Railfan Technology > PotoStick Question

I have seen ads for a product PhotoStick.

It claims to be able to searh your devices and locate all photos stored anywhere on them.

Has anyone used this, and does it work as advertised?

It appears to be a good solution for keeping track of ones photos.

OCV

It looks like a gimmicky gizmo aimed toward people who, for whatever reason, don’t manage their photo files on their own. Something grandma might buy.

My iPhone photos automatically upload to the cloud, and are then available on my computers. It’s very handy.

I imagine Android phones have a similar option available, with uploads to a Google service.

I manage files from my real cameras manually on my computer.

I don’t think Photostick would be helpful in my workflow.

Posted from iPhone

OCVarnes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have seen ads for a product PhotoStick.
>
> It claims to be able to searh your devices and
> locate all photos stored anywhere on them.
>
> Has anyone used this, and does it work as
> advertised?
>
> It appears to be a good solution for keeping track
> of ones photos.
>
> OCV

Did a quick research, and I can make educated guesses on what the gimmick is without spending any money.

Photostick makes money on selling surplus smaller capacity USB sticks (around 32 GB) with adapter. Their "value add" is the software that searches your device (PC, Smartphone, whatever) and copies them to the USB stick.

However, the software (and the programmers) has to know ALL existing image formats (more than just JPG, PNG, TIFF, GIF) to be able to find ALL photos on your device. It's possible they might NOT know some of the cameras' RAW filetypes in which case Photostick might miss some photos. Software is NOT magic, it has to be told what to do.

All PCs (Windows, Mac, Linux, others) provide tools to search specific files on your device anyway, so you don't need Photostick for that. Furthermore, folders like "Photos" are premade by file managers (Finder, Windows Explorer) to encourage you to be organized to begin with! Can't speak for Smartphones (don't have one) but I suspect iOS and Android provide similar tools.

Beginner programmers (the "script kiddies") can write software to search and copy files, and it can be customized for files other than photos (videos, PDF documents, etc) so most computer geeks won't need Photostick. They can better spend money on better USB sticks, or use other media like SD cards

At face value, Photostick's gimmick is legit, but if you are THAT disorganized, you deserve to give them money for your own bad habits. :-)