Monday, November 5, 2012

Kindle News: Amazon Cloud Drive Photos App for Android and Original Kindle Fire

Amazon Cloud Drive Photos - New app for Android devices and Original Kindle Fire

Oddly enough, the Kindle Fire HD is X'd out in the list of models served by the Cloud Drive Photos app.

  That would be because Amazon is planning to have the features of this app as built-in features, and some reports have said that's already available on the Kindle Fire HD.

  The latter isn't quite true yet, however.  Under the top "Photos" tabs (for photos either in The Cloud or on your Device), the only options showing today on a Kindle Fire HD (KFHD) when you long-press a photo are "Add to Favorites"..."Rename"...and "Remove from Device" although pressing the Menu icon will give you the option to  1) Email the photo to someone (or to a group);  2) Send it on to BBC News (!) or wherever via Flipboard, NFC Tapping, Skype, YouSendIt, and Evernote.

  I sent a photo from the KFHD to me in email to test the sending (there's a a separate email-send icon also), and you're given the From/To email form, with the photo already attached, do they've made it a very simple process.

  I suspect the new Kindle Fire Basic will also have the features built in (in subsequent software updates).

 If, however, you have the Cloud Drive Photos APP, which CAN be used by the ORIGINAL Kindle Fire, you can send photos direct to your free Cloud Drive.

The image at the top is a screenshot of the way the Kindle Fire HD shows representative photos from a photo set -- in this case some Wall Photos that were imported (via choosing the option) from my Facebook-Wall page  At the current time, the KFHD CAN download directly from the Cloud to just about any device just by long-pressing the name of the file on the Device.  The HD model just doesn't directly upload to the Cloud Drive yet.

  Sidenote: These few Facebook-Wall photos were of Yosemite.  If interested in seeing more of what I enjoyed this last year there during three visits in different seasons, you can see a Flickr-controlled stream of more photos from that beautiful place.  For automatically-larger photos, try the larger images if you want a better sense of what it was like to be there, and in other parts of the world.  And for some photos that'll inspire, I've collected favorites by others on Flickr.


Using the app with normal Android devices
I've used Amazon Cloud Drive Photos app with my Samsung phone.  The app doesn't offer auto-uploading of each photo taken (and I always choose not to do that because I don't want large photos taking processing power to go up while I'm still trying to take photos).  Also, I prefer to back up just the ones I'll use.

  It's great to have the free backup and transfer area for important photos, which you can view and share whenever you want.  Unfortunately, the sharing of files is done via one file at a time rather than showing people a full album.  The feature is more for fast, easy backup and for your convenience in managing the files.  You can back up a full album by clicking on it, but I've had a problem completing any album-send that is over 54 photos, so far, even though I have the Samsung Galaxy S2 set up to keep doing data activity in the background (especially since the phone goes to sleep in 10 minutes and tends to shut off WiFi during that time).

  Even then, when I tried to share viewing of one file at a time and used the link to the file, it showed up on my blog page only when I'm logged in (!)  I suspect it's because the 'sharing' is to one person at a time and not to 'the public.'

  When I do give someone the link for a shared photo on the server, it's not shown in full size. It's reduced to a smaller photo but the recipient has a highly visible link to "Download" the file.  For the lead photo in this article, which is just a screenshot (see how to do a screenshot) which I sent myself using the email icon in the side Menu of the "Photos" tab content, I used a regular photo hosting site.

Free Cloud Drive Space - Three different types
  1) ALL Amazon customers, globally, get 5 free gigs of Cloud Drive space to use for personal photos, documents, music that they didn't get from Amazon, and  2) Kindle device owners get an additional 5 free gigs of space for personal docs and non-DRM'd books from other sources, for which which Amazon will now provide annotations backup and will also sync the reading of these between one's several devices even though the books and docs don't come from Amazon).

  If you want even more space for non-Amazon items, $10 per year will get you 20 gigs of space.

  3) Anything you buy from Amazon gets automatically-free Cloud Drive space not counted against your space maximums.


If you have more information from experimention all this, I'd love to hear what you find. Thanks.



Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

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5 comments:

  1. Looks like it's only for US users.. :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jonny, for now, yes, thanks for the reminder.
    Amazon is requesting apps for Europe, so it shouldn't be long for that area. I have no idea of the schedule for other areas though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. How do I transfer photos from my Kindle HD to the cloud?. I have uploaded the photos via Eye Fi

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rick, I'm hnot sure what's going on here, as you say you've uploaded the photos via Eye Fi but that would normally be from a camera to the Cloud (to Amazon's servers).

      But it sounds as if you transferred photos from a camera via Eye Fi to your Kindle HD? I haven't used EyeFi and I would have sent it to the Cloud if I could via the Photos for Cloud app.

      At any rate Amazon has a Photos for Cloud feature. This link takes you to general info for moving photos from desktop to the cloud and then mentions the apps for doing this from your phone or from an Android device with a camera.

      In order to get this app, I've said ok to Amazon's offer shown when first pressing 'Photos' on the top menu -- to get the app by giving them the phone's number and then getting the links that result from that.

      This generally will let you get photo sets that you've put onto your Amazon Cloud from the phone that way or get photo sets you have on Facebook onto your Cloud and then accessible by your tablet -- but a side feature is that you can go to Settings aned automate it so that any photos on a device with a camera (like the HDX 8.9) will be uploaded to the Cloud automatically.

      At any rate, your phone or your desktop gets the app first and as a result uploads your photos directly to the Amazon Cloud and then they are therefore accessible for viewing on or for download to the tablet.

      If you want to transfer items from your tablet to your desktop (where they can be put on the Cloud as part of a Cloud-sync'd folder), you can USB-transfer them to the deskgtop OR (wirelessly) use WiFi Explorer Pro, which is downloadable from the Amazon app store.

      Does that help?

      Delete
    2. Rick, I didn't see that you were asking this question in this old blog entry which was all about the Cloud Photo app :-) Sorry about that. But since you transferred photos by Eye-Fi it still applies that you'd need to move or copy them to your desktop (or phone) to have them sent to the Cloud (at least on my 8.9" HD from last year).

      NOW, on my 7" Kindle Fire HD from last year, I have a choice under Settings/Applications/Photos to enable "Automatic Upload
      Save and secure your camera photos to Cloud Drive"

      But that automatifc feature isn't seen on my Kindle Fire HD 8.9" although it IS available on my new HDX 8.9" (for which I've not accepted a Cloud for Photos app yet.

      I've not found a feature said to be available for pure Android photo cloud apps -- where a long-press of a photo gives an option to send the photo to the Cloud -- and this again may be just for phones, but this HDX 8,9" HAS a rear-facing 8 Megapixels camera. *Automated* upload of any photo on the tablet IS active though if you turn it 'On' (which is the default -- and normally I'd turn that off).

      And strangely, as mentioned above, that automatic upload is available on my 7" HD tablet from last year but not for the 8.9" HD model from last year. Confusing.

      Delete

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