Adventures of an Idiot - occasional ramblings of a photography freak

Originally uploaded by Ricardo Philippi de los Santos

The introduction of video clips on Flickr, following so soon after the news that Microsoft may buy Yahoo (parent company of Flickr) was sufficient to start me thinking about moving to a different photo-sharing site (see this post).

Well, what really started as little more than a vague notion rapidly became a project of sorts in its own right.

I’ve already got accounts with both ImageShack and Picasa and frankly neither particularly impress me.
Largely because, despite my recent (and in fact quite minor) criticisms of Flickr, I really like most of the things about it and to date had considered it to be about the best site of its type on the Web. And this of course has tainted my perceptions somewhat insofar as I almost unconsciously use it as the standard by which to assess others.
And of course there’s the whole familiarity thing as well.

Anyway, I set off on my trek around the Web and eventually shortlist two possible alternatives… SmugMug, and Zooomr.

Started with SmugMug. The interface looks really good; its not too dissimilar to Flickr, and I start to feel quite positive about it.
But then a very practical problem arises. Given that whatever site I ultimately choose as an alternative to Flickr (if indeed I do) I will almost certainly want a “pro” or “premium” account (i.e., paid for as opposed to free) so one of the first things I always check is how the site accepts payments.
And I discover that SmugMug only accepts (at the moment anyway) payment via one of four different credit cards. Now I always pay Web transactions via debit card (principally because its just a tad more secure), but the card I use turns out not to be one of the “brands” that SmugMug accepts.

Bummer!

So I fire off a quick email to them and, impressively, receive a response within just a few hours. Moreover, its not one of those “boiler plate” messages that suggest the original query has not even been read (such as I’ve received from Flickr in the past) but deals precisely, accurately, and in a friendly manner with my question.
Unfortunately, not very satisfactorily. For it seems there’s no immediate plans for SmugMug to extend its payment options.

Ah well, move on to the next site.

Zooomr.

Yippee! First thing I check, and it seems they accept payment via PayPal. That’ll do!

And the general appearance of the site and its features is not too different to Flickr.
Beginning to feel a bit more positive, I set up an account (a free one initially of course!), and there hit the first snag.
Having gone through the rigmarole of filling in the form (username, email address, etc) and getting it all set up, and receiving the confirmation email, I find I can’t log in!

Unbelievable! Despite repeated attempts I just keep getting returned to the opening splash page.
“Hmm”, thinks I, “possibly a problem with the browser”. So I switch to Opera and try again. Still no joy. Finally (holding head in disgust) try Internet Explorer. And whaddya know? Still no luck. (Not surprising really, given that it uses the same engine as Opera.)
Well, being a determined little sod, I then try (back to Firefox again) using a different machine.
And hey presto, I’m in!

Now this is probably not entirely Zooomr’s fault. For the first machine I used was my work one, and that’s locked down fairly tight security-wise. So almost certainly I’d be able to overcome the initial log-in problem by tinkering with my firewall settings.
However, the fact is I shouldn’t need to. The fact that I do suggests there’s some sort of scripting/multi-port traffic or whatever going on behind the scenes with Zooomr.

Nevertheless, now that I’ve actually managed to login successfully, press on and upload a few photos… or try to! For there arises the next snag.
I select about a half-dozen photos to upload and all seems to go smoothly enough (progress bars ticking away nicely etc)… until I come to check the fruits of my endeavour. There’s only one pic been uploaded!

Dammit! A quick skirmish through the help forum indicates that there’s a bug using the Flash uploader with Firefox. Hmm… doesn’t bode well, particularly as Firefox is my default browser (i.e., browser of choice).
Anyway, I then try the HTML uploader and all works smoothly enough… except I can only upload one pic at a time.
Given that in the past coupla years I’ve uploaded something getting on for 2.5k photos to Flickr, I really can’t see “one at a time” being much use to me.
Anyway, now I’ve finally got a few pics in Zooomr I try doing various operations with them, and find the whole effort to be both laborious and buggy. And its slo..w..w..w! So whereas I started out (hours previously it seemed) fairly positively, I’m now quite depressed about the whole caper, and think maybe I should look a bit further afield.

Which I do. And come across Ipernity (www.ipernity.com). Now I vaguely recollect stumbling across this some time ago and being attracted by the name (so reminiscent to me of some of Clive Barker’s tales). But, being satisfied with Flickr at that time, I hadn’t pursued it.

But now is different. So, first off, check payment options (free account’s limited to 200Mb per month uploads, but that’s quite a lot anyway) and joyfully discover they too accept payment by PayPal, and indeed wire transfer! Superb. Oh glee! (Why can’t all web services be as flexible and welcoming of potential paying customers?)

Steam ahead with registering for the free account (initially)… and no hitches at all (aside from having to respond to an email to activate the account, which is reasonably standard - and good - practise anyway).
Have a quick browse around the site (before even attempting to upload any photos) and it looks remarkably like Flickr but with a sort of “sitespaces.net feel” to it… that is, a sort of trimmed down open-source CMS.
Then I discover a bit about how the site’s been made possible largely through the use of open-source apps and I think to myself that this just gets better and better.

But the goodness doesn’t stop there… seems the whole setup’s configured to work best with Firefox (apparently may prove a bit buggy with other browsers… well, tough!) and (my joy is becoming almost orgasmic now) there’s a greasemonkey script on-site that can be installed and then allows the import of pics from Flickr!!!

Well, I’ve simply gotta give that a try. And it works! A treat!

So I’ve now imported some 70-odd photos from Flickr as a test, and tried tinkering with them. (Modifying tags, creating albums etc). Also joined a group and “shared” photos with them. Everything works fine, and the various functions are still remarkably like Flickr.

But the best is yet to come…

The main reason I started using this present wordpress blog was because I seemed to be constantly looking for a user-specific blog feature in Flickr, and they simply ain’t got it. Hence this one.
But Ipernity has! Yep. They’ve got an on-site blogging facility that’s user-specific (i.e., each user can have their own blog).

All of which means that after (really) not too much effort at all I think I’ve found a viable alternative to Flickr. Precisely how I’m gonna use it is another matter entirely of course.
I doubt that I’ll abandon Flickr entirely (or even substantially at the mo’) but I can see me using the two of them increasingly in tandem, with the confidence that comes from knowing that should I get really pi***d off with Flickr I’ve got somewhere else to go.

There are however a couple of negatives re Ipernity. One is the user-base… its nowhere near as large as Flickr’s (but then, one wouldn’t expect it to be, would one?). And the other is APIs… or rather, lack of them.
But both of those are situations that may improve over time.

One huge dilemma I face is the question of the blog. Flickr doesn’t provide a user blog, which is why I’ve started this wordpress one. But Ipernity does.
So whaddo I do? Likely I’ll use both and end up cross-posting a fair bit of stuff. After all, I like wordpress and this blog’s a stand-alone, which has distinct advantages, whereas the Ipernity blog will likely only get traffic from on-site. S’pose I’ll just have to see how things develop.

The other dilemma/issue I face is my working methodology. I’m not particularly inclined to have one site simply mirroring the other, but I would like (at the moment anyway) to keep both active.
Well, so far the pics I’ve imported to Ipernity are those of my “output” that I rate more highly than the rest, so that’s probably gonna be the pattern for the future… the bulk goes to Flickr, but what I regard as “the best” will go to Ipernity.

Oh, I almost forgot… another feature that Ipernity has which is absent in Flickr (and which has been a minor gripe of mine for ages now) is that they have a facility for users to change the background colour etc of their page. Admittedly this only applies to the “home page” at the mo’ but at least its a start. The point being that pics look so much better against a dark background than a light one (generally speaking, anyway).

All of which just about brings things up-to-date. Apart from one final observation…

The catalyst for this quest was Flickr’s introduction of video clips. Yet weirdly, I’ve decided to also go with Ipernity as an alternative yet they already have a video upload facility!!!

So what’s the difference? Well, firstly, the way Ipernity appear to have implemented it is slightly different to what Flickr’s done. For they’ve practically separated it off into its own discreet area.
But more significantly, I knew in advance of Ipernity’s features, whereas Flickr has thrust this “innovation” upon all of us (and particularly we holders of “pro” accounts, i.e., paying customers) without so much as an opinion poll, a by-your-leave, or even an opt-out feature.

Its the arrogance that did it for me. That, and the likely buyout by Microsoft!

And (truly lastly) here’s the most important bit of info… my brand new Ipernity page is at fotdmike.ipernity.com. Feel free to pay me a visit, sign up for your own account there… and even add me as a contact! [heh heh]