Ever since I got my first digital camera as a present from my colleagues when I left Evolve Software back in 1999 I have rarely printed out hardcopies of photos. Maybe once or twice to frame a few, but I definitely never bothered with a traditional photo album. It wasn’t until my new brother and sister-in-law gave my new mother-in-law a really cool looking photobook that I became interested. Digital publishing has really advanced and the price point is compelling enough that I took the plunge to create a few photobooks of my wedding and honeymoon. It helped also that there was a 2-for-1 offer (those who know me will tell you that I love a great deal)!
Anyhow, I ended up using MyPublisher which required a download of a fairly hefty client. My lovely wife also later tried Shutterfly which didn’t require a client download. Being a fan of the cloud and SaaS, I was hesitant at first to have to download the Mypublisher client, however once I started using it I really appreciated the “hybrid” approach vs. the completely SaaS-based Shutterfly.
By having a client program on the same machine as my photos, I was able to very quickly make changes to the book I was designing. In other words, having a dedicated local processor rather than relying on share resources for editing in this case was the way to go. With Shutterfly it required me to upload all 300 photos I intended to chose from before I could even get started, I soon lost patience with this approach. In contrast MyPublisher allowed me to make all the edits I wanted on premise via my PC and as the final step, before I purchased and ordered the book, it had me upload the information where it optimized and processed my book in the cloud. Then it was off to the races with MyPublisher even sending me a link to the cloud version of my book, even though it didn’t allow me to make any last minute changes 🙂
SEE THE FINAL ONLINE VERSION OF THE BOOK HERE
This consumer based experience lead me to think how a hybrid approach can similarly benefit corporations with their IT strategy as well. It’s not correct to say that any application should be all cloud all the time, nor is it best to stick with traditional on premise applications. But rather it depends on the use case and technologies available that should define the optimal solution.
Try out MyPublisher.com and Shutterfly for yourself and you’ll see what I mean.
P.S. As a side note, if you want to create a photobook for someone who lives far away (e.g. outside of the USA), try using a local service and you’ll naturally save on shipping charges. For example I used Photobook Singapore for my Mom and the shipping from Malaysia (which is where they sent it from was just $12 SING). In this example you are really using the power of the cloud and having the physical book created closer to it’s destination.
P.P.S There are of course many other options like Ofoto (now Kodak Gallery) which I haven’t tried, but since Costco recommends MyPublisher (you get a 20% discount if you are a Costco member), you can bet they’ve done their homework on which service works best for their members, that’s a strong endorsement in my book. Also generally you can do better than 20% discount, as of writing MyPublisher was offering 2 books for 1 coupons but that might just be for the holidays. Generally it pays to do a Google search for MyPublisher coupons to see what the latest offers might be.