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A Family Collaboration Server?
esobofh asks: "I'm interested in putting together a server for my family that would allow everyone to share & store pictures, movies and music. Whenever we have a family gathering, there are always a ton of digital cameras out and clicking away, so I'd like to have everyone share and submit the pictures and movies they've captured for everyone in the family. I am sure I could roll my own collaboration server, but I'm hoping there is something already put together and pretty. I'd like it to use standard files and directories for storing photos (as opposed to a database), that way the files can easily be moved and manipulated. Is there an application that can handle user accounts, picture submissions (file upload via browser), and other such content?"
Gallery2 is nice, albeit a bit resource intensive when scaling down pictures to thumbnails using the 'convert' app.
The above is most likely humour. Slashdot foot icon goes here.
I tried a wiki.. and what you and I consider easy to use and the masses who aren't really into tech consider easy to use still has a big gap. They said it was too confusing.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I use a gallery2 on my server. Check it out here : http://gallery.menalto.com/
I've been pretty pleased with it. Add in a wiki for letting other family members post miscellaneous stories and whatnot. I found it easy to setup, and it does everything I need.
Allow me to give you a Microsoft based solution (open sourced though!). http://communityserver.org/Default.aspx
Blogs, forums, files, photos, RSS feeds, role based security, etc. I use it to host a site for all my old college friends. The SQL server database is quite happy on both of the free MS SQL offerings, Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) and SQL Express. Only the blog and forum postings and settings are stored in the database. The files and photos are stores in the file system.
Since most of the unwashed masses have Windows, you can use its built-in WebDav stuff. Set up an Apache server with a DAV directory. Then point your friends/family to the URL for the folder, which they merely need add to their "Web Folders." They need not know the underlying protocol to be able to use it. They can then just drag their images and videos onto the folder, and Voila! They are published. It's a no-brainer, and anyone who can drag an icon can use it.
On Linux, Nautilus can do DAV, too. I wouldn't be surprised if KDE had desktop support for it, also. DAV makes a nice small file server, when Samba or NFS won't work.
Perhaps this Ask Slashdot- "Multi-State Family Networking?"-from May 31, 2006 has some replies that will assist you.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.