Apps How save data externally?

[aston]

I am new to android and just started playing around with developer tutorials. I looked at appinventor and downloaded eclipse and got an intro android book.

I don't have the terminology down yet to make a good search for what I want to learn about. I want to create and simple app that stores info to an external location so all app users can update/access/view? A simple app which allows the user to add text info, snap a photo, and save in a shared online location. Then other app users can browse/search all.

I found in the appinventor the tinywebdb which allows for saving external data.
TinyWebDB - App Inventor for Android
This looks good for text. What about photos?

There are also tutorials available for using sqlite and true android programming. I suppose it may be possible to save photo to some web location like picasa albums or other while saving text to a db but that seems like it might be messy for programming and usability but it would alleviate database bloat.

I also have a mysql server which I have never attached to for anything other than web apps- perhaps I could use that for storage and sync or something?

I also noticed that Amazon has an android API for their web storage services too.
http://aws.amazon.com/articles/4225549089557252

I am looking for a relatively easy way to get me feet wet. I have to decide between using appinventor and learning java/android as well. Any tutorials or info to clarify options is much appreciated!

 

[SoftWyer]

I wouldn't recommended writing a service based around *you* hosting the data. There's too many issues around piracy, security, liability for content, etc.

The amazon service could be a way to go, if it allows users to share data. Google docs is similar, though I'm not sure what their api is like (or even if there is one!)

Perhaps the Unique Selling Point of this sort of app would be around finding shared data. A bit like hosting torrents for bittorrent downloads.

There's a few similar apps on the market already. Dropbox is one app that comes to mind for this sort of thing.

In fact, perhaps what would be cool is an extension to Dropbox that allows users to find shared files. There's an API for dropbox -> https://www.dropbox.com/developers

 

[aston]

Dropbox looks like an interesting solution to the photo storage problem. I guess with TinyWebDB storing text info I would have a starting point to work from.