

Image hosting that doesn't suck - just drag and drop - chrisbroadfoot
http://min.us/

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thingie
Is there any other way to drop a picture? Even though drag & drop seems to be
the easiest and most comfortable way, for me, it is not :-) I'd have to run
some kind of file manager, find the directory, image, carefully position both
file manager window and the browser, do the job and then put everything back.
Surprisingly hard, but that's a real setup that I have (and many people I know
too).

~~~
cing
Are you saying that you'd like to do image hosting from command line? I think
you might be opposite to the target audience of this site.

~~~
chrisbroadfoot
That _would_ be cool, though.

Personally, I either want to upload stuff from Finder, or upload stuff from
the command line.

What I _hate_ doing is browsing to an image from a file picker.

Something like <http://sprunge.us/> for images would be great!

~~~
brlewis
You can use the built-in photo sharing on Dropbox, or use Dropbox integration
with <http://ourdoings.com/>

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evgeny0
Love it! Clean, so simple it requires almost no instructions and it JUST
WORKS. I also love the fact that I don't have to wait for the current image
(or batch) to finish uploading and can immediately drag more files in.

(Actually, that last feature made me feel stupid for a moment: I wondered how
images seemed to be uploaded so "instantly" and only after testing it on a
large image file did I realise that you're just displaying the local image!)

~~~
carlhu
This is Carl (Minus cofounder). Exactly, Evgeny: When you drop an image into
Minus, we immediately show the local image to offer the user immediate
usability. The image is uploaded in the background. We'll add indicators to
make this more obvious. Thanks for the feedback!

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pilif
The cynical side of me makes me think that this will go down the road of all
other image hosting services that didn't suck: To cover the immense bandwidth
costs, sooner or later, it will have to suck like everybody else.

At that point, a new service that "doesn't suck" will pop up.

~~~
sebastianavina
actually, Imgur.com was announced with exactly the same title at reddit some
time ago...

edit: found it
[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to_reddit_i_created_an_image_hosting/)

~~~
pilif
that's what I had in mind, but I didn't know whether imgur was known here.

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jrnkntl
Works as advertised! Minimal and clean.

I just tried to copy the url of my 3.1mb image into my browser but it hanged;
turns out you use a base64 encoded string of the whole image to display it
like:

data:image/png;base64,... etc

Was this technically necessary? I guess so, but since you show the direct link
underneath it, why not replace it with that one?

~~~
mindotus
Thanks for the feedback/comment :) We display the image that way so you are
able to Preview it while the image uploads to our server in the backend. Once
it finishes however you refresh and will see the images loaded from our
server.

We also convert larger images into shrunken sizes for the gallery so it can be
viewed without too much lag, but the full size image will still be available
via the "Link to Image" or "Download all as Zip" function :)

John

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BTBurke
Works great, but when I tested it out as an anonymous user, then decided to
sign up, it didn't import the gallery I just made.

~~~
carlhu
Our thinking was that the galleries people create anonymously are different
than the galleries people want to associate their user with, so we make sure
to make those two histories completely separate. Any ideas on how we can make
this more clear from a UX design perspective?

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simzen85
Photos are best viewed on dark background (e.g Flickriver), can you provide
some templates and a quick way to switch between them ?

Also, could we have slideshow for playback where nothing will be displayed
except the photos themselves ?

~~~
mindotus
Thanks, both features we have on our to-do list already, be sure to vote them
up in <http://feedback.min.us> , we're doing our best to prioritize them.

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yatsyk
Correct me if I'm wrong but it's impossible to cover S3 costs with ads
displayed near pictures. According to FAQ you are going to leave picture
unlimited time (and paying for space in S3) even if no one is visiting page
with picture.

~~~
mindotus
Thanks for bringing that up. We are exploring many monetization strategies and
business models but we will definitely keep that in mind.

We may implement few different models but in the end our mission is to keep
Minus free, simple and minimal in making sharing easy and fast :)

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synnik
There are other services with drag/drop to upload your photos. The one I use
even works dragging directly from Picasa, so I don't even have to touch my own
file system.

From what I can tell, min.us has no other features, so I'm very confused as to
why this "doesn't suck". It seems to be a non-unique UI interface to plain old
photo sharing.

~~~
chrisbroadfoot
If you're confused as to why this "doesn't suck", then please tell me why it
sucks!

Please note that I didn't make the claim that it's amazing or ground-breaking.
:)

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emzo
This is really nice and clean. Personally, I think it's a bad name though.
Minus? I appreciate it does "emphasize simplicity and minimalism", but it's
got nothing at all to do with images. Also, it would be even better if you
could include some form of federated login so I don't have to sign up.

~~~
carlhu
This is Carl, cofounder of Minus. Thank you for the suggestions. We are
looking into adding OpenID and Google Login soon. In the mean time, we
designed Minus in the hope that you can use Minus effectively without having
to sign up at all!

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nickbarnwell
This is spurred more by your username than anything else, but how is it
pronounced? Minus, or "Min dot us"?

~~~
mindotus
Pronounced Minus. Sorry, we've been having to use "mindotus" as username on
twitter,facebook etc.. as minus is taken. Still trying to get twitter to
release Minus w/o any luck :\

~~~
abraham
If you get a US tradmark number Twitter should release it in short order.

~~~
Raphael
Can you trademark an existing word?

~~~
abraham
You can trademark anything you want. It just might not hold up if it gets
challenged.

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samratjp
And I thought Dropbox photos folder was the lazy man's photo hosting thus
far... +1 for the minus team!

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redthrowaway
I'd really like to be able to drag and drop images from other tabs, as saving
to disk is a pain in the ass. I suspect, however, that that's a Chrome issue,
not a minus issue. Still, great site!

~~~
antimatter15
It's actually possible to drag and drop images from other tabs, but there's
some weird almost unavoidable issues. Google Docs's presentation app allows
you to drag and drop images.

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quizbiz
As a photographer, I love that you guys are allowing for the high res uploads.
I'm also a fan of the minimalist feel. The animations are very cool but they
need to be smoother. :)

~~~
mindotus
Thanks :) We're definitely working on optimizing things for the user end and
keeping it minimal/simple is our top priority. If anyone can contribute in
terms of optimizing the frontend loading/speed for "larger images" feel free
to drop me at john@min.us

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jwtanner
Excellent design. Big question: how will they make money?

~~~
mindotus
We have few business models in mind and monetization strategies. We will
explore them as time goes on very carefully, but right now our goal is to make
Minus better and increase compatibility for mobile platforms and more such as
allowing documents and other filetypes.

John

~~~
jwtanner
Do any of your business plans involve putting ads on your fantastically
minimal design? I'm visualizing min.us transforming into yfrog.com.

~~~
mindotus
We have few ideas that shall not look like yfrog ;)

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jonpaul
This looks similar to <http://dropmocks.com> same people with new domain?

~~~
chrisbroadfoot
See below. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1929010> (and replies)

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random42
Neat service! Would like to have a copy to clipboard button (A low hanging
fruit, I suppose), for the image url.

~~~
mindotus
That is coming this week :D

John

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scrrr
Curious: Can this be done in pure html/js or is Flash still the way to go to
make this work cross-browser/cross-platform?

John: Great implementation. Wishing you much success. I'll be using it for my
public images.

~~~
mindotus
Thanks, appreciate it :) As for the copy to clipboard implementation, we're
still exploring the best way to do it for max compatibility. If anyone has
suggestions feel free to buzz me at john@min.us

~~~
chrisbroadfoot
You really do need to use Flash, AFAIK. I investigated this a while ago.

Firefox has an API, but the user has to change an option to specifically allow
access to the clipboard.

In the end, I figured it wasn't worth it, and that programmatically selecting
the textbox was 90% of the functionality without all the headache.

~~~
mindotus
Thanks for the advice, we will definitely look into it!

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scrrr
Headline could be: The Imgur-Killer

~~~
mindotus
:) Look out for document support soon on Minus including PDF, TXT, DOC, PPT
and more!

~~~
redthrowaway
Will your documents be crawlable??

~~~
mindotus
We have not yet decided on that at this point. Definitely something to
consider.

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pippy
Works great

<http://min.us/ip99S.gif>

~~~
mindotus
Glad to see it in action :)

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chrisbroadfoot
I'm surprised it took this long for someone to create such a simple image
hosting service.

~~~
gmurphy
:( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1703197>

~~~
kacy
Wow. It may just be the simplicity of the two sites, but they share a lot of
similar characteristics and design choices. Do you know if that was done on
purpose?

Update: Found this on their about page. "The first prototype for Minus was
inspired by Glen Murphy's design and was launched on October 13th, 2010."

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imran
Awesome!

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ctdonath
iOS! iOS! iOS! ...please!

