Flickr, Picassa

[shootingstar]

Any opinions on these services? On how many photos you can upload and how easily you can get them back, etc.? My partner is taken probably over thousand on his solo cycling trip. After 3 wks., in Montana, Idaho, Washington, he's heading over to Oregon. He's running out of portable memory..

[Irulan]

I've had both. I prefer the album viewing interface of picasa. With Flickr you can upgrade to a pro account that has a lot more space than the free one.

[Amira]

I haven't really used Picasa much, but I have used Flickr a fair amount. Unless you upgrade to a pro account (which is only about $25/year or so), you are limited as to the number of images you can upload. With a pro account, you would be fine uploading a lot of images, but if that is your only source to maintain a lot of images, it's going to be labor intensive to download the ones you want to put back on your computer. I haven't done it in awhile, but I think you'd have to download them individually. If they have a download option for multiple images, I haven't ever used it (or found it).

What is he using now? Is he trying to share images along the way? The cheapest and easiest way would be to just buy more cards for the camera and wait until he is home to download them. When I'm on a big trip, I've been known to take 40G of cards with me. And now that cards are larger and larger, it's not expensive to get a 4G card, which will hold a lot of jpegs. He could also get a small portable external drive or even a few flash drives (very portable) that could be attached to a laptop and/or desktop, if he has access to one to download cards.

ETA: and, as OakLeaf also pointed out below, uploading full resolution images to Flickr or another site is a PITA, timewise, although I don't know how big the files are from whatever camera he has along. I guess I need to go buy new, bigger cards myself.

[OakLeaf]

Besides everything else, uploading that many images at full resolution will take fer-frickin'-ever. How many hours does he want to hang around Kinko's waiting for them to upload? +1 on buying more cards. Unless his camera is very old, it should accommodate at least 32GB cards and probably 64GB. They get more expensive as you start reaching the current limits, but he'll weigh convenience and security against cost; 16GB cards are very inexpensive. He doesn't need to be schlepping dozens of 4GB cards around. Weigh the risk of fedexing his existing cards home vs. the risk of carrying them with any longer.

[shootingstar]

This is useful info so far since neither he nor I have ever used Flickr, Picasa.

Yea, amazing how much the price of memory has dropped..well yearly.

[Irulan]

Besides everything else, uploading that many images at full resolution will take fer-frickin'-ever. How many hours does he want to hang around Kinko's waiting for them to upload? +1 on buying more cards. Unless his camera is very old, it should accommodate at least 32GB cards and probably 64GB. They get more expensive as you start reaching the current limits, but he'll weigh convenience and security against cost; 16GB cards are very inexpensive. He doesn't need to be schlepping dozens of 4GB cards around. Weigh the risk of fedexing his existing cards home vs. the risk of carrying them with any longer.

Best solution. Use one of the photo sites when you get home. If nothing else, a place like kinko's can burn your images onto a CD so that you can clear the card.