Future Photo to Kodak Gallery Migration a Success!

I thought I'd follow up on my experience for those of you who read my original post about how Future Shop's photo sharing service, Future Photo, is closing down. Members are urged to migrate pix over to the Canadian Kodak Gallery, and I have decided to go that route. Here's a run-down of how my experience has been thus far. Hopefully this will help other members who are looking to switch over to this new Canadian service.

Migration: As mentioned in the previous post, there was an issue with the image transfer process for my account. In fairness to Future Photo, I don't just have a few pix in there: I have 5-6 years worth of photo albums...60 in all! The issue has since been resolved. Just last night, I received my confirmation e-mail that everything was a-ok, and all of my photos had been transferred. Hooray!

Things that I don't like:

The albums did not retain their original upload dates, which means the chronological order is all out of whack. Viewing by date doesn't do me much good since they're all dated April 24, 2008! Luckily, I had given albums names like "Miami, Sept. '06", and "My 28th Bday", so, in most cases, I won't be forced to try and remember where the heck the pix were taken. But I will have to weed through old albums to locate the most recent ones.

The albums did not retain the cover image I had selected. I'm probably being nit-picky here, but for people like me who have tons of albums, and who like to share these albums with friends, the cover portion is important.

The transfer did not retain all picture rotations, although some seem to have been kept. This means that after spending so much time switching vertical pix to their proper orientation, it looks like I have to do it all over again. Darn.

Probably the most frustrating thing, however, is that it looks like someone manually migrated my account over again (since it didn't seem to port all photos successfully the first time) leaving me with duplicate albums! If I had one or two, that wouldn't be a big deal. But with 60 of them, it'll take a while to go through and delete all duplicates. Sigh. At least there's no storage limit!

My Future Photo albums showed "friends albums" where I could instantly view albums from my friends who also had Future Photo accounts. Will Future Photo friends that move over to Kodak Gallery appear as my "friends" there as well? I'll have to see.

Things that I do like:

Uploading photos is blazingly simple. There's a beta "Express Upload" service, but I opted for the standard upload process, which lets me upload tons of images at a time. It took just a few minutes on my high-speed connection to upload about 50 photos. Not bad.

If you shared an album with someone via Future Photo, that person was required to create a Future Photo user name and password to view the images, even if they weren't going to use the service. Kodak Gallery gives you the option to do this, or just let people see the images in a slide show without having to sign in. This is definitely an added benefit, especially for non tech-savvy persons (like my parents!) who would have absolutely no idea what to do if they didn't click a link and photos just showed up on screen!

Image manipulation and editing is really easy, including even an "instant fix" button. You can also do things like crop photos, remove red-eye, and even add effects and borders. When you make a change to an image, there's the option to overwrite the original file, or save the altered pic as a new version.

All in all, I'm happy with the switchover, even though it will require some tweaking to get my images arranged the way I want them to be.

So what's my next step? I'm looking forward to ordering the 100 free 4 x6" prints that were offered! Funny how, after working in this industry so long, I have a digital photo frame rotating pix in the living room, yet a bunch of empty wood frames all over the place, just itching to be filled.

The Social Networking Stigma

Social networking has a sort of stigma attached to it, especially with the baby boomer and older generations. But I think if one can get past the idea of partication being "kid's play" that consumes too much time, the real benefits will eventually be realized by web surfers of all ages.

Much of the stigma, I believe, relates to people taking the "social" aspect a bit too seriously. They envision Websites like MySpace and Facebook as places where the younger generation can share way too much information about each other with way too many people. I've had this discussion with several anti-social networking co-workers and friends, who feel the entire idea of putting yourself out there for everyone to see is invasive, voyeuristic, and self-involved. I do agree that some people get carried away, offering up private details like home addresses, mobile phone numbers, and even dates they'll be going on vacation! If this information was shared with a few close and personal friends, that's a different story. But with 500+ so-called "friends" (which, judging from some lists, many kids claim to have), are you just asking for trouble? More so, what's the point?

That said, if you move past the juvenile attraction to these Websites, you'll surprisingly find a surplus of benefits for adults and even business professionals.

First, no one has the time to connect socially with each and every person in their life that they'd like to. Why not share things like recent photos, movie choices, and stories online quickly and easily, with people with whom you simply don't often get the chance to call or see? Old co-workers, friends with which everyday life has just made it impossible to remain in constant contact with? It's a great way to "catch up" while not having to spread your in-person time so thin that it's almost invisible!

Furthermore, what about friends and family that live in other countries, or even provinces? E-mail is great, but why go through the trouble of resizing and attaching hundreds of pics in an e-mail when you can reach everyone you want through one Website? This is the same justificatoin that dedicated photo sharing Websites have made for years; and it applies just as much to social networking sites with photo sharing capabilities.

From a business perspective, what other cost-effective method can you think of to reach hundreds of members in your industry all at once? Sure, there are plenty of e-blast programs, servers, and the like that can aid in maintaining a large database of names. But these cost big bucks, and require constant maintenance. With many social networking sites, you can send a note, a story, anything you wish to whomever you like with one click of a mouse, and no money out of your pocket.

When it comes to creating content that one wishes to promote, like a struggling music artists new demo recording, or an amatuer videographer's latest creation, what better way to spread the word and gain exposure for your product?

Recently, I discovered an application on Facebook that would allow me to share my book choices with friends. I can see what they're currently reading, read their book reviews, and browse through a list of recommendations. I'm always asking around for book recommendations, so having all of this information at my fingertips, from people who I know I share similar interests, is absolutely wonderful.

As for the online networking-haters, I have tried and tried to refute their arguments until I've been blue in the face. There are people who will never wish to participate, and that's perfectly fine. But for those who have been on the fence, I encourage you to try it out. As long as you're mindful about what information you share, and who you share it with, it's a neat way to both stay in touch with technology, while also, in a strange way, going back in time.