Is Google+ the Kragle?

I’ve made a lot about all the many mistresses (software applications) managing my photos on my computers, but that number pales into insignificance against all the potential software available on the net and/or via smartphone or tablet apps. There are just way too many. So I will tell you of just a few.

Flickr & Photobucket, both are well established services that began in the time before the social media thing exploded and they offer fairly similar features. They are primarily place to share photos on line, and the have features to suit groups and communities for those with similar interests . They have grown and now offer many other facilities such as on-line editing, book printing, slide shows, its a long list. I like them both but haven’t been using them much at all, Possibly I’ve become too obsessed with trying to understand what's happening with the next mistress google+ photo.

I do still feel I was railroaded into google+, from gmail & youtube but mainly from Picasa,the web side view of which is now google+ photos. There are certainly a lot of “features” and I only use a few but the auto-backup and notifications are driving me crazy. There have been a few nice surprises, some of the HDR images have been fine and I working hard on being a member of a communities. While google+ photo does give access to a larger and growing community of photographers its really only on her terms. They are not well explained, kind of just take it or leave it.  The on-line google+ photos edit features are pretty good, and certainly cover most basic needs. The picasa web style albums are still fine but auto-backup is creating a really big conglomerated mess (if you can't remember the date taken good luck finding your photos!). The highlights (seem to overlook too many good photos) the stories are not worth mentioning and the “gifts” aren’t in my view autoawesome at all. They are more like the second rule of lord business,"Never listen to anyone else's ideas, yours are the best", in the lego movie. Perhaps google+ is really the kragle to make things social web permanently the way the google-verse wants? 

I am taking steps to get less involved, only letting her backup from a specific directory, returning to picasa as my preferred method of sharing, reducing the number of people in my circles and turning off notification (with  the exception of  ThePatch Community)

The last on-line mistresses I want to discussed, she is actually more like a butler, she is DropBox. The service that provides easy file transfer between computers and across the web. Unlike the other services above her photographic credentials are pretty simple (Ok I haven’t tested carousel, because my android phone is still running an old version, however most android apps have no trouble sharing with her, ie DropBox) She can be instructed to atomically upload any photos from you phone (or tablet) when she detects a WiFi signal. She can also manage a small part of your file system on your computer onto which any new files will get synchronise. So one minute a photo is on your phone the next it can easily be accessed from any computer you have connected and synched. If you want you can set up little albums (virtual  organizations of these photos) still within the drop box synch area (and synched across all devices). It is also easy to share with one (via email) or many (email and conventional HTML links). I do appreciate DropBox.