Cloud storage has been hailed as one of the most modern innovations of our time: it allows you to back up your photos under an account that you can access should your local photos on your mobile device disappear or be deleted accidentally.
Some people think cloud storage is everything and more for customers, but a number of consumers see the situation differently. What happens if one’s Wi-Fi router dies, malfunctions, or is struck during an electrical storm? If one cannot access his or her LTE data, how can cloud storage photos be accessed? Cloud storage is a neat innovation, but it seems to only work if one is “always connected” to the Internet.
Mobile Photos Sync to Offline PC
Storage-agnostic service Odysee says that its new “adventure” (pun intended) is to solve the challenge that cloud storage dependence poses. You could choose to take advantage of Google’s unlimited cloud storage or Apple’s iCloud Drive services (with fees after the first 5GB of cloud storage), but Odysee provides a third option: you can save your photos and videos via your local memory storage on your PC.
The idea, created by Raghavan Menon and Shiva Javalagi, was born out of the current birth and rise of smartphones. “After they were born a few years ago, I found that walking around with a smartphone meant 100x more videos and photos captured. People used to just capture the big moments; with an HD camera with us all the time, we capture everything, all the time,” said Raghavan Menon. Menon’s own experience resulted from the birth of his children. Any parent who has children knows how important and desirable it is to capture each moment, every moment.
With his children, Menon says that he wanted both he and his wife to be better able to share the moments they captured on camera. What they discovered, however, is that they had to always use their smartphones to show the photos or videos to each other. And, when they shared photos and videos, they had to share them from cloud storage if they deleted them from the local memory storage on their smartphone(s). Cloud storage has become such a convenience for many – but it also creates a dependence on mobile. Menon wanted to change that while creating a local backup situation that would integrate both mobile devices (smartphones) and stationary devices (desktop PCs).
Menon’s decision to create Odysee not only pertains to his own experience with his children, but also with most consumers: “19 out of 20 people archive their videos on drives or computers at home,” but they can’t share them across all devices with family and friends. Most mobile devices only permit multi-device syncing and sharing within a given operating system; for example, Android devices can share photos and videos via NFC and Android Beam, for example, but Android users cannot cross-share with iOS users unless they adopt a Dropbox, Box, or other cross-platform cloud storage service. Apple’s iCloud Drive remains exclusively available for iOS users.
Primarily a PC Backup Service
Odysee is first and foremost a PC backup service that is free for the first year but will cost $5 a year after Odysee gains 3 million users to sustain the service. The $5 a year fee you’ll pay pertains to the syncing capabilities, not storage – since you’re using your own PC computer storage for photos and videos.
Odysee has a winning idea in pushing for mobile videos and photos to have local memory storage on desktop PC devices. While PC and mobile have their differences, it’s also true that they can work together rather than apart. While some hard-core PC advocates would have you believe that one is “either” a PC user “or” a mobile user, the truth is that we live in a world where one uses a PC at home for productivity and a smartphone on the go for productivity so as to have work (and play) everywhere at all times.
Over time, Odysee looks to offer photo and video backup storage options for not only desktop computers but also cloud storage sites and offline storage providers. “Our vision is to be a thin layer in the cloud that ties together all of your storage devices, capture devices and viewer devices. We are storage agnostic,” according to Menon.
Odysee is available currently for iOS and Windows OS via a desktop app, although Odysee plans to provide a Mac desktop app by the end of the year and is currently testing an Android app for the Google Play Store. Odysee has raised $750,000 in angel funding and is working towards its dream of storage convenience no matter the device.
