Giving Google Photos another chance

Against my better judgement, I left google photo on my new android phone, It immediately insinuated itself into my photos uploading everything (yes I have checked the only upload photo on WiFi connection option). I then just ignore it. Well it did keep updating itself and occasionally asking if it could vacuum up (it uses the term backup) any images saved it new folders on the phone. I got one or two excited notification that the assistant had made a very lame slide show it called a movie or had enhanced one of my images (made it black and white). So I figure its mostly harmless and just keep saying no.

At their recent I/O conference, supposedly for developers, Google announced an upgrade to google photos, included improved sharing, a photobook printing service and a new feature to come called Google lens (a turbo AI charged version of google goggles that will start adding details of what you photographed to you photo’s presumably captions or metadata (read that as where to buy it)

This is google’s mobile phone oriented hype (promotional clip) to make sharing look great, and not something more akin to skynet. I’m not thinking it is so intentionally sinister, its more just a feeble “Emperor's New Clothes” metaphor/slight of hand trick to open up and share even more of you private life with a colossal secretive corporation, who make there money selling such stuff to advertisers (oh yes and the NSA and perhaps others also vacuum it up as well.)

Well there are legitimate reason to want to share photos, firstly publically, so as for a blog post or privately just for the eyes of family and friends. I still use google photo via open writer (an open source version of microsoft’s now defunct Live Writer blogging tool). Once upon a time when google photos was picasa web album you could also get a link to the ,jpeg file or embedded code that could be pasted in any regular HTML. Not any more I’m afraid, google will only let you play like that to google+, facebook and twitter (yes not even blogger). While the Open Writer connection still works I will keep using it but I am now a little less confident in its long term availability.

There are better places to publically share your photos, eg dropbox or flickr.

The private sharing is via share albums which you can allow others, with valid google accounts) to have access. Which is an improvement on having to make things publically viewable if you want to share.

The facial recognition isn’t to bad (possibly better than picasa’s)and once you identify them, add their google account IDs to the face and authorization to share with them and photos of friends and family can trigger a notification that you have a new photo of them, and they will be able to access the photo. I’m guessing this aimed at overly social teens and twenty something’s but I can see it ending in tears and regrets.

Unfortunately despite the claim better organization of your images via AI, the misclassification of places and things in my images is still overwhelmingly woeful. Ok I tend not to take tourist shots and I have travelled a lot BUT to only about half the places google think I’ve been. Under things I saw I’d supposedly taken about 50 shot of auroras! That is one of my biggest photographic desires and whilst I perhaps could have last weekend I am positive I never have. They were mainly star images with light horizons, nothing like auroras. The closest image was a strange green light I photographed in April 2010, it was in the western sky not the south and whilst i can’t explain it is probably not an aurora. (Google you keep disappointing me)

I also went on-line to my google photos web page, and its much the same as the last “upgrade” two year ago, but I did notice a new item called ARCHIVE with a new sticker beside it. Please don’t be decieved this isn’t anything like an archive it will keep all the photos but wont show then in the normal photos view. Presumably because people soon realis4 it is a very cluttered place it might be a much better alternative to not upload them in the first place. I must again stress google photo is not a safe place to store your only copy of your digital photos. If you must it can be used as one offsite place to have as a backup (particularly og phone photos) provide you have another backup under you control (like on your computers hard disk)

So I will keep any open mind, keep using google photos to hold my blog images and let it upload photos from my phone but I am unlikely to return to using google photos as my on-line place of choice to share or organise photos.

PhotoProject :: The Art of Photography :: Assignment 1 Variations

I was looking for a place to put this gallery of photos in  just one spot and avoid reposting across the social web. (ie still looking for a suitable POSSE approach, Post [on your] Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere)  I haven’t found a viable solution yet, so this post duplicates images already posted on tumblr and/or flickr and not to forget instagram. What it shows is all the photos together.

Is Instagram becoming the place to POSE?

I am still keen to find the prefect POSSE Place. Somewhere I can Post Own Site and Syndicate Everywhere. Well with the recent release of an Instagram app for Windows tablets (is pretty much exactly the same as the android app, very simple and apple-esque). The difference for me is I can easily get my DSLR images uploaded. Importantly if I want I can then on post to Flickr & Tumblr, and maybe Twitter (I’m still not a Facebook person or are every likely to be)

The problem with this place to post is it is not really under my control (Own Site) and it is difficult to just point to the images independent of the Instagram's doorways back to the photo. Such as for a blog post like this, I seem only to be able to use the Instagram supplied embed code. However between my tablet and my phone I can see Instagram growing as a way to get photos quickly & easily onto the social side of the web.

#young #buds First post from my HP Spectre #Flowers #yellow

A photo posted by norm hanson (@apimageo) on Oct 16, 2016 at 1:49am PDT

So Instragram is good for a POSE (Publish Once & Syndicate Everywhere)

It is already a foregone conclusion that Instagram is also a good place for show-offs

Thinking about PhotoFlow, rather than WorkFlow

It would seem everything on the Net that is photography oriented will at some time try to sell the perfect workflow. I’m not a fan because these formalised workflows soon become constraints that limit what you can do. In other words I see a rigorous workflow as anti-creativity.
I much prefer the idea the physical flow of the photo  has a lot more to do with being able to work flexibility. (I know it is not truly physical but a spatial workspace is a good analogy). For start I have several mistresses (photosoftware  like Picasa, Lightroom, AfterShot & OnOne) on all of my computers and they don’t exactly play together well. Next I am progressively changing how I organise my photos. There is still an archive of everything (less the photos I cull on import). I now have four places (separate folders on network drives) where I save and work on photos, The most important is Portfolio which is the place I store my best photos, they are not necessarily shared on the net. I have become increasing convinced you need to save your favourite photos in their fully processed view. The three other grouping are PhotoScrapbook, VideoScrapbook & Family are more work places and photos can come and go. If these get post processed the sidecar gets sent to the archive. In all these workspaces I use albums to group the photos (Rather than folder location on the disk).   Finally I have two different ways I share via the Net, the obvious social network places (to open up the image to anyone), and more importantly “private” sharing (where I can select those to share with and only them).
My workflow is still essentially a simple Shot, Edit & Share but I also see it as simple steps to move working photos into a suitable workspace.

not so fast now

Neither of the two runners are drawing away, in the smartphone photo upload to the cloud race, while I am in low connection - infrequent WiFi land. Not that that worries me, I’m used to uploading photos from my phone regularly. A few images are getting through to the separate clouds, but interestingly they are not the same photos and appear at different times. I haven’t counted exactly but google is probably ahead

The biggest issue I am having is trying to group the one’s I want not those chosen by the google photo assistant (aka annoy-ant). Put simply I don’t like google photo not allowing me to use those new potentially good tools and wasting my time with photo I’d rather overlook. Changing the name from autoawesome to assistant doesn't help, it just annoys me now. Also there is the confusion of terminology now that collections are being used instead of album in some places but not in others, For example if you click on a photo on-line it says add to album but the default view is via collections (aka albums). I also ran into a catch 22 when trying to create a new album from a selected photo when I click on add to album it just showed a dialogue of selected album thumbnails to click on, I could not find anywhere to create a new album of collection on the web version of google photos, BUT it appears you need to be on-line to do it. I had to resort to using the old reliable picasa to create a new album. I can add a collection on the phone and it becomes an album! Its all a bit messy and to be honest I just still prefer to do my organizing in picasa on my laptop

The second issue is how to share the images privately with just nominated family and friends. I have for a long time used picasa web albums (and later google+ albums) to share a progressive updates to an album dedicated to my travels. However some time last year this facility was changes so that the photo could only shared with those that had a google account (which annoyed a lot of people to the point where they would bother looking). Has google photos fixed this? It claims it has. You can get a link you can share and it seems to work. However it is not clear if the collection/album remain private. This combined with the restrictions on staying organized if I’m not spending a lot of time on-line, has made it a bit to difficult to set up my normal progressive album/slideshow just for family. I am still preparing an album in picasa of my travels at the moment but…,. I’m frustrated by try to understand what’s going on with the sharing

This is where flickr is streaking ahead, it is really clear what is private and what is public (via a sharing icon watermark) and when you share private photos you get a link and it clearly states that the photo can only be seen by those that receive the link. If you email this link to a family member only they can see the photo (which is the way it should be) Once again you need to be on-line (ie connected via 3/4G data or WiFi) before you can do any organizing of your uploaded photos in the flickr app. However the phone app and web features are much closer to each other, so you get an integrated feel and they do the job simply and well. I’m actually changing over to using flickr for my progressive trip album to share with family & friends

Enough of the sharing already

I’m in the process of swapping from and old HTC android phone (still on version 2.2) to a newish LG android phone (running 4.4) The transition has been very straightforward, You just go to the My Apps section of google play, from my computer, change the device (the number is the same as I just swapped the SIM over) and tick the apps you want (there are a few duds in the my apps list and a few I haven’t used much). So whenever I’m on WiFi I get the apps downloaded (a couple at a time).

Unfortunately I hadn’t anticipated that a number of the apps would be updated (for compatibility with android 4.4) and that entailed turning on the default settings, which on most of my camera related tools involved “free” upload and on-line storage. Suddenly every time I took a picture I would get a copy sent to google+ autobackup, Carousel/Dropbox, flickr, adobe and a few others. Most of which I didn’t know about. Worse google has restarted its auto awesome blooper campaign, sending me enhanced version of photo I didn’t really want rather than the ones I would have preferred and the occasional humorous miscalculation. Where’s the off switch on autoawesome again?

Ok it was easy to turn all the auto-uploads off (except the dropbox, which only uploads when I have a WiFi connection). Fortunately all the uploads where set to “private” (ie not automatically shared). Still it is a timely warning to check those “this app requires access to” settings, particularly around the Photo/Video/Media files  and Camera item(s) and what internal settings are defaults in those apps.

Bad Flickr …not bad panda

For some reason I believed that flickr had stopped stripping the EXIF data out of images when they are shared. This might not sound like a big issue but it is for those that rely on the image having an embedded copyright or creative commons entry in the IPTC and EXIF metadata. This in theory means that anyone that “finds” an image on the net should be able to trace the image back to its rightful owner. The trouble begins when various countries are enacting so called “instagram acts”, which allow “orphaned” photos to be freely used without and copyright or creative commons restrictions. Stripping the meta data away when and image is displayed effectively makes the image an orphan, if the user doesn’t want to take any further effort to find its owner.

I was experimenting with some of the sharing and social network integration in Irista, and happened to notice when irista bought images back from flickr the metadata was stripped. This surprise me because valid meta data is a key check that irista does on upload.

Flickr is only one of the popular services doing it. The only service I have found not doing it is google+

Looks like it is back to always including a visible watermark on flickr, or more probably not uploading important images there anymore.

Sharing the Old Fashion Way (from Picasa Web Albums)

These days all version of picaca, will take to you to google+ photos within google+, rather than to the former way picasa shared on the web, which was called Picasa Web Albums. To be fair google+ photos has a few more features, particularly editing the photos on-line. However it has lost a few of the nice ways to share your photos both privately and publically that where part of Picasa Web Albums (some are just very hard to find). Basically the big green share button is just about sharing within the google+ environment (and those in your circles within that environment).
The good news is the old Picasa Web Albums View and the new Google+ photos actually are just different front ends to the same photo storage. You Just need to know the magic link which will change you back to the Picasa Web Album view (and many of its sharing tools)

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos?noredirect=1

This link still works (at the moment!) The photos are the same, editing them (such as cropping) in one version will change them in the other. There is also a slightly different way to define sharing, which can be set on an album or individually on each photo. The options being Only You, Limited, anyone with the link and Public, shown by simple little icons (a lock for private, a little globe for public and a globe with a piece of paper in front of it for limited). There is a share button which goes to google+ but you can also share via email by adding the email address above the share button. They get sent the email that you then set up on a dialogue popup (shown on the right) and can access the photo or album using the included link in that email. This is a very quick and convenient way to send a number of images via email because you only send the link, and the photos will be private to yourself and the person receiving the email. Google+ can do an email invite but it is firstly an invite to join google+ or log in with a google account before the recipient can view the photos.

The other nice options to share your photos, will show up in the photo display when it is available via limited or public, you will see an extra series of share options below the share key (don’t hit it, its the one that just shares to google+). These share options include posting to blogger and twitter and including a direct HTML link or embedding some HTML code for a website or blog post. You can also reset the secret link, if you fear others have been sent the access code/link.

I don’t understand why google+ doesn’t still offer these sharing options, without the need for the receiver to join google+.

But now you know how to access these sharing options and can enjoy sharing your photos again.

UPDATE Jan 2016, The share button and/or share link are now missing, open sharing outside the google-verse appears to have been turned off.

Start your own Provenance, sharing into the future

Social media is often prompted as a way an artist can reach a larger audience. This is really only partly true. Just putting works on line doesn’t mean others will look at them.  For a start it will probably just be a tiny thumbnail to most until they click on it, if they click on it. Further in a time where almost everyone has access to the net, via smartphone, tablet or computer and their own web presence, via a social media service. Everything quickly gets swamped by a plethora of other distractions. Many of those distractions will be striking similar because the web is full of copy cats and people who “wanna bee” celebrities.  They either are ignorant of, or just wish to remain ignorant of, intellectual property rights and ownership, they are just chasing likes, views and +1s. If your work is original, you may not want it devalued by lots of “clones” or just simply having it “stolen” and reposted without attribution. Well maybe you don’t actually need to post it, just about it.

Establishing provenance (the chain of ownership) for art works is an important historical undertaking. It helps detect and eliminated forgeries (unless the forger can also “plant” an elaborate chain of fake histories) and it is fundamental in establishing the value of the work. It is not possible for you to write the provenance but things you do, write about, sketch and/or photograph will form the foundation of this future value. Posting about your current work, including sketches and photos of you working on it and/or others in front of the work (say at an exhibition) are probably better ways to use social media to promote your art than just posting a thumbnail of it.

The Short Black was painted in 2013, as a donation to the Art Auction at Alphington Primary School

Sharing (aka Self promotion) from Red Bubble

I haven't been very active uploading images to red bubble (from where you can purchase the images in a variety of printed product formats)for some time. However having a relook at places to present works that could be displayed (safely) and purchased, I noticed that red bubble now have metal print. My Gaia Birds Revisited series were designed for this type of printing and I had the originals printed on Chrome foil papers (not directly on aluminium) and it did beautifully enrich the colours and enliven the texture. So I've reworked the images and have uploaded 20 (including some new images) specifically for printing on metal (aluminium) at approx 40 by 40 cm and bigger via RedBubble.

Take a look.

Returning to the POSSE approach to sharing

Weil after what seem like days of dire weather warning of torrential rain and storms (which failed to reach my neck of the woods) it has cooled down a lot and we did get soaking, albeit soft, rain overnight.

Still the ibis are grouping where I have never seen them in large numbers before, perhaps they know something if finally coming? Will the weather Bureau warning come to roost tomorrow?

Original: imageo.withknown.com/2015/light-soaking-rains-overnight-b...

My conclusion is that whilst social media promise to make sharing your images easy, that is only half true. Whilst i may have focussed in google+ and flickr, the same issues (and often more so) apply to other social networks/media services (eg Facebook, Instagram and Twitter). Most folk no longer have their own web sites and even Blogs are becoming more locked into the social space. However I do see it is time to reclaim your domain and build your own web presence and first publish there and then syndicate the share yourself. I have been experimenting with the self blog platform Known and the notion of POSSE. Now I see why this concpet is so important, particularly if you wish to control how you share to the world.

Sharing outside the bubble, that is google+

Despite all the claims google+ make about how easy it is to share photos. When you you press that big green share button, and even with the To line set to the green public option. By public share google really only mean easy to share within the bubble of those that belong to google+ (or more suspiciously places google may choose to share your photograph, such as in searches and maps if you have locations embedded in the photo). That everywhere in the pop-up, should read everywhere google wants. Also even if you limit the share to specific people or circles, if they click +1, then their followers can see the work also.

If you want to share you photo to the wider world its really not obvious how to do it. Here are three ways that seem to work for me. First you need to share the photo on google+, then go to that post.

Get a URL link	Embedded Post
1. Get the Link by right clicking on the date stamp then selecting the copy link address in the drop down option list.	3. If you look on the upper right hand side of the post there is a small down arrow icon, clicking on it brings up and option menu and the embedded code option .
2. You can also click on the dates stamp of the post itself, and then copy the URL address from your browsers address bar.

However these methods are tedious, and really discourage me from using google+ photo. I’m not so interested in just getting a URL, because that doesn’t let me easily display the photo. The embed code is of more desirable. The really interesting part is that you can paste this HTML embed code into blogger and it will not display in their compose mode of their standard post editor but it is displayed in google+ format on blogger itself (see the insert in this post at the top). All the same none of these methods appeal to me.

Stormy weather & losing ability to share

I must admit that I know I can not easily share a photo into blogger directly from picasa. The work around was to share into google+ photos (the picasa web album connection no longer works either). BUT google+ doesn’t really let you share easily so you had to use the blogger web page input which does let me insert photos in picasa web albums (but not directly from google+). OK google+ and picasa web albums are really the same thing only a different front end.  To be able to access as a photo in picasa web albums from blogger you need to be able to supply an album name the picasa web interface recognised. AND now for the clinker you can no longer use an existing album name as you upload from the big green share om google+ plus in picasa!

Stormy weather

Do you see all the catch 22’s here google?

Weather …or not?

flickr are probably sailing close to the wind on sharing their vast photo collection, yet again! This time it is being handled more sensitively. I received an invite to join a new project they have called the weather project. The basic idea is pretty sound, via a free smartphone app called Yahoo7 Weather, you will be able to see flickr photos of your location showing current conditions, supposedly backed by "the most accurate forecasts" (aka the weather channel with temperatures in Fahrenheit), Now this is an opt-in situation whereby joining the group you can expect to have your images shared, provided that are selected as suitable, by “a team of trained Yahoo Weather photo editors". This is clearly a better way to handle the public sharing of photos. So I say cautiously, congratulations flickr.

The first drawback for me is I can’t install this app on my older android phone, not such a big deal because I already have a weather app that accesses the local bureau of meteorology (even when I’m travelling) and it works fine (and the temperatures are in Celsius. However before joining the group I want to make sure I understood the conditions of use. There is a quite comprehensive FAQ section which did deal with my primary concerns, which where conditions of submitting, who “owns” the photos and attribution. It is also clear that flickr, or yahoo, will not be making any payment for images used. Fair enough,


BUT and its a big issue for me, they don’t mention licencing, and specifically anything about creative commons usage.They do acknowledge that the photo are your works not theirs, but they want you to share them freely, unrestrictedly freely! After the fuss over their wall art I expected flickr to be more upfront about licencing.

The condition include that the photo is yours, your original work. Again fair enough. The clause "You also hereby waive the benefits of any provision of law known as Moral Rights or Droit Moral" does concern me but I'll have to research what it means in Australia, since we do have a similar rights in law, COPYRIGHT AMENDMENT (MORAL RIGHTS) ACT 2000 

I do intend to join the group and very carefully watch how they handle attribution, I don’t expect a lot of traffic from their phone apps, but will be happy if any photo I share are considered worthwhile, since I am very unlikely to share my best ones into a group with rules like the clause above!

Sharing Post from Known into Blogger (via Flickr)

Whilst blogger does have an api of sorts, (via a http: request) I’m not certain how to include this in a known add-in (basically I’d probably rather wait for a more savvy developer to work it out). I have found it is pretty simple to share your post (with a picture) into blogger, by firstly sharing it to flickr (which is one of the current social media share links built in.)
The sharing process involves two steps in flickr, and three or four steps in blogger. Thus I have found it best to have both flickr and blogger open in separate tabs in your browser. To begin open the photo page for the image uploaded from Known, click on the share icon (which is the right facing curved arrow on the right hand side of the image. This brings up the share dialogue, click on the HTML radio button and copy the HTML code in the bottom dialogue line (see example on the right). This is HTML code that will display the photo in blogger while the photo itself stays on flickr. Now go to the blogger page and select the Create New Post (it is a pencil icon up on the top left, but I’m sure if you blog you already know that). Firstly change the edit mode from compose to HTML on the blogger post page. Now paste in the HTML code from flickr into the post text area,(see the example below in the blue dashed line highlight box). Next return to the flickr page and click on the small edit icon (again a pencil icon) beside the title and comment section. This will them show you the actual HTML version of the text from your know post (see example on the left). Copy this and return to the blogger page and post it under the image HTML (also shown within the green box below). You know have a post almost identical to the post back in known. unfortunately like the google+ link any hashtags will not be automatically transferred so if you want to use any you will need to enter them manually using the lables button on the right hand side of the blogger page. 

Perhaps this is not as nice as an automatic share, and it doesn’t add a flag back into your Known post that it is also posted in blogger but it is pretty simple once you understand the sequence, and it still has the link to your original Known post to establish your ownership and provenance.

Sharing Post from Known into Google+

I have been experimenting in the Indie web for the past few weeks, specifically with the known blogging platform. (which I hope to bring back to my own website soon, even though the withknow,com site is very easy to use and update, having my web post under my control is my ultimate goal.) The big advantage of the indie web principles, for any creative person is that you control the original post location and can determine who it is shared with. This goes by the acronym POSSE, Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. This can be a massive advantage in trying to establish ownership of the intellectual property. Also I see this approach to social network being perfect to establish reliable provenance particularly if I also discuss a little of why and who I am doing a particular work or project. It also means that I am are not beholding to a third party having control of my works (please also read your social media of choice’s term of service because you are probably surrounding ownership to that social media service by posting your work!!!)

The Known project is open source, with a strong academic/education focus at the moment, and offers a very simple and easy to use blogging/microblogging platform. A basic principle is to allow the POSSE style syndication. so at the same time to publish to the block you can click on extra share buttons for well known social network services, like facebook, flickr & twitter, the post are also submitted to these services via their api so they look and feel exactly like native post on those services. The system is designed to allow development of add-ins for other sites and publishing approaches.
Publishing to google+ in this way is a problem because google does not offer an api (application programmiong interface) to publish into google+ from another party (eg your Known blog) and given the apparent back peddling on google+ generally I doubt it will ever be made available. So I went looking for an alternate approach and it is pretty straight forward. Once you have published on Known, you just need to click on the date entry under the post (see example above) and you will be shown just that post with the permalink to that post displayed in the URL address at the top of your browser. Next you need to select that address and copy it into your cut/paste buffer. Now you can go into google+ and select the link icon, which brings up the link dialogue, shown on the right. Now paste the permalink to you known post onto the Attach: line. Google+ will soon check your post and make a sort of summary selecting a photo (if one exists in your known post) and the title of your post. If you want to use hashtags your need to type them in the google+ status box (at the top of the dialgue screen). You may also want to change who to share with,(eg Public, Circles, Communities) on the To: line. Then finally click on the green share button.

Is Google+ the Kragle?

I’ve made a lot about all the many mistresses (software applications) managing my photos on my computers, but that number pales into insignificance against all the potential software available on the net and/or via smartphone or tablet apps. There are just way too many. So I will tell you of just a few.

Flickr & Photobucket, both are well established services that began in the time before the social media thing exploded and they offer fairly similar features. They are primarily place to share photos on line, and the have features to suit groups and communities for those with similar interests . They have grown and now offer many other facilities such as on-line editing, book printing, slide shows, its a long list. I like them both but haven’t been using them much at all, Possibly I’ve become too obsessed with trying to understand what's happening with the next mistress google+ photo.

I do still feel I was railroaded into google+, from gmail & youtube but mainly from Picasa,the web side view of which is now google+ photos. There are certainly a lot of “features” and I only use a few but the auto-backup and notifications are driving me crazy. There have been a few nice surprises, some of the HDR images have been fine and I working hard on being a member of a communities. While google+ photo does give access to a larger and growing community of photographers its really only on her terms. They are not well explained, kind of just take it or leave it.  The on-line google+ photos edit features are pretty good, and certainly cover most basic needs. The picasa web style albums are still fine but auto-backup is creating a really big conglomerated mess (if you can't remember the date taken good luck finding your photos!). The highlights (seem to overlook too many good photos) the stories are not worth mentioning and the “gifts” aren’t in my view autoawesome at all. They are more like the second rule of lord business,"Never listen to anyone else's ideas, yours are the best", in the lego movie. Perhaps google+ is really the kragle to make things social web permanently the way the google-verse wants? 

I am taking steps to get less involved, only letting her backup from a specific directory, returning to picasa as my preferred method of sharing, reducing the number of people in my circles and turning off notification (with  the exception of  ThePatch Community)

The last on-line mistresses I want to discussed, she is actually more like a butler, she is DropBox. The service that provides easy file transfer between computers and across the web. Unlike the other services above her photographic credentials are pretty simple (Ok I haven’t tested carousel, because my android phone is still running an old version, however most android apps have no trouble sharing with her, ie DropBox) She can be instructed to atomically upload any photos from you phone (or tablet) when she detects a WiFi signal. She can also manage a small part of your file system on your computer onto which any new files will get synchronise. So one minute a photo is on your phone the next it can easily be accessed from any computer you have connected and synched. If you want you can set up little albums (virtual  organizations of these photos) still within the drop box synch area (and synched across all devices). It is also easy to share with one (via email) or many (email and conventional HTML links). I do appreciate DropBox.

The Biggest Workspace of Them All

In my post about workspace not workflow, I omitted the biggest workspace, the all pervasive, everywhere at once internet, now often just referred to as the cloud. This oversight may be because I am still uncertain what it has to offer, even what it is? Rather than being on uniform and extensive place, it is a mismatch of different services, formats and connections.

So Why even put stuff there? Well the ease of exchange and sharing is wonderful and services like drop box make it very easy, not to forget email which is over 20 years old now.The other reason often suggested is that social media can be a great way to expose your work to others. In fact all I see is a pervasive pressure to go viral and become an overnight celebrity, that drives a lot of appallingly bad content. So much of what is on offer is boringly the same copy-cat, look at me stuff (eg rise of selfies and LOLcats, need I say more). I am starting to firmly believe it is ok to share what you are working on (as in provenance) your thought and methods and some of your works, but it is more important to be honest in following your creativity (ie don’t worry about the crowd).

I have had negative and unresolved issue with scrapping of my content and unauthorised (aka stealing) of my images. So I only want to share publically via services that offer creative commons licences. I am also not sure that social media is as secure as they pretend. I worry about small things like less desirable people I don’t want to share with, just what is actually being stolen and reused as some one else work or worse sold. I’m very conscious of the filter bubble effect that social media sites like google+ and facebook can create.

So I am very unlike to do much more than token photographic works and art publically in the cloud. I am certainly unlikely to put my entire collection of photos in the cloud even for a backup. Lets see if I am forced to eat my words in the next 10 years!

When SHARE isn’t

I’ve been getting a little frustrated with google+ of late, when it comes to trying to share images stored in google+ photos across the web, in google’s blogger and indeed within google+ posts themselves. What was once a very easy task in picasa web albums, find the photo you wanted get the link (as a piece of HTML code or just a URL link) no longer works and without documentation and things just changing unannouced. I can only click on the big green share button, but that just shares back into google+ or someone in your circles or with a google gmail account. That might be a lot of people potentially but it is not the way that Tim Berners-Lee envisaged the web working. It is in reality creating a “filter bubble” and google should know better because free access to information and images on the net is their source of income, shutting people out because they are not in the google+ environment can only harm their reach, not extend it.

See Eli Pariser TED Talk  Beware of the online ”filter bubbles” for a deeper insight.

So what can be down about it? I’ve posted several question on the google help forums and so have many others without much assistance. So the google+ faithful are largely in the dark also. What I have found by experimenting is once you published a photo into google+ post and shared it publically, there will be two items to share it further under the little v option icon, on the top right hand side of the google+ post. Click on it and the second item is share this link (which gives you a unique URL for the post), and the third is embed (which gives you a new dialogue box and a panel of javascript to paste in your blog or web page) but this reproduces the whole post not just the image. So you have to essentially duplicating your post, Once inside the bubble and once outside.

There is now a share (to google+) option within bogger, to share a blog post (or more particularly the opening of it (often this text is in duplicate again, no idea why) into google+ posts, along with one of the images from the post. Only most of the time lately the images aren’t shared I just get a large version of my buddy icon from my google account. I did get an answer from Peggk on the google help forums to this one.

“If you want a big thumbnail when you share your blog post to Google+, your image must be at least 506 pixels wide AND  have an aspect ratio of no wider than 5:2 (width to height).”

And don’t get me started on all the broken links back deep in this blog. (If you see any such broken link with strange lh6.ggpht.com as part of the address, please leave a comment that there is a broken link on the post itself and I will endeavour to fix it, It is a legacy of changes in google+ for links that once worked from picasa web albums)

Photobucket has been updated too

I must admit I haven't used Photobucket in a while, it seemed to be keeping place with changes in other on-line services like google+,flickr & tumbler but I kind of backslide into just using blogger and flickr for my blog posts. It was once my first choice to add photos into my blogger posts! Ok that was almost a decade ago. I actually liked their idea of stories, but never got around to creating any. Anyway the display of photo and the uploads have had some significant updates, see the video below.

 

If you are new to storing your photos and videos on the web, and want a safe place to share a few (not everything) then a photobucket free account is a good place to start. Photobucket is a solid well thought out service, that has been around a fair while now and gives you one place to upload, edit, organise, share and print your digital photos, with the addition of an active community as well, albeit largely teenagers these days.