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Jun 13, 2011 -
Jul 13, 2011
(30 days)
- First created · 8 backed
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Show older commentsCreator Jaisen Mathai on September 11, 2011
Thanks Keith. Go figure - you can never get away from Facebook :).
I think it's a bug to have a FB Like button on a "private" message to backers only though.
Creator Keith on September 11, 2011
Jaisen, pretty funny that your update says "please don't forward to FB friends" but it has an (auto-generated) FB like button just above that !
Great work on the early access.
Creator Jaisen Mathai on August 7, 2011
George, I can't answer all of your email ATM but I couldn't agree more. We're wrapping up a plugin framework for themes and I think doing so for functionality makes a TON of sense.
The best way to track this is via a Github issue. Feel free to add to the thread there.
https://github.com/openphoto/frontend/issues/40
Creator George Antoniadis on August 7, 2011
Hey,
Just forked the latest source and got it working, everything seems very nice and smooth.
I try not to comment on anything functionality related as it's a very alpha stage - but I'd like to ask something that came to me from a comment made around albums.
I understand that people like to categorize photos differently.
* You Jaisen and others by tags.
* Other users by albums that they manage manually.
* I like my pics automatically added to albums by their "date taken" and these albums named according to the date and "gps location".
* Random dude might want to have instant albums based on tags, date and person on photo.
By no means I expect that everyone's crazy idea should be even considered - but - what if we could allow users to help each other?
* Plugins...
Photo viewer plugins for example.
- Tags
- Albums
- Datetime
- Some random EXIF or meta tag.
- All of the above
Photo uploader plugins.
- Automatically organize uploaded pic according to something?
- Reverse GPS location and add street name to description?
- Face recognition?
- Automatically crop/resize/add-yellow-dots-to-image...
Anything goes.
The reason why I'm suggesting such an approach is that people WILL hack the source (I have already started) to add functionality they want for themselves.
Why not allow them to do it in a orderly fashion and help other non-developers to benefit from it?
Thanks for a great app and sorry for ranting. xD
George aka geoah.
Creator katrina on July 18, 2011
Congratulations on achieving the pledge amount. I'm looking forward to whatever it is you actually end up creating. Exciting! Best wishes.
Creator Adam Jensen on July 15, 2011
@Marc & Jaisen
ohh... I see you have launched a Facebook group... that's a bummer :/
Cheers,
Adam
Creator Adam Jensen on July 15, 2011
Marc,
Using Facebook for discussion would be ironic as they kind of owns every data bite you produce for that platform...
Why not using a tool like http://uservoice.com/ ? Easy to use and you can log in with almost any online service you like...
Cheers,
Adam
Creator DDayDawg on July 15, 2011
Congrats Jaisen! I'm looking forward to seeing how things turn out. I have a few photographer friends that are less "techie" already interested.
Creator Kevin John on July 14, 2011
I'd love to see this work with Diaspora...they really need some photo album love
Creator Marc "TheMM" Mennigmann on July 14, 2011
Good idea...! CU there.
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 14, 2011
@Marc do you mind "Kickstarting" the Facebook group by asking your question there?
http://www.facebook.com/groups/openphoto
Creator Marc "TheMM" Mennigmann on July 14, 2011
Jaisen,
is there already a recommended forum for discussion? Should we use facebook or will there be a dedicated forum? Because I think you will hear some questions over and over again when we use your private mail for qustions.
I would like to know, if also FTP servers will be supported, instead of using S3 or Dropbox. This would enable me to store originals on my home server for example.
Best,
Marc
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 13, 2011
@Jorge - I need to set up a "community" page which includes feature requests. Ideally it will be a system that accepts votes so the most popular ones can be prioritized.
Don't tags solve the "virtual albums" problem? The previous photo service I co-founded had them and it worked really well. You could link to a "gallery" of tag(s) that included all photos with those tags. We even had the notion of a "tagset" that behaved like an "album" where you gave it a name.
Link to tags:
Every one of my favorite photos of my son
http://photos.jaisenmathai.com/users/jmathai/photos/tags-tavin,favorites/
A tagset (notice the "tagset" Tavin -> favorites on the right). This is essentially the same as the link above but logically organized into an "album".
http://photos.jaisenmathai.com/users/jmathai/photos/tags-tavin,favorites/quickset-1592-Tavin/
So to answer your question, that "feature" will be available out of the box on OpenPhoto.
Creator Jorge Pereira on July 13, 2011
Congrats on getting funded... My first involvement in KickStarter and I am looking forward to the experience !!! -- Already impressed with the communications and your openness!
Will you be setting up a "feature request" area somewhere?
I have been using several photo services and one feature that is often missing is the virtual albums - The ability to show an album comprised of multiple images from anywhere in the system -- Smugmug finally implemented this a couple of months back and works very well.
Creator Fredrik Averpil on July 13, 2011
Congratulations and good luck!
Creator John Fabrizio on July 13, 2011
Alright! Congrats!
Creator William C Crawford on July 13, 2011
Congratulations! I look forward to seeing it! :)
Creator D. Archibald Smart on July 13, 2011
Woohoo! So excited to get the code!
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 13, 2011
@leonardr Yes, we've already exchanged emails with the MediaGoblin folks :)
@Adam & @Marc - Thanks so much. Let's build this!
Creator Marc "TheMM" Mennigmann on July 13, 2011
Congrats, goal reached! Phew...
Marc
Creator Adam Jensen on July 13, 2011
Congrats! Jaisen, you have reached your first goal - now go and do some coding! 8)
Creator Leonard Richardson on July 13, 2011
Have you given any thought to interoperability with GNU MediaGoblin? (http://mediagoblin.org/)
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 13, 2011
@Thomas, upon further inspection it looks like S3 is slightly more expensive than CloudDrive. If the CloudDrive shows up as an S3 bucket then what you said is true and you can have OpenPhoto store your photos in your CloudDrive.
Amazon's new to offering their cloud services to users so it'll eventually be the same as CloudDrive which should continue to go down in price.
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 12, 2011
@Thomas, Yes. I believe Amazon's pricing for CloudDrive is the same as it is for S3 (which is really what CloudDrive is).
New users to AWS will get to use the free usage tier which includes 5GB of space for free. Anything above that will be billed at the standard rate (very cheap).
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#pricing
Creator Thomas Robinson on July 12, 2011
Love this idea.
1 Question: Would the same data fees as the Amazon Cloud Drive - https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore - apply to OpenPhoto? In essence is it still going to cost me $20 per year to store 20gb of photos?
Thank you.
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 12, 2011
@Daniel, meta data, facial recognition, etc are all things we're thinking about. More info on that later...follow us on Twitter or Tumbler to keep up to date.
Regarding the thumbnail index. No worries. It'll look good. I haven't had anyone with an eye for visuals touch the page up on current.openphoto.me - also, every theme (once available) can decide exactly how to display the list of thumbnails.
There hasn't been any work done on the current design. That'll come shortly. If you have more questions or concerns feel free to drop me a line at jaisen@openphoto.me.
Creator Daniel on July 12, 2011
@Jaisen--resizing looks great, but I'm _very_ concerned with the thumbs or index page:
http://current.openphoto.me/photos
Do you have a way (or thoughts) to mix in thumbs that are, say twice as wide as they are tall? (2*Height X Height ). The grid of thumbails that's 3 images wide might doesn't have to break, just support rows that might be just 1 image wide...
Creator Daniel on July 12, 2011
Meta data; face recognition; etc.
While these are important and useful they're really hard to maintain especially when there are multiple image copies.
It would be sublime if OpenPhoto maintained a link of some type between images so that I could add meta-data to a local image and the OpenPhoto image was also updated, or better still if all of the versions of this image in the S3 &/or Dropbox were also updated. Similarly, if someone adds meta-data to an OpenPhoto image on S3 I'd like my local version of that image to also be updated.
I love the idea and it look forward to seeing great progress!!!
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 12, 2011
@Daniel - We've got you covered :). The OpenPhoto API lets you render any size image you want. If you have an 1024x768 image and wanted a 20x20 or 16x9 you're able to have those generated on demand.
Here are a few examples. They don't include "cropping" as they maintain aspect ratios but similar to the black and white version you can specify that the photo is cropped exactly to the dimensions you request. By default it will scale into those dimensions without cropping or changing the aspect ratio.
http://current.openphoto.me/photo/sh/300x300
http://current.openphoto.me/photo/sh/300x300xBW
http://current.openphoto.me/photo/sh/900x700
Creator Daniel on July 12, 2011
Presentation, presentation, presentation...I mean supporting thumbnails that reflect the shape and ratio of the original image. Squares are easy, but they're so.... (wait for it) ...square.
These images aren't all squares:
http://www.flickr.com/search/…
The thumbnails are, however, rendered in a square space (restricted in width), which makes it very easy to display a whole mess of 'em, but the larger images get squished in relation to the smaller ones and the thumbnails page show more bits for the smaller (more square) images than the larger (more rectangular) ones.
I'd love it if OpenPhoto provided robust support for rectangular, aka, panoramic, images.
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 11, 2011
@forteller, You should drop me a line at jaisen@openphoto.me. With that many ideas I think it needs to be in an email thread :).
I agree that social needs to be baked into the experience. Let me know if you want to be included in those discussions (which haven't started just yet).
Creator forteller on July 10, 2011
@Jaisen Thanks again for your thorough reply! Of course I'm backing you!
I just want to stress how important the social aspects of this is! I don't know what you meant by:
"Self installed and hosted versions would both provide social aspects. The hosted version may add additional social features which probably wouldn't be available otherwise - due to technical limitations."
But I very, very much hope you will make the social aspects key in OpenPhoto. Flickr had not been where it is today if they didn't focus on the community aspect, had groups, comments, etc. Remember what Fake said about it being like a party: http://www.kottke.org/06/11/hosting-a-party
So I hope both versions will be as much alike as possible, and have social aspects built in everywhere it makes sense to do so!
I also want to stress again (I'm passionate about these two things, I hope I don't come off as nagging) the importance of these social features being distributed/federated! I'm no developer (as I've said before), but I do understand if this sounds like a daunting task. You don't have to implement it from the start, but it needs to be there after some time (IM-not-so-HO :))!
If you do this then we will have yet an important tool in the fight against censorship and against oppressive regimes who wants to block access to certain services. OpenPhoto might also become the photo sharing service shipped with the FreedomBox server software, which is a truly awesome and important project. http://freedomboxfoundation.org You should have a listen to this talk by the head of the FreedomBox project: http://freedomboxfndn.mirocommunity.org/video/3/why-political-liberty-depends-
Oh, and I just wanted to point out that both ActivityStrea.ms and Salmon is actually a part of OStatus… :)
The very best of luck! I'll do my best to promote the Kickstarter project in these last hours to help you reach your monetary goal, and then promote OpenPhoto itself afterwards. You're making my dreams from so many years ago finally come true! :)
Oh, one last thing: There is already a pretty great looking FLOSS online photo gallery software, but it has been dead for quite some time. You might still get some ideas from their code and/or design, maybe? And I would not be surprised if some of the developers from that project would like to help you a bit on OpenPhoto, if they're still around… http://www.getlifebox.org/
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 8, 2011
@ShutterCal,
The short answer: yes.
The long answer: we can't realistically support every photo service. We are however building an open platform for services we can't support ourselves to support themselves. Think of it in terms of a plugin gallery that users can select from.
We're definitely interested in discussing deeper integrations. If you have something specific in mind then drop me a line at jaisen@openphoto.me.
Creator ShutterCal.com on July 8, 2011
Will this service work only with the obvious services like Flickr and Picasa? Or are you going to work with Smaller services too? I can see how smaller web projects like ShutterCal would see OpenPhoto as a invaluable partner if the transfer works easily in and out.
I think you've got a great idea Jaisen. I'm happy to be a small backer and wish you luck.
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 8, 2011
@Mark, Like++++++++
Creator Marc "TheMM" Mennigmann on July 8, 2011
So I'll go and increase my pledge amount, just to make sure that it'll really happen... ;-)
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 8, 2011
@Marc, yea that would be awesome. Others have asked for Adobe Lightroom plugins as well.
Based on how awesome OpenPhoto supporters have been so far I think we'll have all that!
Creator Marc "TheMM" Mennigmann on July 8, 2011
Jaisen - just another idea for potential users: OpenPhoto needs OSX iPhoto integration - an uploader at least.
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 7, 2011
Already have that conversation started with a Wordpress plugin developer :). Definitely agree that's a great feature to spread the word. OpenPhoto shares a lot in common with Wordpress.
Creator Marc "TheMM" Mennigmann on July 7, 2011
What a great idea! And I'd recommend to provide a WordPress plugin from the first day, because this would spread the word and make it easy for so many website owners to switch from flickr to OpenPhoto.
Good luck!
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 6, 2011
@Dan - Thanks. I've been formulating this for years. Now's the time :).
Creator Dan Reich on July 6, 2011
@Jaisen,
GREAT IDEA! I've been thinking about this exact concept for the past month!
Psyched to see you building this and look forward to your progress.
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 4, 2011
@Dan, Could you email me more details on what you are thinking? -- jaisen@openphoto.me
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 4, 2011
@Carl, Let me know if you have any thoughts on the API. I've got a ton to make it as easy as possible for others to consume and produce to. More details to follow! Always up to discussing API design.
Creator Jaisen Mathai on July 4, 2011
@Andrew, There's definitely plans for gallery and ecommerce. The timeline for these are end of 2011. Feel free to email me at jaisen@openphoto.me if you want to discuss in more detail.
Creator Dan Tappan on July 1, 2011
I've been using Flickr, with a "Pro" account, and the issue that's been torquing me lately is that the stats on who is viewing/using my photos is close to useless. The only detail I can get is through the HTTP "referrer" field, and most of the accesses don't seem to be coming from web browsers. After some poking around I'm pretty sure it's accesses from sites like radaris.com, questionably legit under the CC-noncommercial license, but I can't prove it because the stats aren't there. Plus there are too many to issue takedown notices even for the ones I'm sure they are using. It would be really nice to have both better granularity usage statistics and better granularity access blocking.
Creator Vadim Gordin on July 1, 2011
What a great idea.
Creator Carl Oscar Aaro on June 30, 2011
I love the idea of this!
Being a web developer as well as a photographer myself, I've tried working with flickr in connection to my own site, to have an easy management with uploads/editing through flickr and with their API get the photos to my site. However, there are some limitations to their API, specially for thumbs, that made me walk away from that solution and hosting it all on my own server instead.
I believe OpenPhoto with some sweet API-love could provide what I've always wished for - a great way to manage my photos. I'm totally backing this, hoping it will bring something great. :)
/ http://carloscar.se/
Creator Patrick Santana on June 30, 2011
That's a nice idea. Looking forward to see the result. Of course => code forked!!
Creator Ezra Moore on June 30, 2011
I'm very excited to see this. I've been trying to find a slick solution to my photo sharing/backup problem for a long time!