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What is Grove Street?

Grove Street is a free web site that allows you to create digital photo albums. Because these albums are on the web, they're a lot more fun than traditional photo albums. You can share the albums with friends, if you wish, and add titles and descriptions to each photo. You can also search for pictures -- in your albums or across all of Grove Street -- to find all of the photos that have something in common.

What can I do with Grove Street?

Just have a look at the features page.

How do I get started?

Jump right in. You can browse public albums right away, to see albums that other users have made public. But soon, you will want to register. Registering lets you create your own albums and access other features. Plus, it makes us happy.

How do I get my photos onto my computer?

Scanners and digital cameras can both produce files suitable for posting to Grove Street. (The Tips page provides some guidance on where to buy a scanner or digital camera.) Many photo labs also offer the service, providing a disk or website with your photos.

How do I get my photos into an album on Grove Street?

Once you have created an album, you can use the Add A Picture page to upload photos one at a time. If you plan to add more than, say, 20 photos, you might want to try the upload applet. The applet is a Java program that lets you drag-and-drop pictures to initiate uploading. More information is available on uploading.

Grove Street wasn't working yesterday. Whom do I sue?

First of all, this baby's is in constant development, so it works when it darn well pleases. Second, it sounds like you need to re-read the Fine Print.

Can I link to my photos on Grove Street from other sites?

You can link to web pages on Grove Street, but not to image files directly. The links to image files change every hour, so any links that you copy and use in another site will return "file not found" shortly thereafter. We had to do this because so many people were using Grove Street purely as an image server (for sites like ebay, discussion boards, and personal sites), consuming far too much of our limited bandwidth.

Are there any limits on how many pictures I can upload?

Yes. I had to implement storage and bandwidth quotas to keep the site up.

I'm a nerd. What can you tell me about the site?

Because Grove Street is in development, it changes a lot from day to day. But some things are relatively constant. The site is database driven, so nearly all of the HTML is prepared on the fly using Java Servlets and JSP. Grove Street's web server is Apache, running under Linux.

Why is it called Grove Street?

It sounds good. It's a very nice street in the West Village. It's where Rich lives.

Who are you people?

Grove Street is the creation of Rich Carr, with page design and other support by Josh Auerbach. Rich and Josh welcome your comments and suggestions, at rich@grovestreet.com and auerbach@grovestreet.com, respectively.

Will Grove Street start charging for service?

Grove Street will always try to offer a free service for sharing albums online. However, with the failure of some other for-profit online photo sites, there has been a great increase in users and pictures at Grove Street. At some point, I may need to limit growth in order to keep the site sustainable on my meager paycheck.

The most likely scenario for the future would involve two levels of service: free basic service and non-free premium service. Premium service would probably include higher storage quotas, FTP upload access, and more.

What happens if Grove Street goes out of business?

People have asked this question, and I want to start by pointing out that Grove Street is more "hobby" than "business". As such, I make no guarantee of continuing service or warranty regarding the site. No pictures should be put on Grove Street without being backed up elsewhere. However, if Grove Street does ever shut down, I will make every reasonable effort to make your pictures available to you (most likely by making them available by FTP).

Will my account ever expire?

Users that do not log in for more than one year may have their accounts terminated and pictures deleted. As long as you keep returning to the site at least once per year, your pictures will not be deleted.

Related topics: About Grove Street, Features, News (recent), The Fine Print, Tips, WebTV and Grove Street

Last updated: 7/29/2006

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