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Thread: A few simple new user questions.
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This question is not answered.
Helpful answers available: 2.
Correct answers available: 1.
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Last Post:
Jul 20, 2006 3:19 AM
by: tomgleeson
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A few simple new user questions.
Posted:
Jul 12, 2006 9:24 PM PDT
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I am brand new to S3 and have gone through the FAQ and looked on the message board but am not sure of a few things. I am not a developer but a photographer who wants a safe place to store all of my image files. Here are the questions:
Is there a Control Panel for me to make URLs? (i.e. a folder called"photos 2005" "photos 2006" "documents") I wouldlike to make them private too.
How do I know what my URL is if I want to retrieve a photograph from anothercomputer on the WWW somewhere?
A program called Jungle Drive was suggested for me to use to upload my files and I have it installed and tested it and it seems to work fine but I am not sure of where to go to retrieve those files should my computer crash.
Thank you if you can help steer me in the right direction, in the mean time I will keep checking the forums.
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Posts:
102
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5/8/06
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Re: A few simple new user questions.
Posted:
Jul 13, 2006 12:12 AM PDT
in response to: Benjamin B. Janis
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Cardbox for Windows sounds ideal for this. You can have a database on your computer that indexes all your photographs (on as many criteria as you like) and contains a low-resolution copy of each photograph ("low-resolution" means whatever you want it to mean - thumbnail, or 320x200 or 640x480 or 800x600) so that you know exactly what you're talking about. Each record will also have a link to your original high-resolution picture stored on Amazon S3: the link can be of a kind that is inaccessible to anyone but you.
Basically, to do this you'd need nothing more than Cardbox plus your own Amazon Web Services / S3 account.
A few bonuses:
- If you want one of your customers to be able to download a photograph, you can give them a link to the high-res version: the link can expire automatically at a set time.
- If it's appropriate, you can even give your customers read-only access to one of the databases. This will let them view your low-resolution pictures and identify exactly the ones you want.
To have a look at this in action:
If you look at
http://www.cardbox.com then you'll see what Cardbox is all about. Get the 1-month trial licence and install the software. Then do File > Open, select the Server page, select 'database.cardbox.net' as the server, and on the right you'll see a list of databases. Double-click on the Photos file and you'll see a very simple, very small example of the sort of thing I'm talking about. [In this particular case, because the database is meant for public demonstration, the low-res images are pretty big and the links to the high-res images are public links; but they don't have to be].
I would love to set up a database format for you so that you can try using Cardbox-plus-S3 as an archive. I expect I'd have it ready in 24 hours, but I do need to ask you a few questions about how exactly you want it all to work. I'm interested in doing this because I see photographic archiving (even at the home level) as a big application of Cardbox+S3. Cardbox is aimed at end users and it's normally "roll your own", but it's always helpful to have some templates already there, so that people can get started at once and then start adapting once they have some experience. To do this, there is nothing like starting with a real user with a real need!
I've sent you all this as a private message but since I've never used the PM system before (and possibly you haven't either) I'm going to post this message in the public forum as well. I hope people aren't too irritated by this. Feel free to respond by emailing me on support@cardbox.com, or visit
http://cardbox.wordpress.com/2006/07/13/cardboxs3-photographic-archive/ and add comments to the posting there (in which case the discussion will be public and other people can join in).
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Posts:
129
Registered:
3/27/06
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Re: A few simple new user questions.
Posted:
Jul 13, 2006 4:37 AM PDT
in response to: Benjamin B. Janis
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Benjamin,
As you've probably realized by now S3 is not really a 'consumer facing' product. Its intended audience is primarily Web Service providers, ISVs and professional /amateur developers. To use it without a technical background requires a 3rd party product. Most of these are free but still lack the sophistication/simplicity than consumers expect.
One of the best, is Jungle Disk, but its 'use case' appears to be a backup and secure utility.
NS3 manager (
http://s3.amazonaws.com/ns3/home) is also quite good and may be more of use to you as it is more of 'publishing' tool and the resulting URLs required to access the uploaded files are more instinctive. For example if you upload a file "lovelysunset.jpeg" from C:\holidaysnaps\summer2006\maine to an S3 bucket called "benspictures" then the file will have an URL of "http:://s3.amazonaws.com/holidaysnaps/summer2006/maine/lovelysunset.jpeg". There is also a option to use your own domain to access the urls but again a bit of technical knowledge is required.
I use NS3 manager for publishing tasks and Jungle Disk for back ups and the like. For other tasks I use the following non-S3 apps; Google Picassa Web album for home photos and www.pickle.com for sharing home videos.
To generate temporary keys to allow public access to my S3 files for period of time I use an Excel macro !
All in all, a bit a dogs dinner and not the ideal situation but keep an eye on the forums S3, appears to be gaining traction I'm sure the killer app will appear.
The Cardbox for Windows product looks very good but with a price tag of $550 its off the radar as a 'consumer product'. I know there is a home edition but it's limited to 10000 records and has no encryption etc. If your requirements for storage are low (0 - 5GB) consider some of the many photo storage offerings on the web such as Googles Picassa Web Albums, Box.net or even Flick.
I have no association with any of the above products.
Tom
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Re: A few simple new user questions.
Posted:
Jul 13, 2006 6:31 AM PDT
in response to: tomgleeson
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Tom, you're mostly right but I hope you won't mind if I clarify a little.
1. If literally all you want to do is upload files to S3 then Cardbox offers far more than you need. But if you need to index, manage, search and so on, Cardbox makes a lot of sense. Especially since with any online solution, downloading high-resolution images is slow and costs money - better to search and browse low-res images on your own computer first.
2. Yes, the Professional Edition of Cardbox for Windows costs around $550; but you get what you pay for, in software just as you do in lenses. If you're a professional photographer and you have over 10,000 photographs to archive and you can't afford an investment of $550 in software
or
hardware, the selection of archive software (although important) is perhaps not the highest of your priorities!
3. Home Edition ($85) limitations: yes, 10,000 records, but the limit is per database and there's nothing to stop you having as many databases as you like. Yes, no encryption, but that doesn't matter much since the database (as opposed to the archival images) will be stored on your own computer anyway, and you still have encrypt-while-uploading available for the actual archival images if you want it.
A more serious impediment is that the macro design tools aren't built in to the Home Edition and you will be needing macros for this particular application. But the Home Edition will still
run
macros, so if one enterprising person with the Professional Edition sets up a database design (including macros and all) then lots of other people can frugally buy the Home Edition and use the database design he's created for them.
I'll try and get the promised example posted on our web site later today.
- Martin.
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Re: A few simple new user questions.
Posted:
Jul 13, 2006 11:21 AM PDT
in response to: "mkochanski"
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Thanks for your replies. I will consider all of the options. I was drawn to S3 because it is a good price for storage but it does seem a bit tricky to use. I will check out the stuff you suggest and make a decision. I have looked at the Picasa storage but they will only sell you 6GB of storage and I have about 40GB of photos (and growing quickly) alone that I want to store so that will not work for me.
Thanks again for your long replies giving me all of my options, I appreciate it!
Ben
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102
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Re: A few simple new user questions.
Posted:
Jul 13, 2006 2:55 PM PDT
in response to: Benjamin B. Janis
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This is just to let you know that, as promised, the sample photographic archive database is ready for anyone who wants to try it.
The page describing it is
http://www.cardbox.com/support/kb/photoarchive.htm - it gives full instructions for downloading, setting up and operating the database.
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Posts:
129
Registered:
3/27/06
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