I've been looking at SmugMug for offsite photo storage based on some nice things I've been reading about them and some conversations in the office. They use Amazon's S3 for very cost-effective storage which, being a geek, made me think that perhaps I could simply load my photos into S3 for storage. Yes of course, but then I'd lose the neat management tools and features that SmugMug provide. So my thought is: when are we going to see applications that let me use my own S3 account rather than theirs?

To all application providers thinking about using S3: I want to control my own data thank you, but I'd really like to be able to pay you to build features that I know you'd be great at providing. I'm quite likely to pay for several different applications that perform distinct functions on the same data. Just let me own my own data.