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Backup your Instagram Photos to Your Computer

Instagram has been a hot topic over the last couple of weeks. First added a lot more fans by becoming available on Android. That part was followed up by Facebook acquiring Instagram.

Not all fans of Instagram are happy about Facebook acquiring the company as they fear that Facebook will kill Instagrams independence and turn it into just a feature.

There are a couple of quick ways to backup your Instagram photos on your computer.

#1. Instaport

Visit Instaport.me and use your Instagram login credentials to authorize the app. Once we are done with the authorization the site shows a page which allows us to download photos in a .zip file.

The advanced options allow users to download all your photos, photos from a specific time frame and even all the photos you liked from other users. It also allows downloading upto 100 Instagram photos from a particular tag.

Link: Instaport

#2. Instagram to Dropbox

My favourite backup application is Dropbox. It works great with other websites and I use it to backup my Facebook photos automatically on my computer.

I like using this iftttt recipe that automatically backups my Instagram photos to my Dropbox account.

Link: Instagram to Dropbox

I personally like using the second option because it works automatically and behind the scenes but for more features using Instaport is great too.

Do drop in your comments.

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[TIP] Dropbox Doubles Free Space for Every Referral!

Dropbox only allows 2  GB free space when someone creates an acocunt. But getting extra space is not that difficult especially if you get a lot of your friends to signup as referrals. Usually each referral would get 500 250 MB extra storage space.

Dropbox has recently doubled up the storage space for referrals from 500 MB to 1 GB 250 MB to 500 MB.

I guess for cloud storage 2 GB is a lot but as many people like myself end up storing photos on Dropbox, having extra space which is free does not hurt. 🙂

Just sign-in to your Dropbox account and share your referral link on Twitter, Facebook and also in your Email.

Is this the Google Drive effect?

Dropbox might soon get a strong competition from Google. It is rumored that Google will launch its cloud storage service this April called Google Drive. Dropbox has the disadvantage of not having a captive audience but it has the advantage of not being platform oriented.

For example, I still know a lot of people using iPhones or iPads using Dropbox rather than iCloud. This is because they might have a laptop running on Windows which also is compatible with Dropbox.

If and when Google Drive is released, it will be interesting to see how things unravel between Dropbox and Google Drive. Do drop in your comments.

Link: Dropbox

Related: Automatically Backup your Facebook Photos on Dropbox!

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Dropbox Website Gets New Design and Photo Viewer!

If you are using Dropbox like I do, then chances are you have quite a few photos stored on it. It is a great solution to sync my photos across different devices and computers. Taking into account that more and more people are storing photos on Dropbox, it has recently released an update that allows users to automatically store photos from a camera to Dropbox.

Yesterday, Dropbox has introduced a photo-viewer on their website. This will allows users to view photos like a slideshow much like how they view photos on Facebook or Google+.

I cannot help but wonder if Google+ is now the web standard for photo viewing. 😛 It seems Dropbox has copied this feature just like Facebook did few days ago.

Some notable changes on the Dropbox website are also that it now allows right-click to open a menu. This allows easy options to copy, move or download files or even check previous versions.

Most Dropbox users will not really notice these changes as they use it from their desktop rather than the website but these changes will make the website interface very useful.

Do try out the newly designed Dropbox website and drop in your comments and views.

Related: Automatically Backup your Facebook photos to Dropbox

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Automatically Store Photos From Your Camera to Dropbox [Desktop]

Dropbox is ramping up its service in a big way over the past few days. For starters it has a new design for it’s website. It also has introduced photo-storing features from mobile phones and PCs. These new options by Dropbox are very important as soon it will face competition from Google and Microsoft with their own cloud storage and sync services.

Considering a lot of photos are taken from mobile phones, this could a make or break feature for Dropbox. It helps that Dropbox is not part of a larger company, which allows a lot of third-party apps to work with it. For example you can read how I use Dropbox to automatically store images from my Facebook account.

Dropbox (Beta) on Desktops for Connected Devices

  • Download the latest beta version of Dropbox and install it.
  • Connect your digital camera or mobile phone which has your photos. The connected device can be opened on Auto-Play using Dropbox. So make sure on your Windows computer, Auto-play option is not disabled.

  • Click on the Dropbox option and all the photos from your camera are transferred onto a folder on dropbox.

  • This folder is usually named “Camera Uploads”. Once you update your photos, you will get 3GB additional space.

Saving Photos from your Android phone to Dropbox

If you have a Android phone, then download the Dropbox App on it. This will automatically sync your photos from your phone onto your Dropbox account.

Mac and Linux users can also avail of the latest beta build from the forum link below, to photo-storing is enabled on their computers too.

Direct Download Link: Dropbox Beta (Windows) | Dropbox (Android)

Link: Dropbox Experimental Build Forum

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Automatically Backup your Facebook Photos to Dropbox

On my Facebook account, I have almost everyone I have known in my life. It also is a great place to keep in touch with family and friends who live far away. I often have some nice photos uploaded from my school days uploaded by some friend of my or the other.

Most friends of mine end up tagging me to these photos. I do like to download some of these photos so in case it is taken down, I can still have a copy with me.

I found this nice online tool which allows users to automatically backup photos they are tagged in to a designated folder on Dropbox.

I am using Ifttt, a neat website that allows users to create triggers to carry out actions. In this case whenever someone tags me in a photo, it will set off a trigger. The result will be that the photo will be downloaded into a folder on my Dropbox account.

FB_Photo_Dropbox_backup

Creating a Trigger with ifttt

  • First register with ifttt and look up the various recipes.
  • It has many that allows backing up FB photos to Dropbox. My personal choice was this recipe.
  • Now connect your Facebook account and approve the website to access it.
  • Then do the same with your Dropbox account.

FB_Dropbox_action

Now next time someone tag’s your photo on Facebook, it will automatically trigger a download to your Dropbox. Considering Dropbox is a sync service, I am basically saving all my tagged photos in the cloud available to me anywhere on any computer without necessarily logging into Facebook.

Try out ifttt and its numerous options to create triggers between various online webapps. Do drop in your comments.

Link: Ifttt | FB Photos Backup

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Enable Non-Dropbox Users Upload Files Into Your Dropbox Account

One of the main reasons why Dropbox is the best file syncing service is that there many 3rd party apps which enhance it, Dropbox has released its API long ago. A few file syncing services like Wuala haven’t released their API and this is a serious drawback.

DROPitTOme is a web app with which your friends can start uploading files to your Dropbox without even having a Dropbox ID, this is quite handy as no one will prefer to sign up for a site just to send some files to his friend.

DROPitTOme's personalized upload page

Features Of DROPitTOme

  • Receive files from non-Dropbox users and get notified (through E-mail) when a new file is uploaded into your account.
  • You get a personalized URL which you can share with your friends, your friends need to upload files there.
  • After you have authenticated the app, a new folder is created in your Dropbox account and all the files uploaded by your friends will be in it.
  • You can also set an upload password which your friends need to know to upload files. This feature is set to block spammers.

The service has one drawback is that the file size limit for uploading is 75MB but it is a  break from the traditional E-mail way to get files, a must have Dropbox fans.  Try this app and drop your opinions.

Link: DROPitTOme

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Download Dropbox 1.0 RC: Use New “Selective Sync” feature

I have used Dropbox for over a year. It is something everyone at work uses to store, backup and most important share synced files. At the moment Dropbox 0.8 version was still a beta version.

Dropbox 1.0 RC (Release Candidate) version is now out there for use.

If you were using Dropbox 0.8 beta then the features wont be very new for you but there are a few bugs fixed.

New features with Dropbox 1.0 RC

  • If you were using Dropbox 0.8 beta version then the changes are not too many. In terms of features and additions it is pretty much the same. Except there are many minor bug fixes.
  • The new feature out here is the Selective Sync. This allows selecting only certain folders from being Synced. Just look up “Selective Sync” in your Dropbox preferences.

Dropbox - Selective Sync Screenshot

  • Another great way to share folders is through creating a link and sharing it with others. This can be done from the Dropbox folder itself.

Some Disappointment!

The big disappointment with Dropbox 1.0 RC is that it does not have the “Watch Any Folder” option. This option is mainly a way for Dropbox to sync even outside the “My/Dropbox” folder.

Most final versions are pretty much similar to Release Cadidate versions and that means we will probably not have this function with Dropbox 1.0 in the future either.

When the final version of Dropbox is released is should automatically update on your computers. If you want Dropbox 1.0 RC right now, download it from their forums.

Link: Dropbox 1.0 RC

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Selective Syncing now on Dropbox [Experimental]

Note: Selective Sync is avaliable with Dropbox 1.0 RC version and is quite stable. Read about it here.

Dropbox is set to bring Selective Syncing to its users in the upcoming stable build. Currently this feature is enabled in the latest experimental build only. Most of us are know about this excellent tool to sync files and folders across different computers. To know more about Dropbox, I suggest you to read:

What is Selective Sync?

Earliers builds of dropbox sync all your data uploaded to dropbox folder on one computer to the other computer. Selective sync lets you choose the folders you want to synchronize to your computer. In a way, it provides the users with greater control over what is sync’d from one computer to other. This feature can be useful when you have limited space available on your system where sync’ing is to be done! More about Selective Sync.

How to use Selective Sync?

Currently this feature is only available with the latest experimental build of dropbox. To use the feature, you need to download and install it on your computer where sync’ing is to be done. Download the experimental build for Windows/Mac/Linux.

After the installation, let dropbox index your files/folders and donot pause in between. Now, follow the steps:

  • Right click on dropbox notification icon, and select preferences.
  • Click on advanced tab and click Selective Sync button.

The list of folders in your dropbox folder will appear in a pop-up window. Uncheck the folder that you do not want to sync on your computer. When done, click ok! Unchecked folders will be removed from your hard-drive.

This way, you can simply sync selected folders with your computer. The experimental build has worked fine for me, on Windows xp as well as Linux 10.04. Download and give it a try! Or you can use stable builds of dropbox and wait for Selective Sync to come to the stable build.

Links: Dropbox Experimental build 0.8.64 | Dropbox Stable build | Create an account.

Happy Sync’ing!