ThisLife
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ThisLife wants to store and manage all your photos
ThisLife is an intriguing and capable photo system from the folks at Shutterfly. It's been in beta for a long time, and we last took a look 2 years ago when the service was by invitation only. ThisLife is an end-to-end photo manager. It gathers photos from your local computer, cell phones, tablets, and any social services you are a part of. It uploads them in full resolution and then provides a web based portal and dedicated apps for iPhones, iPads and iPod touches. ThisLife automatically uploads in the background on iOS, and you can tell it to only upload when you are on Wi-Fi if you are watching your data use. On a Mac, there is an auto uploader that watches what is going into iPhoto and uploads images in the background, or you can do it all manually. You can also point the uploader to folders on your Mac and upload those. Families can have sharing, so all photos from all devices can be uploaded into a large pool -- or not -- as the user wants. Like iPhoto, you can tag the photos with locations and people names, and you can rotate, crop or delete individual photos or groups of photos. There are no other editing tools, so don't expect filters and some of the other tools iPhoto provides. On the web, or using the iOS app you get views of your library, people, places, stories, and a find function. Stories are photos grouped by theme. I tried the app on my iPad, and also uploaded about 2,000 photos from my laptop. Everything went smoothly. When I uploaded duplicates, the ThisLife software figured that out and only uploaded the highest resolution photo. Getting photos back is a breeze: any photo in the collection can be downloaded in full resolution to your desktop, laptop, or to your iOS device. The ThisLife system is not alone in the consumer space, but it does provide a more end-to-end solution. iPhoto limits you to Apple devices. Flickr and Google+ do photo editing and syncing, but they don't aggregate from other social networks. Once your photos are in the cloud, you can forward them to others, either singly or as a group. ThisLife supports adding annotations to photos, and you can even record a short voice clip. You can also order photo books, with the design and layout nicely automated by ThisLife. The automation and level of control with This Life is commendable. I never saw any bugs, and uploading was quite fast over my not-so-speedy DSL connection. Improvements? I can think of a few. There are small differences in the GUI between the Mac and iOS versions, so if you learn on one platform everything is not in the same place on another platform. While help is available using the web based portal, there is no help in the iOS apps. I'd also like to see the ability to change the size of the thumbnails in the web version. ThisLife only supports jpeg images, and a wide variety of video formats. Some people might be happier with TIF format storage or even RAW file uploads. Pricing is quite reasonable for the features offered. A free plan provides space for 2,500 photos. A $59.00 annual plan offers storage for 25,000 photos and video up to 100 GB. To sweeten the deal, you can get a photo book printed for free. A Premium service is $139.00 annually, providing storage for 100,000 photos and videos up to 400 GB. There is also a free photo book offered at the Premium level. Prices are quite fluid, but for a rough comparison SmugMug charges begin at $40.00 per year for unlimited storage, Flickr offers a terabyte for free, and Google+ is $120.00 annually for a terabyte. While all the services overlap, not all have all the features you may want, while ThisLife pretty much does everything. ThisLife is a powerful service for getting all your photos in one place. Vice President Erik Weitzman told me he was hoping to offer a reliable and easy to use service for families that have photos scattered over many computers and mobile devices. That goal is accomplished with ThisLife, and I think families and individuals will see this as a worthwhile solution. You can certainly try the free limited services to get a taste of how it all works, and of course the company is hoping you will find it attractive and sign up. I think many people will appreciate another option in the increasingly crowded field of photography management and storage.
Shutterfly to buy ThisLife photo archive and sharing service
Shutterfly has made a name for itself by offering a streamlined way for photo buffs to turn their snapshots into scrapbooks, calendars, prints and other products. Now the company has acquired ThisLife, a cloud-based photo-sharing and archiving service which offers both paid and free subscription tiers. Earlier this month, TechCrunch reported on a rumor that pointed to the impending acquisition, and it appears that those sources were spot-on. According to a press release regarding the deal, Shutterfly plans to use ThisLife's tech to further flesh out its product-creation process. "Consumers will be able to safely and easily preserve, organize and share their memories, regardless of where photos are stored -- from Facebook to Picasa to mobile phones," the release reads. "ThisLife's intelligent organization platform offers features like facial recognition and presents photos and albums in an elegant timeline for convenient sharing and product creation." Shutterfly already maintains an iOS app and ThisLife has promised that its own app is on the way for iPhone and iPad, so it will be interesting to see what changes are in store on that front. Shutterfly hasn't revealed the price for which it acquired ThisLife, but notes that additional details will be revealed in its next earnings call.
ThisLife rolls out iOS app, Mac uploader for family photo service (Updated)
Update: Here's the link that'll let you skip the queue. The cloud-based family photo manager ThisLife has been percolating in development for a couple of years, but with a new $2.75m round of investment and a fresh look, the service is almost ready for prime time. As part of the beta phase, ThisLife is offering both a Mac uploader tool for photos and an updated iOS app to help you organize and display your images or videos. ThisLife will happily ingest photos and movie clips from a slew of online sources (Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Kodak, Smugmug, Shutterfly, Picasa or Twitter), in addition to direct uploading with the desktop tool or simply emailing your photos to the service. The desktop uploader can optionally grab photos directly from iPhoto -- either all at once or individually, your choice -- or import them from SD cards as they're mounted on your Mac. Once the photos are loaded to ThisLife, the magic begins. The service keeps a Library of all your images, and you flag your favorites to be called out as Moments; the Moments are what make up your Timeline, the virtual scrapbook of your family. If you're trying to track kid photos over several years without getting bogged down in fifteen near-identical snapshots of the messy spaghetti incident, this is a big help. ThisLife also includes impressive face recognition, which will be familiar to anyone who's used the current iPhoto app; you knock out the faces that don't match, and ThisLife automatically tags recognized images with the person's name. Photos that are tagged on Facebook match up with ThisLife faces instantly, no manual tagging needed. The web app and the iOS app are both a pleasure to look at, with an uncluttered design and responsive viewing; the web app even lets you choose between Flash and HTML5 versions. Sharing options include giving a spouse or grandparent co-curator access to a complete set of images ("sharing your Life," and the service supports multiple Life collections); individual Moments can be shared by email or social networks. A more comprehensive Moment sharing model with persistent access is coming soon. ThisLife may not be a one-to-one replacement for MobileMe Galleries -- and with less than three days left to go before MobileMe sunsets, it's a little late to be looking for that at this juncture -- but it's got a solid foundation and an interesting approach to the challenge of managing family photos. The company was founded by a husband & wife team who simply wanted to organize their images, and the product remains focused on the specific issues of photos and family. Invite-only registration for ThisLife is ongoing, so you can sign up at the site (or check back here later today for a TUAW-only invite link that lets you jump the queue). The service is free for up to 1,000 photos or an hour of video clips; after that, plans start at $7.99/month ($79.99 a year) for 20,000 photos. Note: Commenter Jayne is concerned about the "entire iPhoto library import" -- please note that is optional, not mandatory.
