamHost account, and give you cloud backup and access, and they have an iOS app with an Android version coming soon. And they just launched Trovebox (https://trovebox.com https://trovebox.com) which is their hosted option if you don't want to install Open Photo on your own server. Trovebox already has both an iOS and Android app, and also APIs. I'm just surprised I have seen either one mentioned here.

jmathai 13y ago
Founder of OpenPhoto / Trovebox here. Correction, our iPhone app has been out for a year and our Android app for 6 months. Go get them [1][2]! Somehow this is an incredibly difficult problem to solve. Even Google with as many integrated services as they have (gmail, picasa, G+) don't look like they're going to really solve it. If there's one thing people are opinionated about, it's their photos. Some refuse to rely on the cloud. Others refuse not to have iPhoto as part of their workflow. There's about 50 of these... Our approach has been quite different. We first focused on making sure your photos are portable. Whoever you choose today to store and keep all your photos is probably not who you're going to be using in 10 years. I'm surprised that HN doesn't really zero in on this. Closed systems are just a temporary solution for a problem that's getting exponentially worse. Using Trovebox you can decide to change your storage provider at any time. We move your photos for you. Your web links, iPhone and Android apps continue to work as if nothing ever changed. We haven't even scratched at the surface of the problem though. There's organization, sharing, etc. needs which we need to continuously improve on. The parent didn't link to our source code so I'll include that here, https://github.com/photo https://github.com/photo P.S. We're funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation (big huge shoutout to them) [1] http://bit.ly/trovebox-for-android http://bit.ly/trovebox-for-android or source @ https://github.com/photo/mobile-android https://github.com/photo/mobile-android [2] http://bit.ly/trovebox-for-iphone http://bit.ly/trovebox-for-iphone or source @ https://github.com/photo/mobile-ios https://github.com/photo/mobile-ios
- masnick 13y ago
  +1 for Trovebox. I love that I can use my own domain name (http://photos.masnick.org/ http://photos.masnick.org/) and have Trovebox use my own S3 account for storage. I haven't had a chance to hack on the source code myself yet, but you actually can contribute to the Trovebox frontend on GitHub (http://github.com/photo/frontend http://github.com/photo/frontend). I've filed a few issues here and fixes were in production on trovebox.com within a few days!
- subpixel 13y ago
  Am I overlooking a setting, or does the Trovebox iPhone app only allow me to take square photos, and force me to crop pre-existing photos I want to upload? I definitely hope not - I'd like to be able to make that call myself.
  - jmathai 13y ago
    The app doesn't do any cropping (unless maybe you apply filters, I have to check on that). The home screen on the app shows square cropped photos and the Gallery view does a little bit of cropping as well on display. But the photos themselves are not cropped. A look at the web version shows this a bit more clearly (for example, see the panoramas) -- https://current.trovebox.com/photos/list https://current.trovebox.com/photos/list Valid point though. We don't want the app confusing people into thinking it's cropping. We're big on retaining the original, unmodified.
    - subpixel 13y ago
      This is not my experience. The app only takes square photos, and forces you to crop existing photos if you select them from the camera roll one at a time, regardless of whether you select a filter. Unless I'm missing a setting, which I've looked for. The uploaded photos viewed on the web are indeed cropped/square. EDIT: I see there is a separate upload/sync menu item, and that allows you to batch upload uncropped photos. However, if I want photos taken on my phone to be auto-uploaded to Trovebox, they need to be taken through the app, which forces me to take a square picture. I'd respectfully request that you make cropping an option when taking a photo, not the rule, so I don't need to take photos in one app and upload them manually with another. Better yet, let me tell the app to just incrementally/periodically upload all the photos I take on my phone (ala Everpix)

jmathai 13y ago

Founder of OpenPhoto / Trovebox here. Correction, our iPhone app has been out for a year and our Android app for 6 months. Go get them [1][2]! Somehow this is an incredibly difficult problem to solve. Even Google with as many integrated services as they have (gmail, picasa, G+) don't look like they're going to really solve it. If there's one thing people are opinionated about, it's their photos. Some refuse to rely on the cloud. Others refuse not to have iPhoto as part of their workflow. There's about 50 of these... Our approach has been quite different. We first focused on making sure your photos are portable. Whoever you choose today to store and keep all your photos is probably not who you're going to be using in 10 years. I'm surprised that HN doesn't really zero in on this. Closed systems are just a temporary solution for a problem that's getting exponentially worse. Using Trovebox you can decide to change your storage provider at any time. We move your photos for you. Your web links, iPhone and Android apps continue to work as if nothing ever changed. We haven't even scratched at the surface of the problem though. There's organization, sharing, etc. needs which we need to continuously improve on. The parent didn't link to our source code so I'll include that here, https://github.com/photo https://github.com/photo P.S. We're funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation (big huge shoutout to them) [1] http://bit.ly/trovebox-for-android http://bit.ly/trovebox-for-android or source @ https://github.com/photo/mobile-android https://github.com/photo/mobile-android [2] http://bit.ly/trovebox-for-iphone http://bit.ly/trovebox-for-iphone or source @ https://github.com/photo/mobile-ios https://github.com/photo/mobile-ios

masnick 13y ago
+1 for Trovebox. I love that I can use my own domain name (http://photos.masnick.org/ http://photos.masnick.org/) and have Trovebox use my own S3 account for storage. I haven't had a chance to hack on the source code myself yet, but you actually can contribute to the Trovebox frontend on GitHub (http://github.com/photo/frontend http://github.com/photo/frontend). I've filed a few issues here and fixes were in production on trovebox.com within a few days!
subpixel 13y ago
Am I overlooking a setting, or does the Trovebox iPhone app only allow me to take square photos, and force me to crop pre-existing photos I want to upload? I definitely hope not - I'd like to be able to make that call myself.
- jmathai 13y ago
  The app doesn't do any cropping (unless maybe you apply filters, I have to check on that). The home screen on the app shows square cropped photos and the Gallery view does a little bit of cropping as well on display. But the photos themselves are not cropped. A look at the web version shows this a bit more clearly (for example, see the panoramas) -- https://current.trovebox.com/photos/list https://current.trovebox.com/photos/list Valid point though. We don't want the app confusing people into thinking it's cropping. We're big on retaining the original, unmodified.
  - subpixel 13y ago
    This is not my experience. The app only takes square photos, and forces you to crop existing photos if you select them from the camera roll one at a time, regardless of whether you select a filter. Unless I'm missing a setting, which I've looked for. The uploaded photos viewed on the web are indeed cropped/square. EDIT: I see there is a separate upload/sync menu item, and that allows you to batch upload uncropped photos. However, if I want photos taken on my phone to be auto-uploaded to Trovebox, they need to be taken through the app, which forces me to take a square picture. I'd respectfully request that you make cropping an option when taking a photo, not the rule, so I don't need to take photos in one app and upload them manually with another. Better yet, let me tell the app to just incrementally/periodically upload all the photos I take on my phone (ala Everpix)