Category: Photos
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Return of the Blog
Gigaom recently published an article that highlights an important point. A point that has been resonating through my head since Lift 07:
In this incredible sea of data that surround us, what happens to my data when a service like Twitter or Flickr or FriendFeed is sold to another company.
Gigaom writes:
The cynical me believes that it’s foolish for any of us to expect that Web 2.0 companies be in the business of providing services for charity. They are, after all, for-profit entities and when opportunity arises, everyone looks out for themselves. That’s just the way of the world.
I really like Flickr, Twitter and I recently started using Friendfeed more actively. Mainly ‘cos I can search thru my Twitter content more easily.
But… what happens when these services are discontinued?
It is my data. I am the owner. As the owner I want:
- To be able to download a backup copy when I want to
- Close, shut down and delete all of my data whenever I want to
- Control who sees which data, where and when
These are my minimum requirements for online, interactive web applications. Sound easy and straightforward.
End of topic. Well, not quite.
Many web applications – and I’m kind of shying away from the omnipresent social media / social network term here – don’t offer an easy Export/Backup all of my data/Batch Download function.
Flickr Batch Download
Consider Flickr, by all measures one of the more established and mature tools. If you click Get Help this dropdown menu displays:
It doesn’t list an item how to download photos. titles, descriptions and comments or create a backup of photos and comments using a batch downloader or similar.
The tools page only lists applications to upload files.
Apparently, the export feature is being discussed in the Help forums. I know that there are lots of threads, discussing download tools for Flickr, ‘cos I was worried about my data at Flickr. Yes, every dedicated photographer has a backup system in place for their photos.
There are some third party tools like Downloadr (I haven’t tested this yet).
Here’s an example how to create a backup of your Twiitter content using Dave Winer’s OPML tool:
How To: Backup And Search All Your Friends’ Tweets In Google Reader
But, my point is: the effort is on the users’ side. And I know many users forget or ignore this. Luckily, the RSS format offers a number of options.
One way street
Signing up and uploading is made as easy as possible. I have years of data at Flickr and I really like the application. So far the benefits outweigh the downsides by far. I like sharing my photos at Flickr. But since I signed up, Flickr was purchased by Yahoo and now Yahoo is partnering with Microsoft. Who knows what will happen in the next 1-3 years? A good web application should offer a batch export/download function.My advice if you’re signing up for a web application:
- Be aware of the fact that most web apps are one way streets. They are in the data business. They want your data to display on their website for business reasons.
- Read the terms and conditions carefully.
- Find out how you can export or download your data beforehand.
- Find out how you can close and delete your account.
- Be prepared to spend time and resources to learn the web application that you are using. Learn the advantages as well the disadvantages of the web application. It is important that you acquire web skills.
- A good web application should offer a batch export/download function. If it isn’t available, ask for it. Remember: It’s your data.
- Build your own blog. Get involved in building your own website. Your blog is your mothership. Consider services such as Twitter and Friendfeed as fast and zippy spaceship shuttles that bring visitors to your mothership. Rather than feeding Facebook and co., you will experience a learning curve that will benefit you in many other areas.
- Develop your research skills. We need independent, ad-free blogs more than ever.
Remember the continuous bootstrap curve.
But somewhere between my cynicism and people’s Utopian desires lies a happy place. It’s called the blog.
Your Opinion…
What are your thoughts on this? How are you backing up your Flickr and Twitter and Facebook and Friendfeed and Google data? Do you care what happens to your data? What precautions are you taking? -
Blue and white
I went photowalking again 😉
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How to Resize Photos
My family’s email account in Blantyre was blocked twice in the past week, due to well-meaning but over-sized Christmas and New Year email greetings. Attachments with over 2 MBs. The family is still on a phone line with a very slow connection rate. And downloading emails with a large attachment takes forever and a day. Luckily I can access their account via the web and move the large emails out of the way. But I thought I’d raise some awareness.
And point you to some resources describing how to resize photos.
Using MS PaintHow to resize your photograph by exact dimensions
- Right click on the image and select ‘Edit’. (This should bring up Windows Paint).
- On the menu bar at the top, select Image -> Attributes…
- If the image is a portrait layout, use a width of 640 and a height of 480. If it’s a landscape layout, use a width of 480 and a height of 640.
- Save the file. (You may want to ‘Save As’ to a different file so you don’t overwrite the original).
How to resize your photograph by percent
- Right click on the image and select ‘Edit’. (This should bring up Windows Paint).
- On the menu bar at the top, select Image -> Stretch/Skew…
- Change the percentages in the Stretch box for both Vertical and Horizontal. Make them both the same or else the picture will not be proportionate.
- Save the file (you may want to ‘Save As’ to a different file so you don’t overwrite the original).
Using Picasa
Resize by exporting
Exporting lets you resize your photos while controlling the JPEG compression (image quality) introduced by your applied photo edits. The result is newly resized copies of your photos, saved to any location on your hard drive. During the export process, you can adjust both the ‘Image Size Options’ and the ‘Image Quality’ settings in the ‘Export to Folder’ screen.
- Under ‘Image Size Options,’ select the ‘Resize to’ option and adjust the size slider. The number of pixels you select with this slider determines the length or height of your photo (whichever is longer). The other dimension is determined automatically to maintain the aspect ratio of the photo.
- Select the desired image quality for your photo using the ‘Image Quality’ drop-down menu:
- Automatic: Preserves the original image quality
- Normal: Balances quality and size
- Maximum: Preserves fine detail for large file sizes
- Minimum: Yields some quality loss for small file sizes
- Custom: Enables you to select your own value
Resize by emailing
If you’re sending photos by email, you may want to resize then in order to get under the attachment size limitation. To change the size of the photos you email from Picasa, please follow these steps:
- Click the Tools menu.
- Select Options.
- Click the Email tab.
- Under ‘Output Options,’ use the slider to set your desired pixel size when emailing multiple photos. Use the radio buttons to set the desired pixel size for emailing single photos.
- Click OK.
Lazy workaround via Flickr
I sometimes use Flickr as a lazy workaround.
- Upload or email photo to the Flickr stream.
- Go to the photo page and select All Sizes.
- Select Small or Medium and click Download the Small (or Medium) Size.
File format:
Always use JPEG.There are tonnes of other ways to resize photos with free software, such as IrfanView or The Gimp.
Within MS Word:
Don’t change the viewable size within Word (e.g. dragging the corners of the photo). Word will store the image in its original size. Resize the photo before inserting it into Word.Adobe PDF:
Check the conversion settings.Check the sizes of all files (Word, pdf, .jpeg) before sending them.
Be considerate and don’t send photos in their original size. Especially if you don’t know what type of connection the recipient is using.
It’s five minutes for you versus 30 minutes of expensive download time on a plain old telephone connection for them.
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shadow on the wall
Photo walking is more fun when conditions are not quite as cold as yesterday (about 3 degrees plus and windy).
Older snapshot from a recent trip to Hannover:
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Text Snippets Circling Around
Pêle-mêle off the top of my head:
Learnt yesterday:
The number of English-speaking Internet users is decreasing, currently at about 35% of total number of Internet users.Shared yesterday:
Who writes about African technology developments? From the list, I follow White African, Afrigadget, and sometimes Google Alert points me to IT News Africa.Photo processing software for Ubuntu:
I’m currently MacBook-less (there are plans to change this very soon), but in the meantime I’ve installed Ubuntu 8.04 on an Acer Aspire 5920. I tried upgrading to Intrepid Ibex, but I couldn’t get my LAN connection to work. Something to do with the MTU count. And I encountered 2 bugs during the install:- package update-manager 1:0.93.32 failed to install/upgrade: ErrorMessage: SystemError in cache.commit(): E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1), E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
- package ubuntustudio-menu 0.9 failed to install/upgrade: there is no script in the new version
So I went back to Hardy Heron. Cost: most of my Saturday. Learning effect: priceless.
I’ve been scanning the Internet for Linux photo processing software, besides Gimp, Picasa and F-Spot. ‘Cos so far Canon’s DPP has not been ported to Linux. I guess I could use it via Wine. But between you and me, I’m just looking for a good excuse to get a new MacBook. Beyond that DPP (still) lacks a good straightening tool.
I tried BlueMarine ‘cos it sounded promising, but I quickly gave up. Not usable.
There are a couple of commercial tools to consider:
- LightZone Linux
- Bibble
In the end I tried Raw Therapee and downloaded Qtpfsgui for HDRs. Both of which are free and look promising at this stage.
BTW, this blog post is good example how I can trick myself into writing a longer text. Initially, I just wanted to write a few Tweet-like text snippets, a summary of various small items circling around in my head. Pêle-mêle off the top of my head.
Please feel free to comment. I would be very grateful for any Ubuntu tips and tricks, etc.
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Blogging is so 2004
LOL at this Wired article!
Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.
I agree with the author. Blogging is so 2004. For the record: I installed WordPress on this server in September 2004. Time to pull the plug.
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr instead.
(BTW I’m still the top entry at Google for Boring Flower Snapshot)
😉
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Architecture Tour “Birsstadt”
As seen previously on my Flickr stream, I stumbled across this poster:
I took part in two architecture tours this weekend organized by Architektur Dialoge as part of the Les Journées de l’Architectures.
Birsstadt
I’ve uploaded a couple of snapshots of yesterday’s tour through Basel-Land. It was “off the beaten track” and lots of fun. During the tour we got a sense of the upcoming challenges as the various municipalities continue to grow and expand from a city planning point of view.
Today’s tour will have to wait til tomorrow…
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Tagaroo and other links
Pêle-mêle off the top my head:
In my daily reads, I stumbled across a WordPress plugin called Tagaroo. It reminded me of Zemanta. I haven’t tried it out. But I guess the interesting part is that it is being sponsored/developed by media giant Thomson Reuters as part of the Calais project.
As usual I’ve been taking lots of snapshots. Faves of the week include:
Oh and yeah, I know what this year’s Christmas card will look like:
I tried out some night photography which was a lot of fun. Found out that I’ll need a good, lightweight tripod to pursue this more seriously.
The Swiss consumer magazine K-Tipp published the results of a chocolate degustazione.
I downloaded hours of video podcasts on CSS.
African bloggers in Amsterdam:
Picnic 08 (an annual tech. conference held in northern Europe) had a special Africa track called “Surprising Africa”. There’s a short video featuring the speakers here (via tweet).
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Mulanje
I just surfed through lots of cool new photos in the Malawi group on Flickr.
Including these photos of Mulanje mountain by Lisa de Vreede:
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Swiss Peeks
Just a link to support a great Flickr project:
Swiss Peeks is a series of books of photographs taken in Switzerland. The books, published twice each year, contain photographs by amateur and professional photographers alike, which have been shared online and submitted specifically for inclusion in the books.
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Orchard of old varieties
i went a-photowalking and learned about a project that is collecting and growing old varieties of fruit.
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The Summer of 08
As a gentle drizzle sets in, I’d just like to dump a couple of
carefully composed poetrytext snippets here at Chiperoni headquarters.So far this summer of 08 has treated me well. I’m spending every weekend with my latest gadget: Shooting photos with my Canon 40D. There’s a lot to learn. And try out. Especially regarding lenses and post-processing. I’m still very much of a snapshotter.
I have noticed something:
The memory aspect of photos has become important to me. A couple of years ago before I started blogging and flickring, I joked that I’m taking photos with my retina and one day I’ll just download the contents of my brain (bioware, wetware). But as I proceed through life, more and more of my life pictures are moving to the back of my brain. I can still access them if I want, but they are moving further back as I take care of the daily clutter. But I don’t know if the pictures will disappear one day.
I like the way I can document one moment. With one shutter click.
Yesterday I went to see the Fotomuseum in Winterthur. I enjoyed it immensely. The show that I liked the most was the one on Theo Frey.
See this Wikipedia page for more infos on his biography.
The show reminded me of a Hernando de Soto interview I read. Not so long ago, many people lived in abject poverty here in Switzerland. The Frey photos brought this time closer.
Throughout the past weeks I’ve continued my low key fitness and jogging program. I haven’t run any races or lost any weight, but it helps to deal with stress. And the side effects of sitting hunched up in front of a laptop.
The Summer of Ohhh Eight…
Did you realize? This is the second last year of single digits. I didn’t know that 08 is a lucky number in China. But I feel that this summer is special. A time to remember. Dobbiamo profittare. -
Coca-Cola Ad in Blantyre
See also this previous entry on the Coca-Cola Index.
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Basel Rhyhafen
i went a-photowalking again
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Workspace of an artist…
Just a quick note pointing to some snapshots I took on Saturday in Martin Gyger’s studio.
I like seeing other people’s workplaces…
Martin told me that he will be moving into a new workspace very soon, but before he moves out he’ll organize an exhibition. I forget the exact date but this should be some time in early September. And Martin says he’s planning to take part in this year’s Portes Ouvertes on 18th and 19th October.
Martin displays much of his work on Flickr. His work is for sale. Contact him directly if you’re interested in getting an original or a print.
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Puzzled
This t-shirt text puzzled me this morning…
ZIM
TST
ERNI figured it out after a while but at first I kept associating ZIM with Zimbabwe.
I’ve uploaded two batches of snapshots to my Flickr stream. I’m a snapshotter at heart and I’m not spending much time correcting or editing my work (yet).
Unhindered by talent or technical skills, I hope I can at least convey the fun I’m having. I particularly enjoyed Saturday’s photo tour with Diveangel.
BTW, there’s a Basel Flickr meetup planned for 27th July 2008.
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Working for one week in SF
I’ve uploaded my wild snapshots of San Francisco covering smoothies, books, bikers, shopping, browsing magazines, coffee, cars, Ocean Beach, the hotel, buildings, streets, public transport, signs, Lufthansa and waiting.
BTW, I didn’t see a single Clinton 08 poster, I did see several Obama 08 posters and a guy selling Obama buttons. I guess, it doesn’t say much since the California primary already took place. Just something I noticed.
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Pédaler, Ã §a réchauffe!
I liked this velo poster… in Geneva.
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Crossroads
Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls. -
Greek version of Nutella
added to the Nutella alternatives group.
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I am a snow bird
just got back from one week Southern Florida.
More snaps in my Flickr stream:
http://flickr.com/photos/chiperoni/. -
uploads
i’ve measured my life out in flickr uploads
here’s another life phase
