Where to store jpegs and gifs online

July 30, 2010 7:10 AM

I have a bunch of funny/interesting/neat pictures that I've accumulated over time from the internet. Rather than storing them all locally on my harddrive, any way I can do that online for free? (This question could also be expanded to other filetypes, like word documents and music files, so if you have suggestions for that, please post them as well.)
posted by Busoni to technology (14 answers total)

I use Dropbox for this very purpose.
posted by nomadicink at 7:16 AM on July 30, 2010

Although Dropbox is very useful, you'll then be storing them online and locally. It's a sync service, not a cloud-only service. Deleting them locally will delete them in the cloud.
posted by sharkfu at 7:27 AM on July 30, 2010

Flickr.
posted by goethean at 7:35 AM on July 30, 2010 [1 favorite]

You could do this with a combination of Picasa (by Google) for photos - upload once and then delete locally if desired, Google Groups for I think any kind of file, and Google Docs for Word docs, Excel files, and maybe others (let's you open/edit and not just store). There's some overlap between Picasa and Groups and between Groups and Docs in terms of intent and funcitonality, but it can all be tied to the same Google account. If you've already got Gmail, all the better.
posted by Askr at 7:36 AM on July 30, 2010

Do you want to keep them so only you can see them or do you also want to share with others? I realise that would not work for docs and possibly music though.
posted by markx2 at 7:38 AM on July 30, 2010

Flickr is for your own stuff, not stuff that you've collected and are putting up. They actually go after people too if it's reported.
posted by theichibun at 7:44 AM on July 30, 2010

If you want to share:
What about Tumblr? It would store them (although probably in a compressed, lossy format) and allow you to share them if you wanted to.

Flickr will give you 100MB of uploading free each month, and it will only let others see your most recent 200 pics, but you'll be able to see them all.


If you don't want to share:
I'd second using your Google account to full advantage. I think you only get 100 MB total on Picasa, but between Docs and Mail, you have lots of space. Docs lets you upload any file, but you can only edit/view certain types.
posted by soelo at 7:46 AM on July 30, 2010

Sign up for a Google Mail account, email them to yourself. They will live online forever in your inbox.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:07 AM on July 30, 2010

Right, these are random images, not my own photos. I have no problem with sharing. I guess I should have limited my question to pictures, but I got a little greedy.

I guess tumblr might be a way to go, but I remember someone had an account on a site for just this purpose, and he had a a gallery of pictures (not original content) he'd culled over time.
posted by Busoni at 8:22 AM on July 30, 2010

I'd use Photobucket for the images, and Dropbox for everything else.
posted by seikleja at 9:00 AM on July 30, 2010

This might do it: drwr.it

They even have a bookmarklet that allows you to post directly from a page when you come across something interesting, which preserves the link to the original source.
posted by ella wren at 10:10 AM on July 30, 2010

I recently started using evernote (www.evernote.com), which has a chrome extension, and makes it very easy to clip many things from the web, make notes, and organize them. They have a free and premium version... like I mentioned, I only started a few days ago and can't speak much of its limitations, but I'm liking it so far.
posted by lacedcoffee at 11:17 AM on July 30, 2010

Seconding Dropbox. You don't need to install the client and manage files locally if you don't want to, it's just one of the use cases.

You get 2 GB of storage for free, and a whole bunh of useful features (controlling what you share) as well as public gallery type functionality. You can either buy upgrades, or hand out referral links, the latter of which will let you get up to 10 GB free (if people don't mind being pestered and sign up.)
posted by rodgerd at 3:03 PM on July 30, 2010

To anyone who's reading this, the website I was thinking of turned out to be imageshack.us. But I guess something like photobucket or picasa would work as well.
posted by Busoni at 2:45 PM on August 11, 2010