New company offers picture-perfect online solution

BOULDER – Call it fate. A venture capitalist lost his entire digital photo collection – not once, but twice. Then he learned about a young company in Boulder that could help him prevent a third disaster. And, yes, he handed over money to help that same company get off its feet.

Brian Devenny, a public relations executive in New York City who works on the account for the company, said the venture capitalist prefers to remain anonymous. Nevertheless, it was an obvious picture-perfect relationship.

The Boulder-based company, which launched in August, is called ProtectMyPhotos.com. It stores and protects electronic photos and other documents like movies and music on the Web, in some cases for free. But the typical package allows customers to backup 40 gigabytes, enough space for roughly 40,000 photos, for $39.99 a year.

The free account comes with some limitations, namely photos will be low resolution. But for $39.99 customers get unlimited storage of pictures at full resolution in several kinds of formats including MP3 and WMA and JPEG. So if a hard drive crashes, ProtectMyPhotos puts all of the files back where they were.

Users simply visit the company’s site and download a utility that gives them two options: “set up photos for protection” and “restore my photos.” If users choose set up for protection, they can opt for an “automatic discovery” option or a “custom folder” choice. Auto discovery will scan an entire computer and back up every photo file.

And that’s it. Users never have to do anything else to back up their photos. Even new pictures are automatically uploaded behind the scenes. A broadband connection is recommended. Uploading 20 gigabytes, for example, could take a while with a dial-up connection.

Restoring photos to a computer takes just one click. Plus, pictures may be downloaded to any computer, not just the one that was used to upload them. Photos can be accessed from any Internet-connected computer.

This service is in demand because of the increasing interest in digital technology, and because in no time shutterbugs can amass many gigabytes of holiday, birthday and new baby shots.

One of the company’s founders, Boulder-based entrepreneur Cliff Shaw, said most people don’t have physical copies of a lot of the files they have on their computers. Research has found that that 97 percent of computer users would “feel distraught” if they lost personal photographs; yet only 18 percent regularly back up their photos, according to “Digital Imaging Study: Sharing and Storing Picture and Video, July 2005″ from CEA Market Research.”

Further research found that more than 29.5 million digital cameras are projected to be sold this holiday season, and given that only 18 percent of digital camera users back up their photos, there’s a spacious void in the marketplace.

Industry insiders say there are many reasons people don’t back up their data regularly, primarily because it’s boring, tedious and sometimes difficult for lay users. Many people are not even aware that losing data is common.

Some reviews of ProtectMyPhotos.com say its simplicity is a major strength. “We want to be the easiest way to back up your photos, movies, music and documents than anything else on the market,” Shaw said.

Competitors include Carbonite, Mozy and Sharpcast. However, Devenny said Sharpcast is limited to 2 gigabytes, that Mozy is “complex” to set up and that Carbonite has no online viewer.

The company has gotten plenty of good publicity in tech trade pubs that has led to “literally thousands of users” signing up in just a two-day span. Blogs also have aided in the word-of-mouth success.

ProtectMyPhotos is offered in 14 languages. Company officials said many markets (such as China and South Korea) are significantly underserved, and are growing many times faster than the U.S. market. According to Devenny, because the company is privately held it would not release financial projections.

Today the product only works with Windows, but Shaw said Mac support is just a few months away.

And reportedly “major partnerships” with “a top retailer and a top photo editing application” are near as well. Devenny confirmed that ProtectMyPhotos has plans to grow through partnerships, original equipment manufacturers and direct-to-consumer marketing.

“Partnerships are currently in negotiations with several brick and mortar retailers to establish point-of-purchase displays offering a free trial with digital camera purchase,” Devenny said. “In addition, ProtectMyPhotos is also in discussions with hardware and software distributors for potential partnership opportunities.”

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