forteller's blog ^pro

What the..? What's going on? She just disappeared, just like that? I know she's been thinking about it before, but she talked about it first and then she let the account stay up. And then she came back. But now she didn't even let the account stay up long enough for people to see if she wrote anything about why she's leaving, or at least a goodbye.. This is upsetting, she was such a resource to this community, with very insightfull thoughts and questions, and some truly fantastic photos. And suddenly she just leaves and takes all that away from us. I'm actually a bit shocked.

Does anyone know what happened?

Here's a cach of her profile. You will be deeply missed, Annjin! Please come back to us some day!

Edit: And now I just learned that M-evolve has quit too! But he's still active on Flickr.. What is going on?

Creative Commons has launched CCPlus to make it easy to both use a Creative Commons license for non-commercial use, and at the same time sell trough a company for commercial use. It would be great if Ipernity teamed up with one or more companies that sells photos for commercial use, and implemented CCPlus to make it easier for people who find a photo on ipernity they want to use commercially to buy that right. Having ipernity be a dead simple way of making money off of your photos could drive in some more users.

Here are some mockups of how Creative Commons thinks that Flickr could implement CC+. How about beating them to it?

It is impossible to open a doc in a new window or tab from the "browser" in the sidebar. It's not a big issue, but it's been an annoyance for me at times, and if it's an easy fix I would like to see it changed!

Have you ever been annoyed by this, or am I just wierd..? :)

I love the fact that you don't have to be afraid of censorship when you upload your pictures to Ipernity, that is absolutely the way it should be! But still, some times it can be a problem that any time you go to ipernity.com you must be prepared to face a NSFW picture on the front page. This is very unfortunate if you're actually at work or school, or in any other setting where nude pictures are not appropriate. Also after logging in you might face NSFW pictures in the "Latest docs from your network" area on your homepage. As I said; normally the lack of censorship is a good thing, but sitting at school today, logging in to Ipernity I felt a little awkward when this was what greeted me:

I know, this is not very NSFW, but still I felt a small discomfort, and it could very easily been much "worse"! Also before I got that far I had to log in through the front page, where a much larger NSFW picture could have been. As I've said; I don't have a problem with that normally, but in some situations it would be very handy if I could be certain that I would not be greeted by any (semi) NSFW pictures, neither on the front page, or on my home page.

That is why I would like to propose the idea of ipernity.com/sfw. /sfw would look and feel exactly the same as ipernity.com, with the one exception that everything would be SFW, both on the front page, and everywhere else on ipernity, both before and after logging in. After that it would also be quite easy to implement a feature for logged in users to always use the SFW version of Ipernity if they would prefer that for some reason (small children in the house, jealous wifes, etc.). But first and foremost ipernity.com/sfw would make it safe for normal users of Ipernity to also log in from work, school, and other places where (semi) nude pictures is not accepted.

What do you think? Would you use such a feature, or do you think it's a bad idea? Please voice your opinion!

It's been quite some time since I first said that I would become a Pro now, and I'm sorry about that. But now, finally, I am able to bear the Pro badge with pride! Thank you for your hard work, Team Ipernity! I hope my small contribution will help you make this place even awesomer!

Even though Ipernity clearly is the best all round photo sharing site on the web, there is no hiding that you are quite minute compared to the giant which shall remain unnamed. That is not fair, but it's an easy understood fact none the less. They were first, they were good. Now Ipernity is better, but you're too late, because the community is over there, and that's not easy to change. Well, now you have the chance, if you act on it!

Google has just announced its OpenSocial platform for interaction between social websites. Who's on it till now? Sites like Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, and now also MySpace, Bebo and Six Apart. Who's not on? You know who! They're owned by one of Googles main competitors, and are not likely to join anything they create any time soon. If you join in now it will be dead easy for MySpace, Orkut, and Bebo users to use Ipernity with their social networks, and just think of what just a small fraction of their users will mean for Ipernity! Slide is already on the bandwagon, don't let any other photo sharing sites beat you to it! Also, as an extra bonus; If you're one of the first to join OpenSocial, you might very well be mentioned in a lot of articles and blogposts about OpenSocial which inevitably will follow in the wake of the launch of OpenSocial. Please do not miss this opportunity!

As Techcrunch notes:

It’s clear that the developers who arrived early to the Facebook Platform party won easy customers. Those that came later had to fight much harder. Developers found their new gold strike, and they will soon all be there, mining away.

Edit: OpenSocial is now, ehm, open...!

Dear Ipernity!

I love this service, and I think you've done a great job with it! Finally I have found a better place for my pictures than Flickr!

But there is one thing that is bothering me; Why do you demand that people log in before they can see the original sized version of my creative commons licensed photos, and why do I have to be a pro to see the original sized version of non-CCed photos?

It is not your pictures to do what you want with, and when I spend so much of my monthly bandwidth uploading the original sized version of the photos, I do that because I want people to be able to see and enjoy them, not to make you money. Especially when I license them under a Creative Commons license, you should not make the choice for me of who should, and who should not, be able to see the largest size of my photos.

I am thinking about becoming a pro member myself, because I really, really like this place, and I think you've done a lot of things right, but I'm not quite there yet, and this is one of the things that makes me think twice about it.

Until you change this practice I will add a link to the original size in the comment field of all my photos.

I know that you provide this excellent service free of charge, and fully understand that you need to make money somehow, but this is not the way to go about it!