In sync, finally!

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

During the last week I finally got all my archives and originals since 1998 uploaded to my site, www.photosocal.com (http://www.photosocal.com).

I mean, the last couple of years already were online, but I never had neither time nor the means to do the oldies... Not anymore:-)

More than 30Gb, more than 25K files, more than 1,000 new galleries...

And all that with pretty much no human intervention at all!
Just one drag, drop, click, then minimize S*E (http://www.starexplorer.com) and let it finish...

Now I need to do a major facelift of the site itself...;-)

[Cem_Usakligil]

Hi Nik,

Congratulations mate, great job! Now I know why you've kept a low profile on the board recently, you must have been very busy getting this mammouth assignment done.
I am trying to get to the level of having all my film material from the last 35 years digitised, let alone put them up to a photo web site or anything like that. Hopefully someday, if ever (sigh)...

Cheers,

[Tom Henkel]

Congratulations. That must have taken some effort. Quick question, however -- why make everything available? I usually only make public things I like, and even some of those I take down after a while. Aside from the obvious advantage of having a virtual backup copy of your images is there an advantage to having so much online?

Tom

[Asher Kelman]

Nikolai,

Amazing!

Did you use *Star Explorer, your own software you sell, or was it part of the website?

How expensive is it to pay for the 30GB storage?

Thanks,

Asher

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

Hi Nik,

Congratulations mate, great job! Now I know why you've kept a low profile on the board recently, you must have been very busy getting this mammouth assignment done.
I am trying to get to the level of having all my film material from the last 35 years digitised, let alone put them up to a photo web site or anything like that. Hopefully someday, if ever (sigh)...

Cheers,

Thanks for commenting!
No, it was not the upload that kept me quiet. This weekend is when the most important for our company trade show starts (NADA), so the end of January is traditionally the most hectic time of the year.
Speaking of film.. I know, I'm in the same shoes myself. Thousands of slides and old pictures. Low quality, over and under developed... It's a history, and as any history it requires a lot of manual work. I didn't even start... Thus far it was my digital archives...

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

Congratulations. That must have taken some effort. Quick question, however -- why make everything available? I usually only make public things I like, and even some of those I take down after a while. Aside from the obvious advantage of having a virtual backup copy of your images is there an advantage to having so much online?

Tom

Boy Band? I'm confused... Is this a figure of speech?

Re: why everything availalble...
Not everything. The originals (the ones I can use as the backup) are all private.

As to the rest.. I started the whole photo sharing as a way to let my family and freinds back in Russia to know about our life here in US. I still consider it a my #1 goal. Darn "politiks" do a lot of misinformation of both sides of the oceans, I hope my photo coverage would allow for some real view of what's life here looks like.

Thanks!

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

Nikolai,
Amazing!
Did you use *Star Explorer, your own software you sell, or was it part of the website?

Thanks!
Of course I did use Star*Explorer.:-)
Neither web-site tools, nor any other smugmug-related 3d party software would allow such work to be performed in a fully automated way.. Creating albums alone would take weeks...


How expensive is it to pay for the 30GB storage?
Thanks,
Asher
Well, first of all 30Gb was only the last chunk. I currently have about 100Gb uploaded.
As to the price... Every smugmug account comes with unlimited storage:-) The difference between three types of subsriptions lays in features. If you boil them down, the differences are:

Standard, $39/yr: unlimited storage, up to 8Mb per file, no movies
Power, $59/yr: all standard + better customization + movies
Pro, $149/yr: all power, plus way more control, plus custom sales, 16Mb per fileIn case you were thinking of backing up some photos on OPF, it could be a good investment to get a standard SM account and don't worry about a thing:-)

HTH

[Tom Henkel]

Boy Band? I'm confused... Is this a figure of speech?


Thanks!

Sorry, not a figure of speech. Barely even a figure of music. There used to be an American band called 'N Sync that was popular (particularly among teenage girls) back in the late 1990s.

Tom

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

Sorry, not a figure of speech. Barely even a figure of music. There used to be an American band called 'N Sync that was popular (particularly among teenage girls) back in the late 1990s.
Tom

Oh, that one... Of course!
Thank you for the clarification!

[Edward Bussa]

What is Star Explorer?

I asked the internet - I still don't know =D

[Cem_Usakligil]

What is Star Explorer?

I asked the internet - I still don't know =D
Hi Ed,

Star*Explorer is a utility program for uploading your photos to a smugmug account and for synchronising the files between the online galleries and your local folders. Or as the web site itself cites:
Star*Explorer (S*E, formerly Smugmug Explorer) is a very small, fast, robust and efficient Windows application designed to facilitate certain smugmug-related activities, such as unlimited persistent image upload, download, customized gallery settings, reports, etc.
See: http://www.starexplorer.com/

I use the product myself since I also have a smugmug account. It is very easy to use, does exactly what it says it does and helps one streamline the upload process very well. I am very happy/satisfied and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone with a smugmug account :-).

Cheers,

Edit: The header should obviously read "Star*Explorer" and not "Star*express" which was a mistake (oops)

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

What is Star Explorer?


Cem has already vouched for it (thank you, Cem!:-), but let me add a few things.

I started to write it in the fall of 2004 when Smugmug first published their "open API" (series of hacks that allowed to communicate with the server programmatically). At the time SM upload capabilities were extremely limited: 100 files max, 300Mb max, whichever comes first. So my first goal was to create something for myself to overcome those limitations, otherwise the whole unlimited storage didn't make too much of a sense.
To my surprise, other folks immediately liked it too, so I decided to make it a product.
The first official release was uploaded in April 2005.
Since that time lots of features were added, some of them are unique (in a way that no other tool, neither from SM nor from any other 3d party can do what S*E can). And I'm not talking about something only two geeks in the world would use. You can, for example, drop your whole tree into S*E and it would figure out what albums already exist, what needs to be created, what file go where - all that without asking a single question.
You can also download stuff back - in a very customizable way. Or get back your sales info and plug it directly into excel.

All in all, I think if you take all the 3d party tools there are out there along with most of the SM own web tool, you'd get about 90% of S*E functionality.

The difference - you can have 10 tools, or you can have one. It's your time and your convenience. So you decide whether it's worth paying $15-$30-$50 one time and do not have any troubles in the future (with SM that is:-), or get several free tools, all with different UI, written in different languages (from php to java to vb to .net, etc.) and each time choose the one which does the task you need.

HTH

[Edward Bussa]

I see - thanks. I don't currently use smugmug, but if/when I do, I will definitely keep that in mind!

[Asher Kelman]

Nik,

Not to divert the topic to *Star Explorer, but at least to facilitate others getting large amounts of files up in the right order, what is needed to run *Star Explorer on a Windows System.

If Mac users get Parallels, what is the minimum Windows configeration needed.

Then MacIntel users can use your software too!

Asher

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

Nik,

Not to divert the topic to *Star Explorer, but at least to facilitate others getting large amounts of files up in the right order, what is needed to run *Star Explorer on a Windows System.

If Mac users get Parallels, what is the minimum Windows configeration needed.

Then MacIntel users can use your software too!

Asher

Thanks you for asking:-)
As far as I know, any 32-bit Windows emulator would work just fine. Some of my users are in fact working on Macs, but they use Star*Explorer from their Windows compartment.