Ayan - The Official Guide to Mylio: Mastering The Next Generation Photo Management System

Table of Contents

Dedication

For my father, Kim, who sparked a lifelong love of photography.

Foreword

by David Vaskevitch,

Founder and CEO of Mylio

Former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft

Jordan Ayans book is a gift to all photographers. By sharing his keen insights and infectious enthusiasm, he helps all of us who have growing collections of precious pictures to take a critical step forward.

The digital photography revolution and when you think back to the days of film, you realize just how much of a sea change it is is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it is almost unimaginably easy to take great pictures, and many of them. The smart phones we all carry are so much better than even the best instamatic from the last century. Even middle-of-the-road SLRs, carried by millions of consumers routinely, take better pictures than the high-end Hasselblads of just a few years ago. All of that is a blessing.

But the number of pictures we all take, without even necessarily thinking, is a kind of curse, too. In the old days, dealing with all my prints, slides and negatives was a small and annoying problem. Today that problem has been multiplied many fold and is with us all the time. Take the camera roll on your phone, that same phone that takes such great pictures. The camera roll only gets bigger and bigger and eventually becomes more than we can handle. Several times in the past month or so, friends have set out to show me a picture on their camera roll and literally given up when they just couldnt find it.

In the past fifteen years, I have become friends with many professional photographers, including a few famous ones. Repeatedly Ive heard that what they really love is taking pictures, and that increasingly, the rest of the process is just work for them. Since Mylio became real, Ive started to hear something different: Mylio is putting the fun back into photography. Yes, fun is coming back, and for both the complete beginner as well as the advanced pro, and in similar ways for both.

All of this brings up another way in which digital photography is both a blessing and a curse: our digital workflow. In the old days, there was no real workflow for most people. Shoot a roll of film, have it developed, and then decide what to do with the slides, negatives or prints. Developing may have gone away but a whole new set of digital tools has taken its place. Thats where Jordans ability to see into the future is such a gift for us all.

Steve Jobs pointed out that you cant drive a car if you only look in the rearview mirror. His observation was intended to make product designers realize that they need to see past the ways people have used products in the past and consider completely new approaches to problems and products. The same observation applies to all of us as photographers.

It is so easy to grow accustomed to a particular way of doing things. Change is time-consuming and often difficult. And most people, when they are considering a new product, tool, or process, continue to act like drivers who only look in that rearview mirror. Jordan is different, and that makes him a great guide.

As he says, Mylio truly creates a new category of product. It is designed to solve problems we all have but that nobody has ever solved before. This book sees it all clearly and provides a great roadmap for moving into the future.

As the founder of the company, I cant help but brag a little. So, let me spend a minute to talk about the core problems that we solve, that Jordan caught onto right away, and that this book will help you take advantage of.

Mylio is about three things. We sometimes abbreviate this to everything , everywhere , and always . Lets take those three words separately.

Everything refers to bringing all your pictures, wherever they are, together for the first time, so you can organize them, work with them, share them and just enjoy them. Wherever they are includes the camera roll on each of your devices, on your hard disk, and on social media platforms like Facebook or Flickr, no matter how many of them you have.

Everywhere means getting your pictures on all your computers and devices simply, transparently, automatically, even magically. It means being able to work on pictures on your iPad on an airplane, and then pick up where you left off in your hotel room on your notebook computer, then showing the same pictures on your phone, and later having them all just be there on your desktop computer at home. Everywhere refers both to the fact that your pictures are on whatever device or computer is at hand, and the fact that you are unchained from your keyboard and your screen so you can work on pictures in your dentists office, in a taxi, in your home, or wherever you are.

Always is motivated by the fact that our pictures only become more valuable as time passes. For that reason, Mylio protects your pictures for you all the time, with no thought or effort necessary on your part. Your pictures are always automatically safe. Mylio can actually protect your pictures when theyre in the cloud or when theyre stored somewhere else. If your library is not too large, and you feel comfortable with your pictures in the cloud, by all means buy storage from us and the rest happens from there. On the other hand, if you want your pictures fully protected even if something happens to your house having Mylio running at another location your office, a friends house, a cottage or a ski cabin still gives you complete protection while ensuring that your pictures are all yours.

Doing all that and quite a bit more in a single product is a big challenge. How would anybody even know a product feature is there? Thats Jordans last gift to us all. He brings it all together and explains it in a fashion that makes entry into this world fast, easy and painless.

Everybody whos developing a really new product, like Mylio, wishes for somebody like Jordan. Were glad hes here and I am sure you will be too. Thank you for this book, Jordan.

Acknowledgments

I have to acknowledge the people who know what it is like to live with a passionate photographer: my wife Jan, daughter Ashley and son Christopher. For the many times they have been patient when I said just a few more shots.

I appreciate the support and input from the Mylio team. Especially David Vaskevitch, Kevin Gilbert, Craig Symonds, JP Duplessis, Moshen Agsen, Momin Al-Ghosien, and the absolutely incredible Mylio support team of Jess Lampe, Matt Vollet, Raiza Abubakar.

There were many people who reviewed the manuscript at different phases and provided great feedback, especially several of the todays leading photographers, including Scott Kelby Tamara Lackey, Joe McNally, Helene DeLillo, Moose Peterson and Chase Jarvis

I also want to thank long-time friend and editor, Rick Benzel, who spent many hours helping perfect this book, as well as Phil Jamieson and the team at Proofread Now who were responsible for making sure grammar, spelling and consistency were correct.

Preface

Mylio The Photographic Game Changer

Did you ever stop to think about why you take pictures? There are probably many reasons you could give to answer that question, but they all come down to one key motivation every image taken is a moment of your past preserved. A split second of captured light that may or may not be viewed again for years, but whenever you look at it again, it triggers a precise memory.

In essence, we all are trying to preserve memories when we click the shutter memories of a time in our life that was meaningful to us. A photo is a physical manifestation (or at least a digital one) that preserves a moment in time. It is sad, but sometimes cherished family memories face strange endings. One of the saddest I have seen was a large bucket of images, which to someone had been cherished memories, for sale at a flea market. A handwritten sign above them asked, Why not buy some Instant Relatives?