Piclens - A better perspective on web images &photos Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Delicious is an online bookmarking site that I use, as do many others. Unfortunately I've got so many bookmarked sites I can rarely remember what I have stored. Whilst the site allows you to apply tags to pages, hence permitting you to classify them, I am inconsistent in how I classify and hence two similar sites can end up with very different tags. This makes finding stuff tricky, but this is compounded when I can't remember the name of the site and so have to trawl through the links.

I've often wished for a visual thumbnail wall of my delicious sites, simply because I find it visual prompts of what the site looked like a quicker way of locating what I am looking for. Sadly, I've yet to find such a service.

In the same way, hunting for photos or images of my own or online tends to be very hit and miss. Classifications of tags work to some extent, but the reality is that nothing beats viewing the images. So I'm always on the lookout for tools to enable rapid browsing of images. On my laptop/desktop I use Picassa, the Google application which is excellent.

Well, today I found PicLens. It's a free browser plug from Cooliris, which provides astonishingly good image browsing facilities on the web. Clever use of zooming, panning and 3D style presentation not only improves your ability to scan, but is also visually stunning. It works on many photo/images sites inc Flickr, Photobucket and Picassa Web albums, as well as Google Image search.

Check the intro demo here.

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posted by John Wilson @ 9:05 AM Permanent Link ,

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Photo collages Sunday, December 09, 2007

Having been strongly encouraged by my wife to write the Wilson family 2007 Xmas letter (annual recap on the past year sent to people when never see and with whom the only contact is Xmas cards and the annual letter), I was instructed to also produce a photo collage of some pictures of our kids from the past year.

Trouble was that my software inventory came up lame on the collage generation
- GIMP, which is an open source product, almost certainly can produce collages but you need a PhD to use it
- Picassa from Google has a collage feature but with no controls and doesn't allow you to size it to a normal photo size - you either get a square 2x2 or 3x3 grid. This was important as I didn't want to use my colour printer, preferring to use the local photo shop which churns out high quality shots for 20p each.
- Any of the Adobe or Microsoft products I have didn't make it easy to mesh the photos together with out lots of unnecessary and time-consuming fuss
- Online application FlauntR did lots of great stuff but also came up lame with photo size collages.

Thought I'd struck gold with Collagr, a free online app, until I found that there were no controls you could use to adjust the collage and it only took photos from folders on either Flickr or Photobucket.

But then a further search on Google located Picture2Lite. It was free to use and provided a wealth of facilities to edit your photos which could either be uploaded or taken from online sites. It also had large suite of collage templates to produce your desired look at feel, each of which could be customised to suit your particularly requirements. It was incredibly easy to use and the results were great. Definitely one to add to your armoury of photo editing tools and facilities.

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Animoto - Brings life to your photo Thursday, September 20, 2007

I went to a Wedding at the weekend, and as has become custom, I trot round taking a large volume of pictures of the event and their guests, which I then give to the couple to supplement their official photos. Allowing for some polishing up time (cropping, light enhancing etc), they usually get to see their photos in 24hrs or so, via an online photo gallery service. It also means that other guests can have a look and if they wish, add their own photos to the collection.

The online service I use tends to vary based upon a few factors
- who has the easiest upload mechanism
- who provides unrestricted uploads
- best photo browsing features and download capabilities

Hence, over time I've used several services including Photobucket and this time I used Zooomr. I only use free services as I don't use them enough to warrant a premium service eg I may post 6 batches of photos a year, but when I do post I load several hundred pics. This is where Flickr proves to be of no use to me, despite its many excellent features, since it has a small monthly upload limit on the free accounts.

But, I am always on the lookout for better photo services and I was delighted with this one from Animoto - not because it was a photo hosting service but because of the excellent output in the form of a professional looking "music video", which took less than 5 minutes to create. See below.



It's free to use for short clips, and an option to pay for longer "movies exists". Brilliant way to pep up photos.

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Could this make even me look good? Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Well I may be pushing the limits of this online photo editor, but it certainly is one of the best ones I've seen, especially online. FotoFlexer has some interesting body improvement features (enlarge, shrink) which should obviously be used with care i.e. careful what you alter!

It's as simple as uploading a photo and then modifying it within the browser session.

It caters for the usual stuff like red eye removal, but can also And of course, it's free. Of well, beauty is only a pixel deep.

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posted by John Wilson @ 9:15 AM Permanent Link ,

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In M&A, almost anything goes - MySpace & Photobucket Tuesday, May 08, 2007

A few weeks back there was a little news rumpus over the fact that MySpace had disabled Photobucket photos from appearing on MySpace pages. There was much discussion on blogs about why this had happened and how MySpace was throwing its weight around but how Photobucket was one of the most popular embedded items on MySpace pages and thus MySpace should be ready for some pushback.

Well, it turns out that this show of "force" was simply part of a negotiation tactic by MySpace who yesterday acquired Photobucket in a competitive bidding situation.

As Techcrunch observes "Some would argue that they play dirty poker, but shutting Photobucket down at a crucial point in the acquisition negotiations was a brilliant move, and may have shaved hundreds of millions of dollars off of the purchase price." Not to mention, it will have scared off some potential buyers in the race, worried about the impact on revenues and traffic this could have if implemented permanently.

Techcrunch contends that this was much better deal that YouTube was at a price of $250m on projected revenues of $25m. Or "To look at this another way, YouTube was paid about $67 per unique visitor. Photobucket got just $13."

It's ironic that another photo sharing site, Zooomr, had been struggling to find funding. I bet they find it easier now, although there is always a huge premium for being number one in a market and one of the potential future buyers will probably now be out of the running, unless of course they bought Zooomr for its technology and founder. Likewise, Flickr will probably be kicking itself for having sold for $25m.

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