German firm develops a software to erase photos online

A German firm, X-Pire, is all set to launch a software that allows users to have photos uploaded to websites such as Facebook, MySpace and Flickr erased automatically after a certain time.

The software can prevent the increasingly frequent occurrence of someone being refused a job or running into other embarrassing difficulties after posting a photo that should have been kept private.

On a more practical note, the software will especially be of great help to professionals like engineers, designers, painters, artists etc. who require to show their latest creation to the prospective clients or readers. Although, it will not protect users against third parties downloading their pictures and saving them (a feature that would have made the software become revolutionary); but still "give demo and purge after one hour arrangement" will attract many professionals.

How the German Firm makes the photo vanish after a certain time:

Before the user posts the photo, he or she drags it into the programme which assigns it an electronic key that is valid for a limited time period. When the time expires the photo vanishes. If someone wishes to view that photo later, the server checks whether the photo has "expired" and blocks it from being displayed if its time is up.

Is the software useful:

The software tries to cater to an area where most social users (btw all people in general) are laid back to act. Most Facebook users, for example, are passive users. They go on, they put on a lot of private information and almost never come back on or they forget their password. So even when a social network user, has the option to delete the uploaded photographs, they never do so. Only to repent when they get some backlash resulting from those “once uploaded” photographs. The software is especially useful for such people, who always wanted a "upload and forget” arrangement for their online photographs.

Availability: The software will be available in next few days at a price of 2 euros (2.61 dollars) per month.

Our view: 30 dollars a year, is not bad, if it saves you from the effort of manually removing your “once oploaded” pictures. Regarding more practical uses, if the software helps a professional safeguard him/her from Intellectual Property Threat, then 30 dollars is nothing but dirt cheap.

The utility can also be of great help for those professionals who have to show their assignment specific self or work images to Agencies and businesses. The professionals like fashion models, photographers, designers etc. By using X-Pire, they can set a time for said photographs, under which they expect a response from the Agency or the Business, If the Agency doesn’t call under the set time, the photographs will be erased; even when the person forgets to manually remove them due to his/her other engagements. --------

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