I have tried a few cloud storage options. (there are some great ones) Mega seems to offer the most space for free (50GB), Google Drive and G+ are solid options as well- but the problem with iPhone is that in order to actually backup your photos you need to either
A. have an app running in the background constantly watching your camera roll (not a great option for an already battery hungry phone.
B. Remember to start an app that claims to backup your camera every so often. Problem with that is if you forget to for a few weeks, you have one giant upload waiting for you. (if you are like my wife, and take many photos! :)
There are two ways to go about this. The very involved, mostly web-based, super-nerd way. And the less involved, desktop app way. We'll look at the mostly web service way first.
Things needed (all free)
Dropbox account
Flickr account
Icloud on PC (or mac)
ibeam.it account
Belvedere File Manager (or alternatively, create a .bat file that Windows Task Scheduler can run that will delete files in a folder..more on this later!)
Setting Up iCloud
In order for any of this to take place, PS (photostream) has to be brought to a comp first. Sadly, even though PS is somewhere in the interwebs, Apple doesn't appear to provide access to it other than an iDevice or a PC/Mac iCloud client.
Assuming everything is setup and good to go, first step is to change your PS folder to a dropbox folder in windows. (anytime photostream is updated- it will automatically go to dropbox)
Sidenote: delete folders to shared streams (if any) as they are unnecessary to the process, and take up a lot of space.
PS will only update on WiFi, also, I had some issues with it at first (wouldn't really start syncing on the windows side) until I took a photo on my phone- that seemed to kick it into gear.
Once your PS is consistently going to dropbox on your pc- move on in the process. (Don't worry about dropbox running out of space, this will be addressed later)
Setting Up IBeam.it
I was initially using an ifttt recipe to move any file it saw come into dropbox, over to flickr. Unfortunately, it has an upload limit of 15 files per upload, and runs on intervals of 15 minutes. If you bust the 15 cap, the entire recipe dies, and needs to be deleted and remade (ugh.)
This led me to ibeam.it. A similar service to ifttt that is somewhat odd at first, but definitely gets the job done.
After creating an account, you publish a beam. IE: "Every time I save a photo to drop box...."
This is all you do on your end as the initiator- you are then provided a link. Other people (or you) can visit that link to subscribe to the beam with a service of their choosing. (in this case, flickr)
Ibeam.it will then poll your Dropbox every 5 minutes- if it sees new photos, it will push those photos to the beam's subscribers.
The service's Limitations should be enough for any iPhone camera user. I would say they're pretty generous for being a free service.
Auto Erase
Once you have this system going, photos being downloaded to Dropbox, uploaded to flickr. One obvious problem would be the eventual running out of space on Dropbox.
I circumvent this by having the dopbox folder auto erase at 3am every night. This can be done...
1. With Belvedere. (program has to be running though)
2. Writing a .bat program that you can have Windows Task Scheduler run every day.
That's pretty much it! What should be happening is every picture you take is being downloaded by iCloud to Dropbox folder, Ibeam.it sees it go to dropbox, and uploads to flickr every 5 minutes. With a Terabyte of free storage, this should create a pretty massive photostream.
The less involved desktop version is downloading Photosync and having icloud store PS photos in it's folder, as opposed to Dropbox. This app claims to watch that folder and upload to flickr- haven't tested it out myself yet.
A few stipulations:
1. This is most beneficial on a comp that is always on (think: server.)
2. This isn't a great backup option per say, (there is no organization being applied to the uploaded photos) but rather, a way to have one GIANT photostream for after the photos are off the phone (and beyond what actual Photostream currently offers)...automatically.
3. The "staging area" doesn't have to be Dropbox, Google Drive may be more beneficial for this.
4. If you go the flickr route, may want to set your account to private by default. (it's set to public initially)
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