159 karma · joined September 3, 2008
Timeliner looks cool, but tools such as this are only suitable for the tech-savy crowd. I think there certainly is a market for these sorts of things, and PhotoStructure should be a good fit for those who want to keep thier data local.
Pixaver is targeted toward the vast majority of Google Photos users who don't have a technical background or the desire to maintain local physical backups. Backups running with just a few clicks and they don't to think about buying hard drives or fiddling with code.
As you mention, the data provided by the Google Photos API is sometimes not ideal. Geolocation data and some other metadata are omitted. Currently, only the "optimized" version of videos are provided. That said, our service is not meant as a replacement for Google Photos. We just want to be a way to get your images back if the unthinkable were to happen.
This came from my own necessity. I would occasionally use Takeout as my backup, but downloading more than 50 individual 2GB files was becoming pretty tiresome. Plus, that backup was obsolete the moment I added new photos to my library.
Maybe my workflow is different than others? Google Photos is the only place that all my photos live now. I have multiple devices connected, each sending files to the same library. I did’t have a full backup anywhere, other than the occasional Takeout download.
Agreed, one more monthly subscription not be right for some, but for others the extra piece of mind is worthwhile.
We’re Eric and Eric (or @shelkie and @karj) and we built Pixaver. It’s an app you’ll hopefully install—but never need to use.
Last summer, Google uncoupled Photos from Drive. When they did, I got a little antsy. I didn’t like the idea of all my photos being in one basket. (Admittedly, they already were, but this change broke any illusion of redundancy.)
So, I went looking for a backup solution, but they all involved too much admin. This led me to build something for my own use—and (of course) we figured there might be a product in there.
Pixaver (pic + saver, get it?) is so easy to use, anyone can put it to work.
You create an account, link it to your Google account, and you’re done. It does an initial backup of up all items, then automatically maintains an external backup of your Google Photos library as new items are added.
It doesn’t replace Google Photos in any way. It’s just added peace-of-mind. Let’s say you accidentally delete a bunch of images on Google Photos. Or, you lost access to your Google account. In either of those situations, Pixaver would offer a way to recover your images.
We soft-launched a few months ago. Then we applied to the Google Photos Partner Program (in part for more API calls). That has now been approved and we’re ready to accommodate more users.
If you have feedback, questions, or criticism, we’d love to hear it. :-)
Email notifications are on by default, but you can toggle them in the alerts area. Alerts certainly need more work too, as does the people page. The nav bug is on our task list already.
I hear what you're saying about Mongo. Hoping that Meteor will have additional DB options after 1.0 is released.