Happy Valentine's Day to all of our MiMedia blog readers! We hope you enjoy sharing your love with others today. To help you get in the spirit of Saint Valentine, we decided to share a little love of our own with you. We pulled together a lovable music playlist from our MiMedia account that we plan to listen too all day long.

1. "Let's Get It On" - Marvin Gaye
2. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" - The Beatles
3. "Just The Way You Are" - Bruno Mars
4. "Bless the Broken Road" - Rascal Flatts
5. "Let's Stay Together" - Al Green
6. "Kiss From a Rose" - Seal
7. "The Way You Look Tonight" - Tony Bennett
8. "Always On My Mind" - Willie Nelson
9. "At Last" - Etta James
10. "Everything" - Michael Buble
11. "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" - Elton John
12. "Love on Top" - Beyonce
13. "When I Fall In Love" - Nat King Cole
14. "All My Love" - K-Ci & Jojo
15. "Have I Told You Lately?" - Rod Stewart

What does the Valentine's Day playlist in your MiMedia online media storage account look like? Tell us below.

There are many consumer cloud storage services out there, but how do you know which one is right for you? To help you evaluate the current options in the marketplace, we pulled together a few questions you should ask yourself and your prospective cloud storage provider before you wholly commit to a service plan.

1. Will my files be backed up in real-time? Scheduling routine backups can be a pain. Look for a cloud storage solution that has real-time backup capabilities. That way every time you download a song, add a picture, or save a document, that file can be automatically backed up over your broadband connection.
2. Will I be able to locate my files quickly and easily? Ever have to riffle through file after file, search bar after search bar, just to find the one home video you wanted to share with your friends 20 minutes ago? Look at the organizational structure of your potential cloud storage account. Does it logically organize your data by file type or date saved? A good way to know whether or not you jive well with a provider's interface is to take advantage of available free trial offers.
3. Will I be able to upload all of my files? Let's get real: not all of your digital pictures are JPEGs, and some cloud file storage providers don't support every image file format. Look for a provider that supports multiple file formats of all types of digital media.
4. Can I access files on my smartphone or tablet device? Given the social tendencies of today's mobile society, we know you're not always sitting at your computer when you want to view your personal photos or listen to your favorite music album. Make sure your cloud services allow you to view your files on the go.
5. Can I get started using the service without any hassles? For those of you that have a seemingly infinite number of photos, videos, music files and documents, the initial upload process can often result in computer slowdown, bandwidth hogging and file size limitations. Look for providers that offer alternate ways to get started using their services. Convenient onboarding methods, like MiMedia's free, patented Shuttle Drive service, ensure a fast and easy initial backup of all your files.

** DEADLINE EXTENDED**

Ooh la la... love is in the air. That's right, folks, Valentine's Day is rapidly approaching; and to show our love and appreciation for all of the MiMedia users out there, we'd like to celebrate with you this year. No, we don't mean sharing a romantic candlelit dinner for two or a mountain cabin weekend getaway. Rather, we want to celebrate the love you have in your lives with a Valentine's Day photo contest.

Planning a romantic proposal? Buying your mother the biggest bouquet of flowers anyone has ever seen? Enjoying the most lavish meal of your lifetime? We'd love to see your favorite photos from your Valentine's Day experiences this year.

Here's how the contest works:

1. Share your favorite Valentine's Day 2012 photo from your MiMedia account by sending a private email link to MiMedia@lewispr.com by Friday, February 24. If you don't already have a MiMedia account, you can sign up for free here.
2. We will upload your photo to our "Share Your Love" Valentine's Day contest album on our Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/MiMedia
3. MiMedia Facebook followers will be able to vote for their favorite photo in the album by "Liking" the photo. You can vote for as many photos as you want, and don't forget to encourage all of your friends to vote too!
4. Voting will be open from 11:00am ET Tuesday, February 28 - 11:00am ET Monday, March 5. We will announce the official winner on our Facebook page that morning.
5. The winner will receive a $50 Amazon gift card and 1 year subscription to a 250 GB MiMedia Premium plan ($149 value!)

Keep in mind that MiMedia has the right to deem any photo inappropriate and will use our discretion when selecting photos for participation in the "Share Your Love" contest. Only photos shared from a MiMedia account will be considered.

Happy Valentine's Day and good luck everyone!

P.S. Remember, with MiMedia's desktop software your precious photos (and all your other media) can be backed up automatically to the best online storage around so your precious memories are always protected!

Attention all MiMedia blog readers! We've spent the past couple of months enriching our blog content in an effort to help you make the most of your experience using MiMedia's cloud storage and backup services. We hope you enjoyed our posts on tips for keeping your pictures and videos secure and creative ideas for your holiday photos. After all, online media sharing and storage is what we know best, and now we'd like to hear from you about what you know best!

We know MiMedia users are photographers, videographers, musicians, bloggers, moms and dads, and we know you all have talents and expertise that the MiMedia community could benefit from. Do you know how to solve digital file format problems? What is the best free video editing software? What are the craftiest projects you can do with your children's' birthday party photos?

We want all of you to get the most out of your MiMedia account and that starts with becoming involved in the MiMedia community. If you'd like to share your expertise and advise, please email your name, contact information and blog post idea (2-3 sentence description) to MiMedia@lewispr.com.

Thanks in advance for helping us continue to build a lasting community of digital media enthusiasts! 

You just took a great picture on your phone of your group. Or how about you just got back from vacation with a camera full of scenic photos. Thinking about these scenarios, where is the first place you would go to share your photos?

Our guess is many of you are thinking about your online social networks. While it's quick and easy to upload and share your photos with your family and friends via social networks, it's important to keep in mind that there are potential privacy and security issues.

Taking a look at social networks' privacy guidelines, you'd be surprised to learn that once uploaded, your personal photos could become the social network's property. Some social networks even have the right to feature any of your photos on their home page. Do you really want your personal family memories being shared with the world?

It's time that people take back control of their personal media shared on social networks.

Reviewing the privacy guidelines is a first step. Many social networks give you the option of adjusting your settings to only share information with certain groups of people.  For example, you can create a family group with Grandma, Uncle Fred, and Cousin Sally, sharing personal images only with them.

However, if you are not comfortable with the privacy settings, another option is to simply not share the media you wouldn't want anyone but your closest friends and family to see. Another possibility is to join another social network, or find a new way of sharing your personal photos. For example, with MiMedia you can send a private email link to friends and family so they can view your photos. If you want to share the photos with more individuals, you can also easily share photos and videos to your favorite social network newsfeeds.

If you have already shared your photos, and do not have copies of the originals, there are ways of downloading all the photos to your computer--from there you have the option of removing them from your social network and storing them elsewhere.

In the end, it's important to remember that these are YOUR photos, YOUR videos and YOUR memories--make sure you are always in control of your digital media.

The online community is abuzz about privacy this week--from the now mandatory Facebook Timeline to Google's privacy policy changes. There is no doubt the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) selected the perfect week to host its annual awareness initiative aimed at promoting an individual's right to protect their personal information--Data Privacy Day 2012.

Although the official Data Privacy Day is slated for this Saturday, January 28, this morning U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner Julie Brill and other privacy leaders discussed the responsibility of organizations to operate securely and protect consumer privacy rights in "The Intersection of Privacy and Security."

In case you missed out on the live streaming event on Facebook this morning, we thought we'd pull together a few of our own tips for making sure you stay safe online.

• Understand the privacy policies of the organizations with whom you interact online. This includes social networks, online backup solutions, cloud storage providers, email clients, etc. The more you know, the better armed you'll be against accidently releasing a private photo or video you never meant to upload publically.

• Do not reveal personal information inadvertently. Know when you want to use your real name versus a pseudonym. Only give your personal information to websites you trust.

• Beware of websites that offer some sort of reward or prize in exchange for your contact information or other personal details.

• Do not automatically consent to the collection, use or storage of your personal information without understanding what they will be used for.

• Talk to your friends and family about online privacy. The NCSA has a great resource for how to talk to your kids about staying safe online.

If you'd like to keep tabs on Data Privacy Day, check out the NCSA's blog here: http://www.staysafeonline.org/blog

We'd love to hear your thoughts on online privacy too. Do you have any tips to share? Any changes you'd like to see organizations make in their privacy policies? What are you doing on Data Privacy Day to make sure your friends and family know how to protect themselves online?

Viral videos like Charlie Bit My Finger can be fun and humorous, but not every family wants their home videos to become the next YouTube sensation.  Moreover, public comments from strangers can often be hurtful or unwarranted, and you never know what will end up as a 90-second segment on Tosh.O. For those of you looking to share home videos privately with close friends and family, the private cloud is your friend.

Here at MiMedia, we let you easily upload your photos and videos in just one click and share by emailing a link to your friends and family so that the whole world doesn't see your most intimate moments. The folks you share with will be grateful when they're not required to sign up or register for anything too. They just need to click on your link, sit back and enjoy!

A categorized video library also makes it easy to keep your videos organized for easy streaming. MiMedia keeps your videos sorted by galleries, date taken, or title it makes it easy to select any video you wish and watch it instantly on demand. High quality streaming capabilities ensure your videos always look sharp in either small or full-screen mode. This can make all the difference when sharing some of your most treasured moments with friends and family.

So the next time you're itching to show off your latest home videos but you're not ready to broadcast your life to the entire world, consider using a proven secure cloud-based service--like MiMedia--to share with the ones you love. 

MiMedia, provider of consumer online backup and file storage services, today announced the company has received a patent for its premier Shuttle Drive service, a hard drive based solution to the lengthy process of backing up data to the cloud.  The Shuttle Drive service complements MiMedia's lighting fast broadband uploads.  MiMedia's Shuttle Drive is an encrypted portable hard drive sent directly to customers, eliminating bandwidth clogging and reducing total backup time to a few days as opposed to the weeks or months it may take when backing up large amounts of data over an internet connection.

MiMedia recognizes that computer networks are typically built with more capacity downstream into the home, than upstream into the network.  This is especially true for residential connections.  The result is an "upload bottleneck," the comparative slowness experienced when uploading data to the cloud versus downloading it.  The patented Shuttle Drive service (Patent 8,090,690) eliminates this bottleneck by providing users a quick, easy, and secure onboarding process for digital files of all types and sizes.

MiMedia's Shuttle Drive is fully encrypted and sent via Priority Mail directly to customers that request it during the sign up process.  Customers simply connect the drive to their computer and MiMedia's software automatically and securely backs up encrypted copies of their files directly onto the drive.  When complete, customers return the drive to MiMedia using the prepaid shipping label and the files are automatically placed in the customer's account.

The entire process is competed in days--versus the weeks or even months it would take the average Shuttle Drive user (96 GB) to upload over a broadband connection. The Shuttle Drive service can handle up to 1TB (1,000 GB) of data and is free for MiMedia Premium subscribers.

"As digital media continues to grow at an exponential rate, MiMedia is dedicated to providing effortless and secure onboarding of files into the cloud to the everyday user - proven by our commitment to patent the Shuttle Drive," said Erik Zamkoff, Founder and CEO at MiMedia. "Cloud backup and storage continues to be a effective way to secure and protect your digital life and MiMedia is focused on making it as easy and practical as possible for anyone, regardless of their network speeds or the amount of data they have."

It seems that with each new smartphone release, the cameras are getting better and better. In fact, many camera phones have lenses ranging from 5 to 8 mega-pixels (there are even two phones on the market with 12 mega-pixel lenses).

But are your personal photos and videos truly secure on your mobile device? We've pulled together a few tips for keeping your images and videos secure on your mobile device.

Back Up Often. Mobile devices can be great for taking photos on the go--but with limited storage space (and the possibility of getting left in cab or at the playground), it's important to back up your photos and videos on a regular basis. Most mobile devices provide simple back up your photos and videos to your computer. From there you can also back these photos up in the cloud with the help of MiMedia.

Password protect your phone. This may seem like a simple tip, but in the event that you lose your phone, a password could keep a stranger from browsing your personal photos and videos.

Look at your app permissions. When downloading apps, many of us accept the permissions without a second glance. Be sure to take the time to read these permissions to ensure apps are not able to access your photos or videos.

Beware of unsecured Wi-Fi networks. When cell service drops, most smartphones will allow us to join a Wi-Fi network to continue browsing the web. It's important to remember that some Wi-Fi networks are not secure, and without the proper security settings, others on the network may be able to access information  your phone or tablet.

Access your photos and videos from the cloud. The MiMedia Mobile App will give you one-click access to your entire personal media library. Not only does this provide you with infinitely expanded storage capacity for your mobile device, it also means that even if you lose your phone your photos and videos are safely stored elsewhere.

Have another tip to share? Add a comment below.

If you're anything like us, you've got more than leftover turkey and champagne from the holiday season. You also have stockpiles of photos and videos of lighting the Menorah, teaching the little ones to bake gingerbread cookies and even Crazy Uncle Rob's annual Christmas Karaoke routine. But what can you do with these memories to keep them alive now that the holiday season is over? 

First of all, we encourage you to back up your photos in a secure cloud. Not only will this relinquish space on your camera and computer to collect even more memories, but it also means your holiday photos will be stored safe and sound for years to come and be accessible on any device. We've also got a few creative ideas of how you can leverage simple technologies to create everlasting digital memories.

Construct a digital photo collage. Use a photo-editing tool like Adobe Photoshop, GIMP or Windows Live Photo Gallery to cut out your favorite portions of an image to create a large collage that includes all of your family members together enjoying the holidays. You can even crop your photos on the go with mobile applications like Skitch and Snapseed.

Write a book and relive your story. For many of us, the end of the holiday season marks a 12-month countdown until our next massive family gathering or tropical vacation. Why not relive your holiday memories by playing them over and over again for your friends and family in a slideshow or swipe-through presentation? Short multimedia albums--like those created on BookSmart--allow you to combine photos, text, sound and video clips to create a story or interactive scrapbook about your holiday experiences from start to finish.

Send a keepsake thank you note. Go the extra mile to thank family and friends for the gifts they gave you this year by sending photos of yourself using or enjoying these gifts. Apps like Postcard on the Run make it quick and easy to snap a photo, add a personal message and send to any mailing address. Just remember to upload your new photos to your online storage folder!

We hope you enjoyed our fun ideas for you holiday photos. Do you have any suggestions we should add to the list? Share them below!

The MiMedia Team