Sure, plenty of ISPs sell extra disk space to users who store their photos online, but one software developer thinks ISPs should ask customers "Want some software with that disk space?"

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [February 10, 2005]

Winterthur, Switzerland-based FutureLAB has a photo management system called FOT-O-ZEN for ISPs that has been available for about a year.

The company produces open source Linux-based software for ISPs. In 2003, we wrote about its Arteria OSS system.

"We're using RedHat Linux for the current implementation," says Matthias Aebi, the company's CEO.

"We designed the whole system to be very modular," he adds. The modules are divided into five action-defined sections: upload, edit, organize, use, and publish.

FutureLAB supports two implementations of its software. ISPs can either pay FutureLAB to use the company's servers (a managed system) or license the software and purchase their own hardware (a hosted system). In the managed system, each customer gets 2 GB of storage.

Unlimited storage is available for an additional fee. The largest collection on FutureLAB's system, Aebi's, contains 30,000 images. Since each account also has two complete backups for each image, a 2 GB account requires 6 GB of disk space.

Action
Ease of use is the focus of the system.

"The software that comes with digital cameras is worthless," notes Bill Harshbarger, FutureLAB's director of business development. The import channel supports a client for the user's digital camera that is designed to make it easier to download images from a memory card and then delete them from the memory card.

The system can also import images from a camera-hone, received e-mails, as well as a variety of other sources.

Images are uploaded by date into folders on the left hand side of the screen (to see the system in operation, take a look at the video tutorials). The user can then click and drag them into user-named folders on the right of the screen (in the tutorial, Harshbarger created a folder he called "shoebox" for images that did not yet fit into any category).

A search function operates by searching through image names, dates, and categories. The company is working on adding a function that will search the image itself. An early feature might be as simple as a search that finds duplicates.

For editing, the system saves the original image and never deletes it (which, Aebi says, is a significant advantage over the competition). Edited images are simply saved as records of the changes made, and take up only a few bytes over the storage required for the original image.

Popular edits include removing redeye and auto-correct. Photos can be shaped into polygons, circles, and ellipses. "We go further in this than anyone I know," says Aebi.

The use and publish modules (we're not clear on the difference) allow subscribers to send images in an e-mail, send e-cards (even according to a calendar, so you don't forget those birthday cards), produce slide shows for online viewing, download, print to a lab, and print to a .pdf booklet. "Here in Europe," says Aebi, "a printed and bound book with pictures in it is a popular use of digital pictures."

More modules are in development. "We're working on one that allows to you store images of things you want to sell on eBay and add words you want to say about the product," enthuses Aebi. "Pictures are stored on FOT-O-ZEN and integrated into eBay."

Digital images users, Aebi feels, are frustrated that they need many different pieces of software. They would prefer a single piece of image management software like FOT-O-ZEN.

ISPs need to offer services like this, Harshbarger says. "ISPs want people to store their data online and become wedded to them because of this. ISPs want to be a boutique for users. I see the storing of digital images as becoming as important as e-mail."

Pricing and availability
FOT-O-ZEN is available now from FutureLAB. As a managed service, the product is priced starting at about $3.50 per month per subscriber (it is priced in Euros). Each account gets 2 GB of storage plus two complete copies of each stored image (up to an additional 4 GB). Unlimited accounts are also available.

The hosted service, run on the ISP's hardware, is available for an undisclosed fee that includes a one-time license, source code (not for resale), and own branding and customization, as required. Aebi estimates that the hardware required would cost an ISP about $100,000 for a fully redundant implementation serving a large number of subscribers, or $50,000 for a redundant implementation starting out serving a smaller number of subscribers.

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