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MillimeterSwiss Picture Bank and SnapHaven
Dec 9, 2009 12:00 PM, By Dan Ochiva
Swiss protection for images.
The services are hosted in data centers operated by Swisscom IT Services, a leading provider of IT infrastructure to Swiss banks. Price: Consumer: 300 images for $9; Special one-time offer: 10 days to upload up to 10,000 pictures for $25. Professional: 20GB for $340; 100GB for $1,600
Many of us have dreamed about having a Swiss bank account (well, maybe those tax shirkers who were outed recently wish they hadn't). If you're thinking about the long-term value of your photographs however, you might want to look at the Swiss Picture Bank or its consumer side, SnapHaven.
These two online services, which launched the first week of December, allow you to upload images for a modest amount to store them in multiple encrypted copies throughout data centers in Switzerland. (It's actually a relaunch of the Swiss Picture Bank, which debuted in another version last year.)
While the company is mum about plans to add video to its back-up offering, having a secure way to store photography will appeal to ad agencies and production companies, which often must keep stills used in commercials long after a campaign is finished. For indie producers, you can tout this as an added service to placate nervous investors, since the company states that you can download them at any time when you need them.
But the two operations take it a step further to address a concern I've heard expressed before: What happens if the company goes out of business?
They've got you covered there too because they work with a group called the Foundation for Data Permanence, a Swiss nonprofit institution "devoted to keeping online data safe forever." Well, the PR person who explained this to me said the guarantee was for 99 years, but who's counting?
In any case, the foundation acts like a trust fund, according to the company, and will take over management of your image assets should the public portion go out of business.
You make a one-time payment, with no recurring fees. The pro version allows downloads at full res; consumer images are compressed.
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