cloud – Page 3 – Backerjack

Flink photo frame shares pictures instantly over the cloud

The Premise. Sharing photos becomes easier almost every week. The digital revolution continues to streamline the process through smartphones, social media, and sites dedicated to photo sharing, but can the process be made even simpler?

The Product. The Flink Cloud Photo Frame is designed to take digital photo frames to the next level with simple usage and cloud-based storage and sharing. Using their mobile app and proprietary sharing site, once users have decided who to share with and what photos to share, frames around the world can be updated with new pictures as they’re taken. With an 8 inch, high resolution touch screen and only one physical button on the frame, crisp, beautiful photos of friends or loved ones can appear at any time of day free of complex technical knowledge or cumbersome updates. The Flink app also works to import photos from Facebook or Instagram accounts, and later updates look to introduce slideshows and audio/video sharing.

The Pitch. Patrick Ho, one of the three founders of the Flink, walks viewers through the simple process of using a Flink, then ups the ante later down the page with a video of the prototype uploading a photo to the frame in less than a minute. Campaign photos include the evolution of the frame’s design and some key details that clarify how the product will be operated. The Flink Team is hoping to raise $80,000 to help prepare a server base for storing and transmitting photos, complete manufacturing, and get FCC certification.

The Perks. With a May 2014 delivery date, all backers at the $99 pledge level will receive a Flink Cloud Frame and unlimited storage space on the Flink photo site. At twice that cost, the frame can be personalized, and at the $250 tier, a wooden frame cover can be substituted for the black or white plastic versions.

The Potential. Can the digital picture frame by reinvented from the ashes of products such as the Kocak Pulse? Flink bets that mobile is the key. Once a hot holiday category, other digital photo frames with cloud connectivity are already on the market. The companion app makes the process a little easier for the Flink to single out specific photos specifically for sharing, but overall there isn’t much to this product that will change the marketplace, and little to distinguish it from its competitors. Electronic stores could easily carry the Flink, but for the most part, smartphones and tablets have stolen much of the appeal of the digital frame.

Pixeom keeps your files in the cloud, you in the loop

The Premise. These days, it seems just about every company out there wants you to keep your files in their “cloud,” or share and collaborate with your friends and coworkers using their tools. But whether you pick Google, or Microsoft, or Apple, or Adept, or Box, or Amazon, or some other random cloud provider, where is your data stored? Who really has access to it? And what happens when they have an outage? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could store your own data, and still get all those benefits of cloud collaboration, without having to set up your own massive server farm?

The Product. “Take back ownership of your data,” say the developers of Pixeom, a cloud-in-the-palm-of-your-hand device that makes it practical for consumers to host their own server appliances. The securely encrypted and hugely expandable gizmo can stand on its own as an entirely private sandbox for you and your friends to play in, or can join a global “personal exchange network” of Pixeom devices talking to one another.

The Pitch. Pixeom’s brother-and-sister creators use their pitch video to talk about the benefits of storing your information yourself and hosting your own apps and discussions. They’ve developed hardware based on the Raspberry Pi embedded Linux platform and software to match, and they’re looking for funding to get from the prototype stage to full production of their device. Among other tasks ahead is to optimize the software for better performance.

The Perks. The interesting rewards start at $75, where you get the Pixeom software on an SD card to install on your own Raspberry Pi device, and for $125 and up you can pick up their Raspberry Pi-based hardware when it’s ready. Bonuses for higher pledges include faster hardware, a 1 TB external hard drive, and even user interface and exterior design customization, topping out at $5,000, which nets you a VIP invite to their launch party.

The Potential. Google, Apple, and Dropbox have all provided the kind of cloud service that many consumers want, where they don’t have to think about where it is, how much it costs to run, or what to do if a component fails, and don’t mind trading away their eyeballs for advertising or their loyalty to an app ecosystem. The little product has predecessors in the likes of PogoPlug, the Connected Data Transporter, and connected hard drives such as the WD My Cloud. Still, particularly for open source advocates, Pixeom is a compelling product for consumers and small businesses who want a little more control over where their stuff is, don’t want to commit to a particular company’s apps or ads, and don’t mind putting a little effort and attention into maintaining such a service for themselves.