tuxcomputers's blog/

I wanted to blog and even though I could link to a blog from Flickr it was such a hassle, this site has one built right in, cool.

The worst part about flickr is that they have slowly changed, they have been deleting peoples photos, marking their streams restricted and finally the censorship debarcle was the final straw for me.

I like the look of this site, it uses Google maps, it allows videos and audio, you can see if a fellow contact is on-line, you see who last visited your photos. They have offical upload tools and even better there is one for my platform of choice, Linux.

What I miss (or can't find) is the groups. Without groups we are all just a large bunch of disconnected users. Groups are a must to centralise a special interest discussion.

If anyone can tell me where they are or when they are in the pipeline it would be appreciated.

One of the problems over at flickr was the lack of communication. I loved the place and met people from all over the world. I was the admin of 6 groups, moderated 1 and joined over 100 others but I was active in about 10 or so.

Flickr had it's problems, some technical but most were staff related. They gave no warning and no explainations for just about all of the stuff ups they made. Sure when it was a high profile case like deleting Rebeccas image they would finally say something but it was getting out of control. I explain all the problems I have with flickr here so I won't repeat myself.

Now onto what I hope for ipernity so that they don't make the same mistakes.

First of all a decent fine grained control dispute resolution system. Flickr was using an Uzi to kill a moth. They would just up and delete an image or a post or a thread. The problem was even if they admit they made a mistake all of the comments etc are gone, forever. I would like to see ipernity implement a system that allows that to be retained.

If there is a dispute over copyright or content then the photo / video / blog / audio gets marked as "Staff and user only", if anyone else tries to acces it they get a message that it is under going mediation. Once the dispute has been settled then the item gets deleted or restored.

The second is that we are told in advance of changes that are in the wind. Any change, all changes, good bad or indifferent. A single location for news would be great, (if there is already one in english please point it out). If things got haywire then a quick "we are aware of the problem and are working on it" would be enough. After the flames have been put out then an deeper explaination would help.

Third groups, I know they are coming, I have had a response already on that issue but I would like to see the groups be better than the Flickr ones. To do that I think they need to allow group associations. As an example, there is a "Bribane" group on flickr, then there is the "Bribane Meetup" group, then there is the "Brisbane Historic Photos" group. Each is seperate, different and disconnected.

If we could make them associates, when you joined or found one of the groups you could see that it was associated with the others. The admin of the group could create the association links but like contacts the other admin does not have to reciprocate.

I have only been using ipernity for a day but here a list of features I have discovered so far and what I think of them:

Who's visited you:

Neat, I can see who has come to my stream and looked at my photos. If you are concerned over privacy then you have multiple choices on this feature. From "No-one" to "Family and friends" to "All your network" to "Ipernity members". I always wondered who was visiting my flickr stream, ipernity not only tells you but tells you how long ago it was.

Latest docs from your network:

Like the "Contacts" list on flickr, it shows the photos that your contacts have uploaded with the first image being the latest uploaded. I would like to see just one photo of each contact instead or an option to only show one image. If one person uploads more than 6 photos you will only see theirs.

Latest posts from your network:

Flickr does not have this at all because they do not have a blog function built-in, sure your contacts could have a blog somewhere but who the hell cares, ipernity has one built-in and shows you the latest blogs from your contacts.

Your network:

This shows you the list of contacts in the order of when the logged in, not posted a photo. It also shows you if that person is logged in and on-line right now. Again, if you are concerned about privacy you can change whether anybody sees you on-line.

Your latest posts:

This is your blog, this is where you can rant good or bad just as I am right now. I recently tried using flickr in a hacky way as a blog. There was a comment from a contact that they come to flickr to see photos and use RSS to keep track of blogs and I should use another site to blog. I had tried that in the past and failed, too much effort. When I came and found that they have blogs built-in as well as allowing videos and audio I realised that ipernity is more than just photo sharing.

Ipernity is a communication / sharing site, images, videos, text and audio are all just different ways of me and you communicating with the rest of the world. This site allows you to do any and all of them, awesome.

Chat:

Hand in hand with the display of who is on-line is the chat feature, you can request a chat from the contacts list or up the top of the page is a "Who's on-line" link. You request a chat and then wait until they accept it.

I was using IE7 and it opened another tab as a popup, not bad but not ideal. It is a little buggy, it dropped the connection several times during the chat I had but automatically rejoined us. It was also loading the entire chat each time a reply was sent from either end. I have used "Live chat" in a web browser before and I never experienced those issues. Once ipernity sorts that out it will make it even more useful.

Uploading items (or docs):

There are many options here, the usual "Browse" from within inside the web browser, it's limited to 10 files or less.

There is also a Java/ActiveX plugin that allows you to upload 100 photos at a time. I have no clue what it's like because nothing pops up asking me if I trust the app or anything. All I see is a yellow box on the right telling me I need to trust AURIGMA... ok but it doesn't ask me how to do that it just says I should. I followed the link but it just takes me to a page where you can buy it for your domain.

Zip file, now that is cool, you upload a single zip file and ipernity will unzip it and add each individual file to your stream. I have not tried that yet but it is a neat idea.

URL's, this has two options, the first is the entire web page, everything on the page gets added to your stream. The second is the URL of a file. I have been using this to migrate over from flickr, I just go to the images page on flickr, click the "All sizes", go to the original size, copy and paste the URL of the image to ipernity. Once uploaded to ipernity I then copy and paste the title and description. If anyone wants to write a migration tool that automates all of that I would be forever in your debt.

There is the application, iperUpload, the excellent thing about this app is that it is cross-platform meaning that just because I use Linux at home does not mean I miss out. I will try it tomorrow when I get home.

When I looked at the "Third party applications" list I see that PictureSync is there, I had a look at it and it seems like a really good tool, you just organise your photos on your own PC, tags, titles, descriptions, albums etc and then just hit the "Sync" button, hey presto it know what has and has not been changed and syncs your ipernity account. No idea if it is any good because I don't own a MAC.

Favourites:

I can't seem to find where my favourites are, I saw a blog on the same problem so it is an issue that your favourites can't be easily found. This leads me to the next point.

Help:

I tried looking for the favourites solution again and searched the help, I did not find the answer.

News:

There is a news link at the bottom of the page, problem is that it's in french. I am married to a french speaking woman and she talks to the kids in french but I only understand a few words. I would be willing to volunteer my wife's time and effort translating the news to English in exchange for a free Pro account :) Actually she would do it willingly because it would save us AUS$38 and stop me bugging her to let me spend money on a Pro account here.

Spell checker on the blog:

I just used this and had issues with it. The first is that is uses the US spelling, there is no option to tell it that I use the spelling colour, not color. The second is that it does not allow me to add words to the dictionary. It doesn't even know that "ipernity", "flickr" or "blog" are words.

Geotagging:

It uses Google maps, Google maps is far better than the Yahoo maps that flickr uses. You can also geotag your home location.

API's:

No idea as yet, I have not even looked for third party apps and scripts. I plan on doing searches for GreaseMonkey scripts and Linux apps that will inteface with this site.

(Update 19 June 2007)

Blog replies:

I just replied to a post and found another neat feature, it puts the post you are replying to just above the text box so you don't have to scroll up and down the page to the entry they posted. Of course the one I was doing was just above but imagine a blog with hundreds on posts and you are replying to a post near the top.

(Update2 19 June 2007)

Uploader:

I tried the multi file uploader in Firefox 2.0.0.4 on Ubuntu Linux, it locked up Firefox and I had to kill it.

I downloaded and tried the customised jUploadr, works a treat, you can set Privacy, Title, Description and Tags. It even lets you authorise multiple acounts. I must admit that I only uploaded 1 photo and it was only a small one.

.... not only from flickr to ipernity but from the house I rent to another. I have no idea where we are moving to because we only got the "Notice to vacat" when we got home this afternoon. Moving is such a pain, the packing, the new phone number, the waiting for internet connection, the moving, the unpacking, the expense.

We have been spoiled for the past 4 1/2 yars though, 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, large living area all for less than smaller 3 bed 1 bath places in the area.

We have to vacat the current house the day I fly back from my next 2 weeks on at Longreach. I have asked the real estate for a 1 week extension so my wife is not doing it all herself.

One of the places I like the look of is the next street over from where I used to live 8 years ago. It only has 3 bedrooms and the living area is not reall big so I have no idea where I will put my 3 computers and laptop yet, I have an appointment to inspect it on Saturday.

I work 2 weeks on, 2 weks off. When I got home this rotation the wife is asking me to close BOTH toilet lids before I flush. So, of course, I ask why, turns out she watched some program that shows that when you flush the toilet it sends out a fine mist spray that contains this and that bacteria.

Sounds resonable to ask me to close both lids right? WRONG!!!!

We have lived in this house for 4 and a half years. In that time the toothbrushes have been on the sink next to the toilet the entire time. So for the last 54 months the fine bacteria laden mist has been doing it's thing.

My question is, in the end what difference does closing the lid make? It has not had any detrimental effect in all of that time, one 10 minute segement on TV and now I have to change my habits? pfffft ......yeah right.

Since the censorship issue at flickr I have been trying out different photo hosting sites (ipernity is the best) and Zooomr was the first I tried because I enjoy Thomas Hawks work and he is the CEO of Zooomr.

Imagine my surprise when I tried to register with IE7 on my work computer and it would not let me. No matter what I did or did not do it would not accept my e-mail address as a valid one and change the button on the bottom so I could register.

I contacted TH and he said that he did not know, it worked for him and to try again. I must point out that all of my working life I have been a troubleshooter. My greatest skill is to be able to pin point where the problem is. I may not know what is causing the problem but I will be able to tell where is it caused.

I tried several machines at my work (they all have IE7), same problem. I got an ex-work mate of mine to try with IE7 at his work, same problem. He also tried with IE6 and Firefox, both worked fine.It seemed that IE7 did not like the e-mail checking code. I edited, saved and opened the register page as a local web page. Good god, to my surprise a pop-up appeared asking if I trusted it to use an ActiveX control.

I had my wife register the ID I wanted from home. Well she stuffed it up and used the wrong e-mail address, this meant I did not get the "activation" message AND she did not tell me that there was an activation message. This is understandable on Zooomr's part to stop spammers.

So what is wrong with Zooomr? I will list them here:

It uses proprietary controls

ActiveX sucks dead dogs balls, Microsoft are wankers that do not deserve a dime the way they carry on and try and bleed the computer world dry. Honestly an OS should not be 50% of the cost of a new PC. They have never innovated a single thing in their entire history, they buy or steal all of their advances. They only reformed the IE team because Firefox was taking off and threatening their monopoly.

Now what has this got to do with Zooomr? There are plenty of ways they can avoid using ActiveX and they obviously have because you can use Firefox on Linux to access Zooomr. Why are they wasting time producing a page that uses ActiveX and one that doesn't instead of doing other things.

It has no automated password recovery:

Believe it or not people forget passwords.If your system does not have a procedure that allows users to have it sent to them or reset then you are way out of whack with 99.999999% of other sites that require a username/password. In fact Zooomr are the only site in my memory that do not have this feature.

It has no "Contact" page:

Even crappy personal pages 12yo girls put up all by themselves provide a means to contact them.

No error messages:

Between my wife using the wrong e-mail address and today i tried logging in using my non-activated ID and kept getting dumped back to the main page. I initially thought it was because I was using IE7 but that was proved wrong when I got home and used Firefox on my Linux laptop.

Badly worded error messages:

Today instead of being dumped back to the main page with no error message I got a message that my account, despite never being used, as disabled. Sure I have pointed out problems with Zooomr in my flickr stream but why would they disable my account when I have never used it?

Turns out the error message SHOULD have said "Your account has not yet been activated, please do XYZ and if you have further issues contact us at ABC"

No option to change your profile (to correct errors):

So finally I get into my Zooomr account because I sent Thomas Hawk a flickrmail with a pointer to the screen-shot of the "Account disabled" message. A comedy of errors that were not TH's fault and he responded in a timely and professional manner, kudos there.

Problem is I wanted to correct my wife's mistake, I can't. Your e-mail address is not an option you can change. In fact there is little to no information you can change about yourself. I know for sure that there are people that change ISP's and therefore their e-mail address changes. Does Zooomr allow for this? No, it does not.

I have not yet had a play inside Zooomr itself so I can't report on what is actually inside but what I have seen of the site so far leads me to the conclusion that Zooomr is not ready for humans to use it. Over the years I have learnt humans are clumsy forgetful idiots that need leading my the hand and spoon fed, in case you object to this I include myself here.

You can have the perfect technical solution to any problem but if a PERSON can't work it, then your solution is crap. Instructions need to be clear and precise, you need to spend alot of time thinking "if they don't follow these instructions, how can we help them understand what went wrong and what they can do to recover"

If you make any assumptions about what they will do without providing bullet points on how to do it and how to recover when things do go wrong then it is your fault when it does. An example of this is when the German situation was happening a Flickr staff member was on Zooomr, he was fart arsing around and trying out zooomr putting silly things in his zipine. TH saw his "zipline" where you are told to "put it on the line", he took a screen capture of it and posted it as a criticism of what the staff at flickr were up to.

Dunstan(?) replied in TH's blog saying that he was not aware of how the zipline operated, what, who and when they could see his zipine. TH responded that he should have known because it said to "put in on the line", that is wrong. In todays world of ambiguity and word play "putting it on the line" could mean anything so with no explanation of exactly what the zipline is Thomas Hawk should not have done that.

So far what I have seen of Zooomr it leaves ALOT to be desired, basic functions like password recovery are one of the first things that should be included in the planning before the first piece of code is even written, not something that may or may not be coming with Mark IV.

If I was TH and his programmer guy I would be making documentation and the "user error factor" of the site a top priority, so far I don't see it.

What you are reading for one. I did not realise how much fun and enjoyable blogging was, I tried it in the past and even setup the required links from flickr but it just wasn't the same as doing it here.

I am prepared to give the ipernity team a little more latitude than flickr when it comes to responding to us users. They are only a 4 person team where flickr have the vast resources of Yahoo behind them and I have no idea how many staff they have.

The other thing I like about being here is that there are enough people to make it interesting but not too many that your voice asking about this or that gets drowned out.

The features of iperinty are like when you first got a mouse with a wheel in it. You think "Nice feature but I have got by without it so far", then you discover some of the ways that make your life easier and think "hmmmm...handy shortcut". You get used to using it but it is ony when you use a mouse with no wheel that you realise how much you just love that feature and you would never use/buy one without it.

I am on flickr still because not all of my contacts have come to ipernity and I am still active in the groups. However once groups come to ipernity I will no longer visit flickr, sure I will miss the contacts I have made but it will be too much effort to spread my time over both.

We have found a place to live so we are packing and cleaning. THE worst thing's to clean are the venetian blinds, i hate them, all ways have always will, they make noises in the wind, they crease if you bnd them and they don't look any good but the worst part is they are impossible to clean.

The kitchen ones were the worst, we leave the window open and the blinds being near the cooking get the grease and the dust. I had to use a scrubbing brush on them with hot soapy water.

Thanks god we don't have themin our new place.

My first glance at Zooomr was not pretty now since the debarcle of my wife using the wrong e-mail address was sorted out by Thomas Hawk himself I thought I should at least give it a try, let me tell you it's worse than I first thought.

My preferred operating system is Ubuntu Linux and my preferred web browser is Mozilla Firefox. so naturally I was using them to do all what I needed. That leads me to the first problem.

You can't upload photos using Firefox on Linux

I can browse to the photo, I can set the options but low and behold it takes a fraction of a second to upload a 1 meg photo. My Internet connection is never that fast so I was not surprised to find that it did nothing. Goes through the motions with zero result.

I thought Zooomr might be using some MS Windows reliant crud so I thought I would test using the Konqurer browser. I had no problems uploading a photo. I tried using Firefox on my sons Windows computer, it worked no problems.

I can only conclude that Zooomr have some server side detection of your browser and assume that when they see Firefox that they can use the Windows code to do it.

I can't find info on the "Zipline"

As I wrote in the other blog, you have no idea who where what the hell is going on with the Zipline. Is it a blog that is limited to 150 characters? Who can see it? Can people reply? Is it just an announcement thing? "Hey guys I am currently scratchin' my arse" type thing?

Maybe it's an evolution of a Mark 2 version feature and people that come in at Mark 3 have no clue.

Colour me biased but I knew as soon as I logged into here what the "Write a post" link did and what was going to happen.

It has groups... you can't find

The search field for photos is always on every page but I can't find the "Search for a group" function. If Zooomr is planning to host more than 3 pages worth of groups (they probably do already) then you need a way to search for the groups people want to join.

It has users... you can't find

Ditto on the above paragraph. Now there might be a way to search for the users and/or groups I want to find, but it is so well hidden I don't know how.

The Groups page is confusing

I was in the groups page but it left me scratching my head. At the top was a group called "Welcome", in it was a post from 3 weeks ago telling me if I have photos of Switzerland then feel free to post them? Really? Is that the group name? Is that the post title? Why is one 3 weeks old at the top? Ok now look down the list they seem to get newer, that's it....ooops now theres another that older.

i can't make heads or tails of what that page is supposed to show me. Ok click on the "Welcome" link...oh it's a group called Switzerland and the post is called "Welcome".... go back to the Groups page... nope not a single mention that this is a Switzerland group.

The columns on that page are :

1. Title
2. Author
3. Replies
4. Age

Unless you click the title you can't tell which group it is from. Even the groups page itself is not in any recogniseable order. Author...no, number of replies....no, age....no, title...no. I honestly cannot work out what order the posts are listed.

They expect people to use this site right? Not machines or bots, right? If they do, then they leave alot to be desired. In the 4 subjects I did at Uni (before I realised I did not want to be a programmer) I had to do a few programs. I reckon that I spent 95% of my time on working out what the lecturer could input to it, catching it, testing to see if it was within parameters and giving meaningful errors.

I remember one particular program asked how many circles you wanted to draw, you gave a letter, I told you to go back to 1st grade. If you gave a 1, I told you that 1 circle could not hit itself cause it had no arms. If you gave more than 500, I asked a question along the lines "Is this a cray supercomputer?" If you answered "No" then you were asked to put in a number less than 500. If you answered "Yes" I displayed a message to ring me so I could come over and play.

Zooomr has lots and lots of work to do in working out how people think and providing features that do what they want in a clear and obvious manner. So far I don't see it.

I don't think so, well not in the normal sense of groups anyway. There is a reason every forum and every discussion web site organises itself like a tree, highest level that has the main listings, you go into that and you see sub-listing and/or topics.

While at the main group page you see all the sub-items associated with the group, topics, events, photo pools etc. You select one of them and it takes you to that section of the group. The topic listings are in a recognisable order, normally reverse date so that you can see the latest topic at the top. This allows you to scroll down to where you last read and you can tell what is new.

There is more than one way to skin a cat and normally 2 dozen ways of getting to the same web page. When you are working with groups you expect clicking on the group name would take you to the main page that displays all that you do in that group.

Now let me describe how Zooomr does it:

1. It lists the topics on the main "Groups" page
2. The topics are in no order.
3. It does not list which group the topic is from
4. To get to a group you have to click a topic but of course you have no idea what group it was from.
5. When you are looking at the topic it has a "Photo pool" link... that does not work
6. When you are looking at the topic it has a "Events" link... that does not work
7. When you are looking at the topic it has a "Map" link... that does not work
8. When you are looking at the topic it has a "Invite" link... that does not work
9. When you click on the "Discussion" link it lists the threads and some of the above links disappear, except the "Photo pool"
10. When you click the groups name the "Photo pool" link disappears too.

Why are there so many groups with 1 member, 1 topic and no replies? Why isn't the group listed? Why are the topics listed in random order? Why can't I search the for groups? Why are there links that have no purpose? Why are there links listed on some pages and not others? Why do I need to start at a topic which is at the bottom instead of drilling down to find what I want like every other web site?

The answer to all of these answers is that the Kristopher might be a talented programmer but he is the worst designer I have ever encountered.