Microsoft has announced that all users subscribed to Office 365 will begin to see their OneDrive cloud storage upgraded to unlimited space for no additional cost. The new change will begin rolling out over the next few months to subscribers of the Home, Personal, and University editions. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
[ By Steph in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]
A compact space with thirty years’ history as a storage unit is now a sleek, modern apartment outfitted with everything a single occupant needs with the addition of a built-in bed platform with storage. Architect Karin Matz purchased the unit in a state of total disarray, as the previous owner had begun a renovation in the 1980s that was never completed. When she began, it was a mess of peeling wallpaper, no electricity and “a bathroom only with signs of rats as inhabitants.”
The new architectural volume consists mostly of IKEA kitchen units, extended beyond the food preparation space to form a storage-filled platform for the raised bed. A small void under the bed offers a closet space, and a glass partition gives the little loft a sense of separation from the kitchen.
Aside from the bathroom, which was modernized, the rest of the apartment has been left virtually as Matz found it, with all surfaces remaining the way they’ve looked for the past 20 years. The rough, weathered surfaces of the walls contrast with the smooth new wood of the floors and furniture.
Says Matz, “In a city like Stockholm with enormous housing shortage and with every square meter increasing in price by the minute, this story was somehow impossible to understand and resist. The finished apartment is the result of a fascination for this; a try to let the previous layers and stories of a space live on and at the same time fill the requirements for the new story that will take place.”
Good home design is not just about a perfect product but about process and context, as illustrated in this case through diagrams, videos and photos of how to …
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No room in your bathroom for those essential items? These clever bathtub storage solutions give you more space in a most unexpected place.
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These images may look like people photoshopped onto a background of sketches, but look again – those scribbles are actual, three-dimensional furniture. …
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[ By Steph in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]
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This will be an overview of the N2560 and also a little bit of practical advice for people that have a computer with almost zero disk space remaining, and no clue what to do about it!
Let’s start with the Thecus N2560 network attached storage (NAS) that we were sent to try out.
Thecus N2560 NAS on Amazon
The N2560 is a relatively small (when compared with the Synology 1512+) NAS device that holds two 3.5″ SATA disk drives, and sits quietly (20db) in the corner of your home office serving your images, document, media – whatever. When idle, the little guy only uses 9W of power and 14W under load, so it’s also reasonably electricity efficient.
Let’s look at what a NAS is if you have never used one, or considered using one. Lets say you have a wireless (or non-wireless) router in your home that you use to connect to the internet and that router has a spare network port (the rectangular looking one) Well, in very basic terms, you connect the N2560 to that spare port and with a little configuration, you’re able to access the drive space from your home network without being physically attached to the NAS itself. With the Thecus, and many other brands, you can also use their configuration service to set up your NAS to allow you to connect from outside the house, on the go.
The Thecus is a multi-award winning device and has shown me great performance with 2GB of memory and the 1.6Ghz Intel Atom processor, and while I tried to run a small Lightroom catalogue, raw image library on the N2560. While it was a bit slow across my network (wired, 1Gb cat6 network via an Apple Airport Extreme ) it was useable for smaller Lightroom libraries, and adds a load of flexibility, too. With the T On The Go, iOS app (there are Android versions of Thecus apps, too, rejoice!) you can upload (you can auto upload photos you take with your iPhone, you can also turn it off and ask it to only upload via Wifi etc – well thought out!) download, manage, stream media etc. (audio types will like the Thecus’ ability to playback FLAC audio files).
There’s really not a lot to say about the device aside from it can be a bit tricky to configure if it’s your first time – I had a handful of IP Address issues (What’s an IP Address? They’re the things inside your network that tell other things where everything is, basically – kinda like digital street numbers) Once configured though, it’s not skipped a beat and I’ve been running it alongside my beautiful direct connected Promise R8 and my primary Synology NAS for just over a month.
The Thecus N2560 performs really well, with good speeds for a network connected device at this price point, and I have no complaints with it. If you’re interested, you can read all of the tech specs on the website and learn all you need to know about the N2560 but I thought I’d take this in a slightly different direction and talk about some of the things you can do with a NAS in a photographic environment.
So you’re at that point where your computer is almost full up with your data, there are multiple paths you can go down to sort this out, but let’s focus on two – direct connected external disk drives and NAS. But first, a couple of things about your computer being FULL!
Some people might say “my computer is out of memory!” There are two things they could be talking about: (1) HD space (hard drive or hard disk, both are acceptable) is where the stuff you load onto your computer, like programs, music, photos etc go to live, or (2) Memory or RAM on the other hand is the stuff that your programs all load into and run.
An analogy if you will.Disk space are the seats in your car – when they’re full, you need a trailer or a bus (external disk or NAS). Memory is like the engine in your car, it makes the car run and you can upgrade it to make your car go faster if you need to. (Mmmm – turbo!) – If you’re still confused, ask questions in the comments, I don’t bite!
With a traditional external disk drive, you can plug it into your computer, load things onto it and download things from it. In most cases this is the quickest way to backup, aside from having a disk physically in your computer, directly connected to your computer’s brain – so to speak. There are multiple ways you can connect drives these days, too, just to add a splash of confusion to your choices – USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt being a few of the ways. They have different benefits and speeds.
So, why would you buy an NAS? (and sure, with some external drives you can do these things, too)
Here’s a scenario where my NAS came into its own recently – I was showing a client some portraits for the set of images I’d taken. They were the images I’d chosen that worked for what she wanted. We came to the end of the viewing which was via my iPad in her house, and she asked if there was another specific photograph that she had in mind from the shoot – turns out there was. As I’d put the entire unedited folder into the “working directory” on my NAS, I connected to the internet via my iPhone hotspot and browsed the NAS to show her the set of images that I’d not chosen. We found her photograph and everyone was happy!
The one thing that the NAS is not is a 100% foolproof backup – you must remember this. Sure, the Thecus is a two-drive unit and depending on how you set up those two drives (raid 0, 1 or JBod, I’ve talked about this before – not this time), you do get some redundancy, but always have multiple copies of important stuff – you don’t know the pain of losing a backup until you’ve lost client work that you can’t get back, or worse, family photos that mean a lot and are irreplaceable. If i’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times – backup people!
It’s really not! You can see below the open door on the front of the little N2560, it takes two disks which are very easy to put in – you put the little slider bits on the sides of your disks and they simply pop straight in. The drives I’m using at the moment in all of my NAS devices are the WD Red NASware drives – I’m aware that all disks are either dead or dying from their first spin up (as my old boss used to say) and that any drive can and will completely fail when you need it the most, but so far I’ve had no problems with these disks. (I also use the WD My Passport Pro Thunderbolt external, all good there, too) With the drives in, you power her up after connecting your network cable (supplied) and follow the prompts basically. I mentioned I had a little trouble, and coming back from that trouble was slightly trickier than other devices (Synology, I’m looking at you) I’ve configured previously with slightly better graphical interfaces and directions. Once your config is complete, you’re set to use your Thecus as a local disk folder, media server, personal cloud, photo server etc.
You can see above the little blue USB port I mentioned in the points above. You can plug a USB 3 disk (also USB2 and 1 backward compatible) into the device and use the one-touch backup to take the content from that USB drive into the Thecus NAS, so if you are out shooting and backing up to an external USB drive, you can plug it into your NAS when you get home and with a button press, the data copies across – handy.
In conclusion, I’d say NAS isn’t for everyone, but if you’re looking for a well priced, entry level NAS to introduce into your digital workflow, this little Thecus N2560 would be a decent option. I’ve opted to give the NAS 4.5 stars because in my experience, the operating system could be a little easier to use – but then, maybe it’s just me!
The post Thecus N2560 NAS storage for photographers – review by Sime appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Canon has jumped into the crowded online image storage space with the launch of its new Irista image hosting and sharing site. The result of a several-year-long beta testing program, the new Irista website competes with online storage tools like those from Dropbox, Google, Microsoft and Apple. Naturally, Irista caters to photographers with the ability to upload any standard photo file type including Raw. Though anyone can sign up for a free account, paid accounts are only available to residents of certain European countries. Read more
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Western Digital have just announced a new portable storage solution for photographers and digital content creators! The My Passport® Pro Thunderbolt Raid, the first portable, Thunderbolt™-powered dual-drive solution, comes in a 2 or 4TB flavour and has the cable built into the drive as you can see in the photographs below.
SYDNEY, Australia, – Mar. 28, 2014 – WD®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company, and world leader in storage solutions for the connected life, today introduced My Passport® Pro, the first portable, Thunderbolt™-powered dual-drive solution, providing creative professionals and enthusiasts high performance and capacity in a truly mobile solution. For Mac systems, My Passport Pro has user-selectable RAID functionality to deliver needed performance for the most demanding applications in the field, without the need for power adapters or extra cables. My Passport Pro is available in 2 TB and 4 TB capacities.
“The only Thunderbolt dual-drive solution that’s bus-powered, WD’s My Passport Pro enhances the workflow of mobile creative professionals by providing fast transfers and data protection for the large amounts of digital content they generate outside the studio,” said Jim Welsh, executive vice president of branded products and worldwide sales, WD. “From photographers, videographers and musicians to graphic designers and architects, people who depend on portable storage for their livelihood will find My Passport Pro defines a new level of performance, reliability and especially portability.”
“Thunderbolt™ technology makes new approaches possible for high-performance workflows,” said Jason Ziller, Intel’s Director of Thunderbolt Marketing. “By combining dual storage drives on a portable, bus-powered device, the My Passport Pro from WD is a uniquely powerful storage solution with high capacity for today’s demanding users.”
Directly powered via the integrated Thunderbolt cable — a design unique to WD — performance of My Passport Pro clocks in at speeds up to 233 MB/s, providing super-fast transfer, edit and backup capabilities. Another key feature of the dual-drive My Passport Pro is its user-selectable RAID function, which lets users choose data striping (RAID 0) for high performance or mirroring (RAID 1) for data redundancy, depending on the user’s needs. Superior to both FireWire 800 and USB 3.0, the integrated Thunderbolt technology of My Passport Pro makes video manipulation quick and easy—with the ability to copy a 22 GB high-definition video file in half the time typically required by a USB 3.0 drive working in RAID 0 format.
Consisting of two 2.5-inch hard drives housed in a sleek aluminium enclosure, My Passport Pro is thoroughly shock-tested for extra durability to perform reliably when working on the go.
I’ve had the “My Passport Pro” for a few days now and this is by no means enough time to fully get used to working with a new device, but having worked with storage of all different kinds for so long, it’s enough to get a good feeling about something. Now I just want something to fulfill a certain storage need that I have, so I was very impressed when the WD team pulled out this little beast and handed it to me over a nice chicken schnitzel sandwich (yes, really). The build is solid with little rubber feet to keep it steady, and a fan that’s built in to keep the temperature within its working range. The fan doesn’t come on much – I’ve had the drive sitting running for a couple of days, and even under a lot of load it hasn’t activated – nice and quiet.
I have it configured to speedy Raid 0 for now, checking out the performance of the drive. The 2TB version is going to be more than enough for almost any shoot, even when setup in Raid 1 (mirrored) giving you just under 1TB of useable space. The real test of this device will be in a couple of months when I take it to Israel for a week long photo tour with Kinetis (and our very own dPS writer Oded Wagenstein) and will be writing about the drive and how it performs along the way!
The My Passport® Pro has filled a gap in my workflow and has filled it nicely – time will tell in terms of drive stability and build quality, nothing beats three copies of important content, but a mirrored raid disk in the field is a great start.
You can buy one of these little beauties on Amazon:
The post Western Digital announce My Passport Pro Thunderbolt Raid storage by Sime appeared first on Digital Photography School.
[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]
Playing tricks on the eye, this split-style stairway merges a desk and storage below with a framework of steps hanging down from above, all with a daunting-looking gap left in the middle.
Dutch designer Mieke Meijer hand-crafted this hybrid interior system for the home of Just Haasnoot in The Hague, inspired in part by the black and white photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher.
The frame-based structure was made to save space and maintain a sense of openness. The unfolding angular geometries add elements of visual interest to a toned-down space while accommodating various storage surfaces, nooks and crannies.
The use of alternating steps allows for a steep incline to be safely traversed, though some might still question the absence of a hand rail (which would be mandated by building code in most locations).
This approach seems particularly well-suited to places with less-used upstairs spaces – as the photographs show, it would be easy to let certain steps simply become shelves most of the time, then be cleared off when guests come to stay in the spare attic bedroom.
Boldly curved and cantilevered into midair, these plant-wrapped stairs are designed to provide more than just a means of moving from one floor to another. …
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Designed as carefully as it is hand-crafted, this Tablet Desk has a deceptively streamlined look that hides a series of modular features and space-saving …
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No room in your bathroom for those essential items? These clever bathtub storage solutions give you more space in a most unexpected place.
Click Here to Read More »»
[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]
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Stacks on stacks of bulky external hard drives are so 2013.
Meet the bulk-free Nifty MiniDrive! It’ll hold a microSD card flush inside your Macbook, adding simple, fast, nearly invisible extra storage space for your photos and other files.
Just slip in a microSD card (up to 64GB!) and stick it into your computer.
MicroSD cards are virtually impossible to destroy. They’ll survive big fall, into a puddle, under a ladder, next to a black cat. Dry it off, and it’s good to go.
If you’re sick of lugging around a fragile external hard drive that’s just adding bulk to your laptop bag, or you’ve never backed up your photos at all (gasp!) grab a light-as-about-three-feathers Nifty MiniDrive.
Learn More About the Nifty MiniDrive
$ 40 at the Photojojo Shop
© laurel for Photojojo, 2014. |
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[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]
Would you trust your skateboard to hold sensitive personal belongings, like your laptop or phone? The Briefskate has a built-in storage compartment designed to hold electronics, books, wallets and other small items in a lined interior compartment while you’re skating.
The idea is to eliminate the need to carry a backpack – though you’d better have a safe place to store your skateboard once you get to your destination. Designed by Alexei Novitzky, the Briefskate contains a padded, shock-resistant chamber to hold whatever you need to transport.
Of course, there’s always the chance you’ll wipe out and somehow manage to damage the items contained inside – but that’s a risk when you’re carrying them in a bag while skating, too. The Briefskate is available in long and mini versions, and they’re about to launch a Kickstarter campaign.
If you thought biking down stairs was hard, try skating a stairwell – or better yet: don’t. At least not without this nifty new hybrid board, that is. Click Here to Read More »»
An eight-wheel mechanism allows the unusual Stair-Rover skateboard to descend flights of steps the way conventional skateboards never could. Designed by … Click Here to Read More »»
These bold, graphic storage and organization solutions from Italian company AK47 don’t just put your stuff in order – they function as art pieces, too. Click Here to Read More »»
[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]
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[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]
Would you trust your skateboard to hold sensitive personal belongings, like your laptop or phone? The Briefskate has a built-in storage compartment designed to hold electronics, books, wallets and other small items in a lined interior compartment while you’re skating.
The idea is to eliminate the need to carry a backpack – though you’d better have a safe place to store your skateboard once you get to your destination. Designed by Alexei Novitzky, the Briefskate contains a padded, shock-resistant chamber to hold whatever you need to transport.
Of course, there’s always the chance you’ll wipe out and somehow manage to damage the items contained inside – but that’s a risk when you’re carrying them in a bag while skating, too. The Briefskate is available in long and mini versions, and they’re about to launch a Kickstarter campaign.
If you thought biking down stairs was hard, try skating a stairwell – or better yet: don’t. At least not without this nifty new hybrid board, that is.
Click Here to Read More »»
An eight-wheel mechanism allows the unusual Stair-Rover skateboard to descend flights of steps the way conventional skateboards never could. Designed by …
Click Here to Read More »»
These bold, graphic storage and organization solutions from Italian company AK47 don’t just put your stuff in order – they function as art pieces, too.
Click Here to Read More »»
[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]
[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]
A contribution from Lori Peterson
A few years ago I shot a beautiful, heartfelt wedding. The bride’s grandmother had just gotten out of the hospital after a terrible fall. Her grandfather was not doing well, but he was managing the care of her grandmother in addition to taking care of himself. They made it a huge family occasion and created a beautiful, family oriented evening.
Celebrations continued to the later hours in the evening and then the bride and groom left to spend their first few days as man and wife. It was a beautiful, perfect day. The images I shot in camera looked just amazing and seemed to really capture the essence of the day.
I went home and loaded all the images onto my computer and then backed them up to my external. I edited a few images so that the bride and groom could have some sneak peeks of their wedding photographs to share with their friends and family.
A few days later my husband noticed that my computer was not displaying the photograph slideshow that I have my computer set to play. We sat down and looked at my computer together. While we were sitting there all of the images started disappearing off my computer. I thought “Well, at least they are on my external!” I apparently got too hopeful way too fast. My external and my hard drive crashed at the same time. While we sat there trying to figure out what was going on my computer’s hard drive and the external hard drive were dying….and wiping away all of the images they had.
We have a friend who works for a computer repair store. We called him. We immediately took over the external and left it waiting and hoping for a phone call and for him to say that they recovered the images. I couldn’t even think straight, it was the only thing on my mind.
Our phone finally rang, but he was not able to give us good news. Our external hard drive had crashed and wiped out all of the data on it. Nothing was able to be recovered. Not one image. I was frantic. I now had to call the bride and tell her that all of the images from that day were gone. All of them, except for their sneak peeks. Those little fragments were all that remained of their day.
That was one of the hardest phone calls I have ever had to make. I wanted to tell them in person, but I honestly felt that setting up a meeting to tell them this would make it worse for them. I picked up the phone and dialed the number. I explained what happened. I apologized profusely. She was disappointed and heartbroken, that much you could tell. She was also understanding and forgiving as well. As it turns out, just a few weeks before their wedding, their own computer had abruptly died. They wanted to get it repaired, but according to their computer technician, there was absolutely nothing they could do to save the computer, the photos, and the documents on the computer. When the computer died, it took all of its information with it, just like mine had done.
At this point refunding her money and offering her the world was on my agenda because I felt awful about the entire situation. I was surprised by how well they took the news. They knew that the situation was not one I created or that they created. It was just a by-product of our relying on our technology to keep everything safe. Sometimes it fails and lets us down.
On that day I vowed that would never, ever happen again. That was not a situation I was going to put myself into ever again. This is when I started researching cloud storage. I wanted something that immediately backed up my computer. I wanted a safety net. The external was just not a big enough safety net for me anymore.
You can get overwhelmed when you are looking for cloud storage by the number of providers available. You should factor in what you are looking to backup. Is it just your computer? What about an external? Photos or documents? Or all of it.
One of the easiest and cheapest options for backing up everything is BackBlaze. For $ 5 a month it will back up one computer and any external plugged into that computer. It will back up everything except your Operating Systems and applications. All your files, photos, and documents will be securely backed up and you can retrieve them in the event of any emergency.
Carbonite is another option. For one computer to be backed up their pricing begins at $ 59.99 per year. If you have an external hard drive that you also want backed up they have plans that begin at $ 99.99 per year.
Dropbox, Copy, and Google Drive all have free plans for anywhere from 15-18 GB of storage. Depending on your needs they have other plans that begin at $ 4.99 per month for 100GB and they go up from there. Dropbox does have an add on for $ 3.99 a month that lets you have unlimited undo history for those moments when you accidentally delete something and realize that you really should have kept it.
Whatever your situation, having a backup plan is always a good idea. If you are a photographer, it’s even more important to have that peace of mind not only for you but for your client as well. There are pricing structures and plans to fit every budget and every need, because sometimes technology fails. Don’t have to make that phone call like I did. Back your photos and documents up and then back them up to cloud storage. It’s inexpensive and well worth it to invest in some sort of extra storage.
Lori Peterson is an award winning photographer based out of the St. Louis Metro Area. Her dynamic work ranges from creative portraits to very unique fine art photography. Lori’s work can be seen at www.loripetersonphotography.com and also on her blog at www.loripetersonphotographyblog.com. You can follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LoriPetersonPhotography.
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
Cloud Storage: Why an External Hard Drive is Not Enough
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