We recently held a “Cool Apps” contest to see how our talented Cloudian team might use object storage in creative ways. The goal was to create apps that are simple and interesting. Cloudian object storage is the ideal platform for this: our S3 API has many dev tools available, and the storage device itself can be configured and managed via scripts. Furthermore, we are currently in beta on an easy-to-deploy dev environment, so this was a great place to try it out.
Over this next few posts, we’ll share three of the submissions. We’d love to hear what you think.
One of the finalists was a simple web photobook developed by Toshiaki Tsurumi, our Technical Presales Manager.
Building the Photobook
The inspiration for Tsurumi-san to create his photobook was Cloudian’s Sales Kickoff in January. He wanted a simple and easy way to gather pictures from everyone into a clean photobook interface. With that in mind, he turned to Cloudian’s HyperStore software to do most of the heavy lifting. He utilized the AWS CLI, Bash, and JQ to create a simple script that calls the API every half hour. The script creates an .htm file by reading the metadata on each image. The photos are then backed up and made public on the web photobook.
Simple App With Huge Potential
Despite the app’s simplicity, the foundation leaves room for interesting improvements and sophisticated functions. The primary function of the app is to generate an .htm file, but with a bit more engineering, the app could add more metadata information, smart sorting, and photo merging.
Additionally, one of the key benefits of the app is that a user only needs to upload a photo to a specific bucket and three backup copies are automatically generated. This automatic backup, along with the customizable metadata tags you get with object storage, means that the photobook has the potential to be more secure and robust than many other current options.
Tsurumi-san’s cool new photobook is made possible through object storage and Cloudian HyperStore software. Scalable storage means the photobook can store an infinite number of photos, metadata tags means better organization and searchability, and easy backup means no photo will ever get lost. To learn more about how this is possible, check out our object storage overview or Cloudian’s solutions.
