Bulk Digital Camera Picture Sharing
If you have ever been the “designated photographer” at a family event or party with friends, then you know the frustration of having everyone ask you to “send me the pics”…
The Old Way
Sure, you can upload them all to flickr, but if you have family like mine, then it isn’t quite that easy. They all seem to want the photos in their original format (ie, at 10mp, thats hundreds of megabytes or even gigabytes of data).
My old solution was to burn everyone a CD or zip everything up and try to upload it somewhere for them to grab. This soon becomes very tedious and I stopped brining my camera out just to avoid this!
A Better Way
My friends over at Remobo have given me a much better solution to this problem… and once it’s set up, all you do is offload the photos to your computer as usual and they are automatically “shared” with all your friends and family. Much easier for sharing bulk, raw image files.
Step 1 - Create a Folder to Share Your Photos
Pick any location on your PC, and create a new folder (or use an existing one). Name it something descriptive like “Shared Photos”. Now anytime you want to share photos with your friends or family, just drop them into this folder (they can be in sub-folders too). I choose to keep this separate from the folder where I actually store all my digital photos, since I do not want to share ALL of them
Step 2 - Share This Folder
The next step is to “share” this folder. Just right-click the folder and select “Sharing and Security…”, then choose “Share this folder on the network”. You can give it a different name here if you like, but I just keep it the same. Also remember to only allow “read” access if you don’t want anyone deleting or modifying your files by accident.
The folder is now shared on your local network, but unless all your friends and family live with you, they still cannot access your files. So its on to the mext step…
Step 3 - Download and Install Remobo
Remobo is a small app that creates an Instant Private Network between your computer and any other computers that you add to your buddy list. You can get it here. It effectively extends your LAN over the Internet and will enable your friends and family to view your shared photos folder over the Internet. Incidentally, this program is also very useful for remote controlling your PC, playing LAN games over the Internet, and general VPN functionality…
Anyone who wants access to your folder will also need to get Remobo. Just tell them its a small price to pay to get instant access to your digital camera pictures after an event
Step 4 - Use Remobo to View Shared Files
Once you have dumped your newly-taken photos into your shared folder, add some buddies to your Remobo buddy list. As you add buddies, remember to only add people you would feel comfortable with accessing your shared folder.
Now when your buddies see you online, they can simply click on your computer name, select “Browse Shared Files”, and instantly be able to browse and copy over any photos and files that they see, as if it were a local folder. You can also browse any files that they are sharing as well, so next time just tell them your camera is broken and have them be the photographer.. this Remobo method works both ways
For advanced users, you can also mount their shared folder as a drive. For the computer name, just use:
[remobo_username].remobo.com
So, if I shared my photos and my Remobo username is bob, you can access or mount my shared drive in Windows using:
\\bob.remobo.com
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