

We're giving free unlimited lifetime accounts to victims of Hurricane Sandy - jmathai
https://openphoto.me/relief

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mikeweiss
Cool website and service, but, is anyone else tired of businesses using this
recent tragedy to advertise?

Edit: Also pretty sure this is a little to late for victims of hurricane sandy
who lost thier computers.

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nilium
This seems like an iffy marketing thing to do to try to advertise and get
users. Why not detail what else you've done to help those whose lives were
upended by the hurricane? Why does your business have to come into it at all?
Did you do anything other than decide to arbitrarily give not-really-free
accounts to people when that won't help them rebuild afterward? (If you're
still charging them $.01 a year, that's still charging them something. You
ought to fix that.)

Either way, looks like a nice gesture, but one that's ultimately meaningless
since I doubt a lot of the victims care about your service. It's rather
useless compared to actual help.

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jmathai
I understand your points. It's why we wanted to give free unlimited lifetime
accounts instead of a free year or something else to monetize.

> It's rather useless compared to actual help.

Arguments against helping in ways that have specific impact (providing food,
assisting with relocation, etc) are a straw man. It's not better to do nothing
than something of small value.

I have plenty of photo albums in my closet and if those somehow got lost or
destroyed then I'd be devastated (more than any other physical object in my
house).

> If you're still charging them $.01 a year, that's still charging them
> something. You ought to fix that.

Really? If we get more feedback like that then we're happy to change or give
refunds. We're set up for subscriptions so it's the easiest way to do address
verification. If a penny a year is too much, we'll gladly fix it.

~~~
nilium
> Arguments against helping in ways that have specific impact (providing food,
> assisting with relocation, etc) are a straw man. It's not better to do
> nothing than something of small value.

My argument isn't to do nothing - again, this looks like a nice gesture - but
that you should do more. Maybe take all your earnings for a month and donate
them to help the victims. You can evidently afford to give out almost-free
accounts, can you do anything better?

> I have plenty of photo albums in my closet and if those somehow got lost or
> destroyed then I'd be devastated (more than any other physical object in my
> house).

Then scan them and throw them on Dropbox. Your service actively costs the
victims money, Dropbox does not, so which helps more?

> Really? If we get more feedback like that then we're happy to change or give
> refunds. We're set up for subscriptions so it's the easiest way to do
> address verification. If a penny a year is too much, we'll gladly fix it.

These are people who are already financially strained by the hurricane. They
may not even have a penny anymore. Did you consider this?

~~~
ludicast
Disclaimer: I'm from an affected area (but all good now except for
cable/internet).

Why should they do more? They already open source a lot of their software
(<https://github.com/photo>) and they are giving free lifetime accounts.
Should they also send blankets? Or is that not enough, pillows too (Emmanuel
Levinas would take your side).

The penny is their verification method (this has issues I will be emailing
them about).

Yes they are seeking some publicity for it, but I'd say that's a fair trade
(their site has links to a Scoble video and a Techcrunch writeup so this isn't
exactly how they are launching).

I'm not a user of their product yet, but since I am in an affected area (and
evaluating options for storing baby photos) I might give it a whirl.

~~~
jmathai
Appreciate the comment. We've already received comments that our list of
affected zip codes is not comprehensive enough and are adding more.

Email support@openphoto.me with issues and we'll get them sorted out.

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lukeholder
I am kinda annoyed people here are complaining about something that is
obviously sincere attempt to help people. And seriously - accusing them of
trying to make money by the .1 cent charge is a little crazy. The lifetime
cost of supporting these users plus hosting far outweighs this.

Also the argument that its a token effort that doesn't really practically help
people can also be applied your downer comment. Complaining about this offer
isn't helping the victims either.

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glenra
Having browsed both the linked page and the main page, I'm still fuzzy on what
this service does. Even if it's free, why do I want to deal with yet another
photo-sharing account? I could use flickr or iCloud to back up my photos for
free and make them shareable - they have limited size by default but I can pay
more if I need more. I think DropBox has a photo syncing feature too, though I
don't use it. If people sign up for your service, what value do they get from
it? Do they still have to pay for extra storage from DropBox or whatever
backend you're using as a separate transaction, or are you paying for storage?
How does using you plus my dropbox account guarantee that I "never lose a
photo" given that (a) my dropbox account doesn't have room for all my photos
(b) dropbox might go away at some point just as flickr might - or I might miss
a payment.

~~~
jmathai
We're working on our messaging :).

By decoupling the application from the photo storage you essentially increase
the options you have for keeping your photos for a longer time.

If Yahoo! shuts down Flickr you have to figure out what to do. Download a zip
file of a few thousand photos? Then what? Upload them somewhere else?

Our approach is multi-fold (hence us working on the messaging).

If Dropbox shuts down or increases their price or you find someone else you
like better then you can use our tools to migrate your photos from Dropbox to
BetterDropbox while retaining albums, tags, comments, etc. Your mobile apps
will continue to work how they always have. it's 100% transparent for you.

If we shut down you can still have the same benefits. Everything we've done
has always been open source[1]. That important because anyone can take the
torch and run with it. Not so if Flickr dies.

So as far as we can tell, this is the most effective way (yet) to ensure you
don't lose your photos in the long run.

[1] <https://github.com/photo>

~~~
glenra
My photos are initially and primarily on my Mac, then I upload selected albums
(that I expect/intend to share) to flickr. And also synchronize a substantial
fraction of them to my iDevices. If flickr gets shut down then yes, I'd expect
I have to upload them somewhere else...which I can do from my Mac.

It sounds like your target audience is people who don't ever put their photos
in one central location under their control (say, an iPhoto library), don't
back up that location, and care a lot about preserving not just their photos
but the _online comments_ received on those photos?

When you say "Your mobile apps will continue to work how they always have.
it's 100% transparent for you" - Um, what problem is it that you're solving
here? What sort of "mobile apps" are you expecting would fail when dropbox or
flickr shuts down?

~~~
jmathai
> It sounds like your target audience is people who don't ever put their
> photos in one central location under their control (say, an iPhoto library),
> don't back up that location, and care a lot about preserving not just their
> photos but the online comments received on those photos?

I believe it's an OR, not an AND. If you don't have one spot where you keep
all your photos then we help you do that. Not sure if you're married or not
but my wife's photos are not on my Mac and not in my iPhoto.

> Um, what problem is it that you're solving here? What sort of "mobile apps"
> are you expecting would fail when dropbox or flickr shuts down?

Your Flickr or Dropbox app.

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taumeson
Hey, man -- I'm not going to shit on you for advertising. But I am curious why
my zip code, 06840, is not in the list of affected zip codes. We were fucking
whalloped. We're in CT, right next to Norwalk (listed), Darien (listed), and
Stamford (listed).

~~~
jmathai
No worries. We got our list from one of the .gov sites but realize it's not
comprehensive. I've added your zip code and updated the site to let others
know to contact us of they find more missing.

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commentzorro
A bit of feigned altruism while driving traffic and subscriptions. Cheap: yes
... effective: ?. Please post back and let us know how well this works.

(Note that I'm not doubting your sincerity, just your motivation.)

~~~
jmathai
We're not a company of Mother Theresa's :). But we're also not your typical
startup. _Everything_ we've done has always been open sourced[1] (not just
select libraries).

The motivation was that it seemed to be a good fit. Hopefully we get a lot of
users taking us up on the offer and hopefully we get some paying users as
well.

This is part of an exercise in seeing how we could effect change for the
overall good of society. Sounds altruistic, sure. But we're funded by the
Shuttleworth Foundation, not a bunch of VCs looking to make a buck[2].

[1] <https://github.com/photo>

[2] Not that there's anything wrong with that

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laserDinosaur
Just what they need to get their lives back together [/sarcasm]

~~~
jmathai
Not sure if you read the post but it does mention that a free account on a
website isn't much but it's better than something. It's a tragic situation but
the post hopefully kept the magnitude of the situation in mind.

