General Consultant Discussion

I'd like to get some advice from folks with experience sharing photos of/with/from a group. I experienced a terrific 40th reunion with my fraternity this past weekend. 45 brothers (and many wives) reconnected in Cleveland from Friday evening through Sunday afternoon. I was part of the organizing committee, and we used a variety of media to reach those, and many more who couldn't make it. There were many, many photographers there, and we'd like to upload them to share with the group. But here's the problem: >> we can't use only Facebook (or Google+, etc.) to upload and share these. Roughly half of this group is not (and will not yet) use Facebook. So we want to set up a site that will allow MANYpeople to UPLOAD pix, in addition to letting many see and download what's there. Can anybody help me with some recommendations about a product to use? I know that Picasa and Flickr allow sharing the viewing and download, but I am not aware of a way to enable people other than the account owner to do this. Please help me out here. Thanks!

First the bad news - you're pretty much going to need to have people make an account anywhere they go - and there's always going to be someone who doesn't like it. http://www.flickr.com/groups/

I've used Shutterfly and Snapfish; What if you just create an account that you all share / know the logon. Of course don't know if multiple people can log in simultaneously.

Thanks for the help! Shutterfly seems to have the functionality I need for the task at hand. users register free, and then are granted access and the ability upload photos and make albums on the site so it's not a huge mash of pix from everybody (this process seems easier than flickr's). People in photos can be tagged, and email to those tagged can be generated. It does even more, and is free without a storage limit. Does anybody have any cautionary comments for me here?

Yeah, don't post any nudes.

I use Smugmug. It has the option of allowing uploads via email or allowing friends & family to upload to your galleries - no registration required.

OMG, a nude of @JerryNorman ........

Hmmm ... that would pretty much kill any site traffic!

Check on this but I remember one BIG downside to Shutterfly used to be that you could not download high resolution photos that had been uploaded. You were left with fairly low resolution downloads unless you paid Shutterfly for a CD of the images. This may have changed so double check. I'm not sure why you wouldn't create a Google+ Community and then you can both comment/discuss and upload photos in complete privacy. Don't most people have Google accounts? You are almost forced to these days with the pervasiveness of G+ and Android.

I agree on Google+, or just setup a circle for your friends. Great integration with Android and very nice web based photo viewer including video support

Wayne, thanks! Yes, Shutterfly has no realistic way to download full-res photos, although the site seems to maintain them in full res. Really, really dumb. So that won't work for us. We have some group shots that have value at full electronic resolution. I looked into Smugmug which permits full-res downloads. However, it doesn't look like it permits UPloads from members of a sharegroup, so that doesn't work for us. Case was a very technical school 40 yrs ago, and you'd think Facebook would be no problem for my Brothers. But we've struggled in promotion because only ~1/2 are even on Facebook so our Group there only spoke to half our target. So, Google+ is not an obvious option. We did set up a separate Joomla site which is ok, but clumsy for commenting, and permitted only site admin to upload photo's and files. (Of course, FB has the same limitation. But because half our target won't go there, it's not really an option for the future anyway.) Their objection to FB seems more social privacy and time value than technical. So, Google+ could work where FB did not. We can probably provide some linkage to it from within the Joomla site, with simple instructions. Thanks again for the feedback. This is not an area that I've paid much attention to.

Google+ is fine. You can take any 'album' and share with with circles, or individual email addresses. If your friends have email, they can view the shared google+ pictures. No need to register.

We forget that Android has something like 50% market share - so Google accounts used for login should be much more prevalent than a few years back.

Wayne and Mark, thanks again! I set up a prototype Google+ community to test against. We're running some informal usability testing to see if others in this loose-knit steering committee find it acceptable. It's probably just me, but I find the G+ front page layout and functionality counter-intuitive but something I can live with. We'll see how the others find it. The observation about Android is definitely worth noting.

But @JerryNorman , didn't you grow up in the age of the COUNTER culture?? Counter intuitive should be second nature!

@JeffSchwenk , context is everything. My time at CWRU was 69-73. Kent State happened freshman year, and for a couple days we were convinced the Nat Guard was going to come up the 50 miles to us next. Cleveland mounted cops dispersed a street demonstration, clubbing protesters after first putting their badges in their pockets to avoid identification. The draft lottery started the summer I graduated HS. So, yes, there was turmoil. And part of the campus was sort of counter culture. But counter culture at a fraternity in an engineering school? That's an oxymoron. All that seemed as more of a distraction by ""dirty hippies"" than something to embrace. (Although a few of us did, sort of ...). More to the point of our business here: even radicals generally get tired of dealing with counter intuitive things. Especially when it comes to the interface between us and our tools. I am also struck by what is considered easy/hard/counter intuitive by employees (even technical people) in their 30s vs. those of my age cohort. This is a real training problem.