Storiing Photos Online

Nicole, Uploading photos to a photo sharing website from an Internet Cafe is perhaps not the best solution. Here's a few points to consider: > Internet Cafes are not as prevalent as they once were (although you can still find them in some places). > Some Internet Cafes may be "reluctant" to allow USB Flash Drives to be connected, as that raises the possibility that viruses or whatever could be transferred to their PC's. > Most JPEG images are in the range of 3.5 MB, but if you have a lot of photos, it could still take a lot of time to upload the images. That's not a really good use of expensive holiday time (IMHO), especially when you're paying by the hour at a Net Cafe. What type of Camera are you using? Memory Cards are fairly cheap these days, and these can be stored in your Money Belt for "safe keeping". Are you going to be staying in Hostels most of the time, or budget Hotels? If you'll be using Hostels, be sure to pack along a robust and good quality Padlock for the Lockers (not too large). DON'T use the cheap TSA Luggage Locks for that purpose! If you'll be in budget Hotels, you shouldn't have any problems with having your "Backpack taken". If you do decide to use an online site, I would highly recommend SmugMug (odd name, but it really works well). I deal with this issue by packing along a $400 Netbook, which provides not only internet access and E-mail, but also a hard drive for photo storage. Most Hostels and budget Hotels these days provide free Wi-Fi. That's much more convenient than having to adjust my touring around the hours of a Net Cafe. I have quite a few Memory Cards, so even if the Netbook were stolen, I'd still have the majority of my images. Happy travels!

Finding an internet cafe to do uploading isn't a solution. If you pay attention, don't leave you backpack or camera sitting on a table, slung over the back of a chair, etc. they shouldn't be stolen. To assure non loss of photos is take a laptop and upload pics to on line photo sites like shutterfly, smugmug, or snapfish. Many online storage sites. Do it every night, like homework. As a back up take extra memory cards and don't erase them when you upload the photos. If you are really paranoid you could upload them and then download them to a flash drive. Acer makes relatively inexpensive travel laptops.

As recently as last year I was able to walk into an internet cafe in Paris, borrow the USB cable from the friendly skateboard dude at the desk, and upload my pictures to Flickr. Larger images took longer to upload, but since the fee was a measly 3 Euros for an hour, it was worth it. And I got to watch this hilarious gaggle of teenaged boys playing a wild interactive video game while simultaneously trying not to be seen ogling girls. Hauling your own laptop would work, too, if you want to haul your laptop around for 9 weeks. And laptops get stolen, too - probably more likely for that to happen than for a camera or memory card or pile of CDs to get stolen. You might want to consider springing for a camera with really ginormous storage. My cousin has one that stores so many pix he hasn't had to dump any off the drive for over a year. Oh - and review your pictures every night, and delete the ones that aren't stellar. That saves a ton of space!

If you do choose a camera with a huge memory card, you would be wise to bring more than one card so that at some time you can change out the cards so that you can save the pictures you have already taken just in case anything goes wrong with the camera or something worse.

If you are unable to upload your images and do intend to store the images only on your memory cards its much safer to use numerous cards rather than one card with tons of storage space..... cards fail and I would rather lose only one day of images than my whole trip. I travel with a small Acer and load my images into the computer daily. I also take an external hard drive (the Acer cannot burn DVD's) and use that as a backup.

Check into eye-fi memory cards. They probably do what you want. The issue, for me, is how much data do you have. I took 4,500 shots using RAW on my last month long trip. Too many to upload (Imho.) I take memory cards and backup to a netbook. I also keep them in different places (netbook in carry on, cards with me in inside pocket.) Good luck,keep snapping.