Internet question
 

I'm hoping to be able to e mail digital photos to my children during the weeks that we'll be gone. Should I take my laptop, or will the internet stations available in hotels and cafes have the necessary software?

Should have clarified that most of our six weeks will be in Italy.

I don't know about smaller towns, but I had no problem finding net cafes in the cities.

It's easy to find netcafés, but... will they allow you to load photos..?

As a followup, if one were to download images to a CD in a photo shop, could one then use the CD in a netcafé to email photos..?

Many ISPs routinely strip large attachments, such as the typical jpg file, from email, so you will want to check with your childrens' ISPs as to whether what you propose will work. I've also read than many internet cafes do not allow usb connections; I don't know if they would object to pictures loaded from a CD; they might want to run a virus scan before allowing you to do it, or they might just have no cdrom drives on the rental boxes.

I think burn to CD, and then use that CD to upload is your best option. Attaching to e-mail inevitably is slower and consumes more bandwidth than just uploading to something like Yahoo! briefcase.

I have never heard of the practice of stripping large attachments (like .jpg files) but if you e-mail to yourself (on Yahoo mail, there is now 100 Mb storage) - - then you know the minute that you send that the file has successfully "entered into cyberspace" - - in the sense that it can be retrieved by looking in your own "sent" file. This would work even if the attachment was "stripped" before it was sent (to yourself).

Best wishes,

Rex

Check out www.ofoto.com. This website may very well solve your problem. My nephew in Afghanistan regularly posts his photos there and our far flung family can all access each roll as he posts them.

If you can have your photos burned onto a CD why don't you mail them the CD. That will save you the problem of trying to upload to a computer in an internet cafe. You can include some trip notes with the CD.

<<why don't you mail them the CD>>

Kinda misses the point of electronic photography, doesn't it?

1. Puts the entire collection of photos at risk for becoming damaged or lost.

2. Is slow.

3. Shares them with only one recipient (in fairness, so does e-mailing to a specific individual).

All of these are the same reasons that traditional (analog/print) is slowly losing its appeal to enthusiasm for digital. Not that there aren't counter-balancing reasons to hang on to traditional film photography.

But web-based distribution (Ofoto, Starfish, Yahoo! briefcase, many others) is the logical extension to the instant share-ability, preserve-ability of digital photos.

Hi Rex,

I don't own a digital camera so I'm going to ask this question in response to your answers - do you mean that you can only take the photos off the digital card one time and put them on one CD? You can't copy to a CD? There's no opportunity to make multiple copies of a CD with digital photos so they can be mailed to multiple people? That's weird!

As to slow...I'd rather not spend my vacation time in an internet cafe. I have enough of computers during the 48 weeks of non vacation time. Who cares how long it takes to mail the CD; most people aren't interested in other people's vacation pix anyway. Also, I believe Fed Ex has two-day delivery to the US from Europe for those people who are in such a hurry.

Multiple issues here:

<<do you mean that you can only take the photos off the digital card one time and put them on one CD? You can't copy to a CD?>>

No, I do not mean that. Sure you can make multiple CD's at the original burn, or later. And you can copy from one CD to another. But if burning to CD means that you wipe out (erase or shoot over) the original memory card in your camera - - then you have one single "original" - - that CD, vulnerable to loss or damage. Just like having negatives from film, with no prints and no other way to replace them.

<<As to slow...I'd rather not spend my vacation time in an internet cafe. I have enough of computers during the 48 weeks of non vacation time. Who cares how long it takes to mail the CD; most people aren't interested in other people's vacation pix anyway.>>

I agree with you. It was the post from travelnut that suggested that there is merit to getting pictures to the recipients WHILE the travelers are still traveling - - not my contention.

I quite agree: what's the hurry? - - though it does serve a similar purpose as sending postcards - - to share the experience, and say "we are thinking of you".

But to e-mail .jpg files as attachments as a way of "storage transfer" seems a less satisfactory method than uploading to a "sharing" service - - that was my only point.