We reported on MyShoebox when it launched last year, coming from the highly-polished pedigree of Toronto’s Extreme Startups.
The Toronto-based company has launched version 2.0 today for iOS, Android and the web, complete with revamped Windows and OS X applications. The premise behind the service is to cast as wide a net as possible over every digital photo in your life, and to back them up to the cloud in as frictionless a way possible.
There are two price tiers, and neither of them limit the number of photos you upload; the free version limits the quality of each photo, while the paid version at $5/month gives you cross-platform photo backup at original resolution.
With version 2.0, MyShoebox adds tablet support, both on iPad and Android, with the express purpose of making the service as much about discovering old, forgotten photos as it is about backing up current ones. It uses advanced organization algorithms to glean as much information from each photo as possible; you can search using a number of criteria, from place to date, and they’re all arranged in a nice grid pattern.
The new version also added shared galleries, so you can offer your friends and family a way to see these backed-up gems.
Obviously the question here is whether the service is worth the money in an ecosystem of overwhelmingly high-quality photo services. Flickr recently began offering 1TB of data to each account, and revamped their Android and web services to offer a more robust experience. Then there’s Dropbox, Sugarsync, Google+ Photos and the myriad other alternatives that have improved their photo experience, both on mobile and the web, in recent months.
MyShoebox offers a solution for one problem, but it’s a problem that millions of digital-native users face. Photos get stored on disparate hard drives, ecosystems and services, and from my brief time with the Mac and Android apps, it seems to have serious potential.
Download MyShoebox for Android and iOS.
Via: Techcrunch
