Anyone using Dash Trains for Train Inventory?

Hi.  I'm on the DASH team.  You can find lots of information, video tutorials, etc on the site (look under the FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions).  While we know things aren't perfect and we're constantly improving, I can tell you that thousands of people are using the site to manage their collections (more than 50,000 in people's collections to date.)  You can contact DASH on the site with specific questions too.

Note to anyone from OGR - I'm just trying to help out this guy's question on a free feature so I'm just trying to be generally helpful.

- Bill

Actually I like the service. I really didn't have much of an inventory list prior to using them. Please note in their terms and conditions they can use one of your photos to promote their site. You can make your Dash Site Private and I would assume a lot of people do. I have quite a large public profile on the site.  Dash does function better on Explorer than Firefox. Take a look my Dash page.

http://shar.es/FePPT

Scott Smith

I don't for 2 reasons.  First is I have absolutely zero interest in ever selling my trains. Once they are in my fold they stay there no matter what, unless going to a good cause.  From my brief look at the site when I was looking for inventory software it looked to me that it is mainly geared for ease of selling.  Second, which Scott alluded to, is that their terms say that by adding images to your inventory that you are giving them permission to use those images however they see fit with no compensation to you.  As an amateur photographer I have zero desire to let anyone use my photos like that without expressed written permission from me.

Now the disclaimer, it's been a while since I looked at them, and these things may have changed.  But since I went to a spreadsheet and it's been working really well, I have had no need to update my look at other inventory options.

I would like to use the inventory applications but it was to slow.  I would like to take a picture of an item with my iPad, type in the data quickly and have it uploaded in 1-2 seconds.  When I tried with my laptop and I have a high speed internet it was taking 5-10 seconds without a picture.   

I plan on using it so that when at a show / auction I do not purchase items I already have. I also will use it to maintain my wishlist.

No way. IMHO, they cannot guarantee the privacy of the information.

Privacy is a big concern of mine as well.  If Target and other large merchants can be hacked, who can guarantee the security of anything stored in "the cloud".

Thank you everyone for the replies.

Scott, I appreciate the link and being able to see how the collections are displayed - very helpful.

Hopefully Bill is still following this thread. As a photographer, and as a general principal, I am put off by the T's & C's of DASH. There is the issue of using my images for your marketing purposes and a perhaps even bigger issue with the phone app giving  DASH permission for information I would rather not share.

I like the product, I need the product, I can't buy the product given the above two sticking points. I'm sure it will work for others and maybe I'm too paranoid about various App's, but that is how I look at this right now.

Bill, I hope you don't take this as bashing your product, rather as a platform for ways to make tweaks to your offering and significantly increase your target audience.

Paul

Paul:

I think that you summed this up very well.

Hi folks.  Thanks very much for the feedback (thoughtful feedback like yours is something I'd never consider 'bashing'...it's really, really useful).  A couple of comments:

About our T's & C's.  In creating our T's & C's we literally evaluated the terms of other very popular, related sites and tried to compile the agreement borrowing from their legal expertise.  So, you will definitely see the fingerprints of eBay, Facebook, Etsy, Flickr and other sites in our T's & C's.  All of these sites have a section of their terms that talk about how they can use info you post to their sites. From my reading, it is to protect their liability from people who would post content and then claim compensation for it's display, use, etc.  In other words, it seems to be a way to blanket avoid liability for people's submissions, and that seems smart in a world where people can (and do) submit gobs of who-knows-what content and try to concoct legal claims from the use of it.  The language just says that the sites can't be liable for submitted content.

From the DASH standpoint, I think it too seems prudent to have these protections in place.  It is in NO WAY our intention to use your information for our commercial gain.  We'd never sell your photos.  (We recently inadvertently used someone's photo in a fairly benign way, and we promptly apologized for our innocent oversight.)  We enable you to make the info you submit to your collection completely private.  Info submitted to the Catalog is by definition part of the public, community resource so I hope anyone that contributes/submits to the Catalog knows they are certainly contributing for public benefit.

So, while the T's & C's protect DASH's use of the submitted info, it doesn't say that we WILL use the info.  If you can think of a better way to preserve our protection against people that would try to make claims against us for submitted content while meeting your needs, I would certainly be willing to consider changing our T's & C's.  I'm serious and for sure willing to update our T's & C's provided we can keep protected, but I also know that the way the "big boys with big legal teams" write their T's & C's is a smart place for us to base our policies on.

With regard to general data protection, I've written in earlier threads about how we are architected for securing user data.  User credentials are always transmitted via encrypted communications, user passwords are stored as encrypted on the server (we honestly can't see or know anyone's password), and our servers lie behind several layers of highly secure firewalls.  Trainman52 mentioned the hack of Target (and I too had to cancel my credit card as a result).  While DASH is not immune from attack, we are simply a MUCH less interesting target for the bad guys because we do not store anyone's credit card information.  We never touch it, never transmit it, never store it.

Our team, in past careers, has built systems for enterprise customers and we understand lots of different levels of user data protection.  To the extent we deem it necessary to increase our protections for user's data, we will do so, but for now we think we're very secure in our protection of people's data.

To sinclair's comment that our collection management capabilities seem to be geared around helping people sell their items, I can tell you that wasn't our design point at all.  In fact, we developed the collection management before we even had a marketplace capability.  We want to help collectors keep track of what they have and want, since that is a common and essential need.  Being able to do interesting other things with that info (share, sell, value, print, go mobile, etc) is something we are continually evolving and one of the things that makes DASH more useful in general.

Again, I really appreciate the feedback and I hope you see the thoughtful consideration I give it via my response.

- Bill

Bill-

I'm glad you don't run and hide when people say things that you may not like hearing.  Thumbs up for that.

As for the Ts&Cs, now you know why I don't post photos on or use those other sites too.  Although I am stuck with a Facebook account because it's the only way a couple of people I know will share things (One is family, that's local to me!  I still am the last to hear things from them.  When I ask why they never told me, the answer is always, "I posted it on Facebook.").  It may have changed since it's been a while since I looked, but Facebook did once have an option to tell them that it was not okay for them to ever use your photos for onsite or off site advertising.  Perhaps you can include that option in your user setting page.  It would help some feel more comfortable in using your site to it's fullest.  Maybe even provide an option to allow those that upload a photo to add it to a database of photos on said item.  I wouldn't mind uploading a photo I took of one of my items if I knew that I'd be getting full credit for the photo and I knew that it was only going in a free database for other to see what the item looked like.  I don't mind sharing photos, I just don't want others to make money with my photos without me getting a cut.

Thanks sinclair.  All I can add to the conversation is that we do have a photo attribution capability for photos uploaded into the Catalog (the free public resource).  You can put in your name and even link to a website (like your own photo website where you sell your photos or something).  When you click to Upload Photo (on website only...not mobile apps today) into the Catalog, you will see the photo attribution options.

I'm not a big Facebook user, but dang if I don't feel completely out of touch sometimes with some of my family!  I recently picked up one of my kid's friends the other day and she made a comment to me about liking some concert I had just been at only a few hours previously.  I didn't post it, but my kid did.  Sort of creepy to think so many people form opinions about you without you having any idea the info is out there.  Just call me old school...

Bill:

Thank you for taking the time to reply with such detail. Allow me to reread and I will reach out toyou off the forum to follow up. Once again - I'm glad you responded.

Paul

Bill,start by deleting this line in your TOS

""By posting Submitted Content to the Websites, you thereby grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual license to reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, publicly perform and display, distribute, syndicate and otherwise use such Submitted Content, with or without attribution to you or any other party "

And photos we lifted more than once for use by Trainz

See

Don't Post your photos to DASH

and

Trainz Newsletter

I have had a discussion with Dash and with Trainz about my picture they used. The mistake was from an employee that works at both companies. He was working on the Trainz newsletter and borrowed the picture from Dash and didn't consider that he was using it without permission. Dash has taken steps to insure this won't happen again.  Dash can still use your photo for their own self promotion. You may have seen the Facebook ad using one of my photo's of my NYC Vanderbilt with where they have added the Dash logo to the side. Under their agreement that is an acceptable use of my photo. What they can't do is provide or sell your photo to an outside commercial company. Yes it would be nice if they would ask permission to use your/my photo for they own promotion. However if they don't they are still within their legal right to use the photo.
Mike Taylor (3rd Rail Mike) has been telling me I shouldn't have my site available to the public. If any of you have been on the forum any length of time know; I have a large collection with lots of trains. I take new photos nearly every week for Weekend Photo Fun--I think my secret is out. If someone steals my collection it will be the happiest day of my wife's life-at least they are insured for about half their value (1/2 value for theft the premium was cheaper that way). At least now I have a good inventory listing for the claim.

Scott Smith

quote:

 If someone steals my collection it will be the happiest day of my wife's life-at least they are insured for about half their value (1/2 value for theft the premium was cheaper that way).

That's one heck of an endorsement.

Interesting that the terms of service for the OGR Forum do not include rights to the content posted here.

Yep, Rich has made it quite clear that OGR will negotiate for any photos used, not steal them

Hi.  Just to close the loop on this topic.  I was able to consult a copyright lawyer who essentially said the current DASH language about submitted content was pretty much how it had to be. There are simply too many exposures for us (and any site that enables upload of user-generated content) without this language.

I got a nice call this afternoon from Scott Smith too. He is the guy that we inadvertently slighted with our use of one of his photos. We've long since made up (and in fact can now joke about this), and I assure you we will try not to cross anyone else in a similar manner. Should we ever want to use a user-submitted photo or other content, we will do our best to contact the user for permission and possibly attribution.  We have no intention to sell anyone's photos either.  Just wanted to be clear that we really don't have any intentions behind the uploaded content other than to help make the hobby easier and more fun.  

A couple of points:

If you have photos you may want to upload to DASH and can't abide by the TOS, please don't upload them.

If you upload photos to your My Collection area, you can mark your Collection Showcase as private.  No one else will see your collection or the photos uploaded in this section of the site.

We hope you will use DASH even if you don't upload any photos.