Photobloging over low bandwidth

22-jul-2006 lihir_pit02
Originally uploaded by imageo.

The fact that I have been able to post this panorama, from the remote location it was taken, has overcome a couple of real issues that has stopped me photoblogging when I only have access to very low band width connections to the net. (like when you search out the cyber cafe, if there is one, and it has a 486 PC running windows 95 with and ancient dial up modem).

1) Nice FTP base Uploads don’t work (or are blocked).
2) Frequent Line Drops, Time Outs and errors, which mean that any large file is guaranteed not to be uploaded via on-line forms.
3) Trying to geotag photos with complex on-line scripts (or google earth) which also inevitably fail because of time outs.

For this upload I firstly used flickr, and the upload form in my account, to up load a medium sized version of the photo. I’m not sure if flickr have changed this upload but it does seem reliable and doesn’t fall over or time out. Possibly if such things do happen, it can pick up were it left off and continue. Then I used the blog this button to set up this blog post. Saving me to have to log onto blogger and go through a number of steps all of which where prone to time outs.

I have also used the fantastic script localize whilst still in flickr to capture the coordinates and geotag the photo. Again it worked, a little slowly, but without falling over.

Previously I preferred to use google earth, for remote locations, which I felt had better satellite and air photo coverage, but the google maps coverage is catching up fast. Click on the link below and have a look at the open pit mine from above as well


See where this picture was taken.

All of this was done on a shared satellite link at snail pace speed, but it worked reliably!