Pix.ie

[Fajitas!]

Right, I've Pm'd Marcus from Pix.ie, and as he's interested in our feedback, I said I'd create this as a sticky. If you have constructive feedback, questions etc about the site, please post here.

For those who don't know, the website is www.pix.ie - An Irish Image hosting site, based around communites etc.

The original thread is here, which I'm going to lock, as there's a bit of an overload of information there.

I'll let Marcus take it from here

[Sebzy]

Well to be blunt

Now we have a smaller less featured version of flickr that is driven by advertising.

Now I have a question where on the site dose it state all copyright is held by the account holder not pix.ie????

[Pix.ie: Marcus]

Originally Posted by Sebzy

Now I have a question where on the site dose it state all copyright is held by the account holder not pix.ie????

Hi Sebzy,

The copyright question is a good one was previously asked by Spyral and answered here. But maybe I can expand on it a little:

Thankfully copyright, as of the "Copyright and Related Rights Acts 2000 and 2004" is now an implicit right in Ireland. (My family run a photographic agency in Dublin and this issue is very close to home!)

Nobody can take away your copyright as it is and remains "yours" until such time as you assign it elsewhere. Pixie does not require you to assign your copyright to anyone and never will. What we do require however is that you (the copyright holder) grant us a license to show your photos. If we did not have this license, we would ourselves be infriging your copyright by allowing other users to view the photos that you have uploaded. We need your permission!

Pixie operates within the Irish jurisdiction and therefore you, through legislation and your right to vote are even more in control than from any US based service...

Originally Posted by Sebzy

Well to be blunt

Now we have a smaller less featured version of flickr that is driven by advertising.

Very true... But I think, and perhaps the users that are actively participating on the site might agree, the key words in that sentence are "we have". Flickr first went live with far fewer features than pixie and was also funded by advertising (and AFAIK still is).

What's really interesting about community led web sites is that the people or companies that run them have less control than the people who use them. The users are in control and what happens to pixie and what services it provides will be dictated by those that choose to use it.

We are already discovering from feedback (to a large extent on this board) that pixie provides opportunities and uses that flickr does not...

Hopefully and with a little time, we can improve the services we provide and perhaps make a succes of the work we have put in so far...

Marcus

[Sebzy]

Originally Posted by iampixie

Flickr first went live with far fewer features than pixie and was also funded by advertising (and AFAIK still is).

Thanks Marcus for the quick reply. Just one thing that gets me thinking now true flickr launched with just a basic set of features back in 2004 but your launching in 2007 the market has developed quite a bit over the last 3 year.

Would be happy to move if you could match what flickr supplies but until then....
- More space on pages for images not advertisements.

- A basic search feature even just a simple input for to pass the following http://pix.ie/explore/tag/<WORDS>

- Better support for the users with disability's (Standards complaint)

- Support for user groups and shared pools

- A tool like FlickrUploader I use it all the time as it resizes on the fly and supplies preview.

- integrated message system as not everyone sets up a e-mail client when away from home and to send links you seem to need one.

- HTML tag img phrasing in comments to allow picture responses.



Now for some features even flickr dose not have

User rating system based on the following not just 1-5 stars
# Relevancy to Category Topic
# Composition / Arrangement
# Focus / Sharpness
# Lighting
# Creativity

Customizable styles such a black.

[Pix.ie: Marcus]

Originally Posted by Sebzy

Thanks Marcus for the quick reply. Just one thing that gets me thinking now true flickr launched with just a basic set of features back in 2004 but your launching in 2007 the market has developed quite a bit over the last 3 year.

What can I say - You gotta start somewhere!

Originally Posted by Sebzy

More space on pages for images not advertisements.

We really did go to some trouble to ensure that the "necessary evil", ads, were positioned in such a way as to minimise interference with the photos. We will also most certainly have ad free accounts, similar to the flickr pro accounts in the future.

Originally Posted by Sebzy

A basic search feature even just a simple input for to pass the following http://pix.ie/explore/tag/<WORDS>

This is being done as we speak...

Originally Posted by Sebzy

Better support for the users with disability's (Standards complaint)

Actually we were very concious all during development about ensuring accessibility compliance. Where possible, we have used Hn tags for all headings and all "alt" tags should be populated with text representations of images. Most accessibility aids use these tags to assist those with disabilities. Was there a particular area of non compliance that you spotted that maybe we should address?

Originally Posted by Sebzy

Support for user groups and shared pools

This is almost completed...

Originally Posted by Sebzy

A tool like FlickrUploader I use it all the time as it resizes on the fly and supplies preview.

As soon as we publish the API we will have support for these tools. Members of the community (see other thread) have already offered to develop such a tool against our API.

Originally Posted by Sebzy

integrated message system as not everyone sets up a e-mail client when away from home and to send links you seem to need one.

This is a funny one actually! I sat in a presentation by Cal Henderson (Flickr Architect) where he stated that spending time writing a internal messaging system for Flickr, was in his opinion, a wrong move... But it would seem that this is actually a common feature request, so we will have to push it up the list ourselves!

Originally Posted by Sebzy

HTML tag img phrasing in comments to allow picture responses.

A couple of users on the other thread specifically said this was a feature of Flickr that they disliked... My feeling is that maybe we should allow this based on what the account owner stipulates in their account settings: "Allow images in comments - Yes/No".

Originally Posted by Sebzy

Now for some features even flickr dose not have

User rating system based on the following not just 1-5 stars
# Relevancy to Category Topic
# Composition / Arrangement
# Focus / Sharpness
# Lighting
# Creativity

That's an interesting idea... We are finding that users are a little reluctant to "vote" at all! We haven't worked out why this is yet, but are presuming that it has to do with the fact that this is a feature that Flickr users are simply not used to. We are willing to give it some time to see how we should evolve it.

Originally Posted by Sebzy

Customizable styles such a black.

Pixie is totally skinnable... We made some mistakes in the UI design which are currently being corrected. Once this is locked down and more solid, we can safely roll out skinning, confident that we won't need to make any more major changes.

Many thanks for your feedback!

Marcus

[jaqian]

When are you going to set up a forum?

I'd also suggest (with Boards.ie permission) that you archive a copy of these posts on your forum for reference and historical interest

[K_user]

Can I just mention that one of the main advantages that I can see so far with Pix.ie is this forum. Sebzy has a dozen questions and they are being answered right here, in public, almost instantly. This is something that never happens with other sites such as flickr.

Quote from Sebzy:

Now we have a smaller less featured version of flickr that is driven by advertising.

Most businesses are driven by advertising and profit. I doubt that iampixie is paying for the site and the storage just out of a kind heart!

[Pix.ie: Marcus]

Originally Posted by jaqian

When are you going to set up a forum?

I'd also suggest (with Boards.ie permission) that you archive a copy of these posts on your forum for reference and historical interest

Hi Jaqian,

To be honest... having our own forum is not near the top of the list at the moment.

We have some core features to implement first like finishing "organise photos" and redesigning the "explore area" and "photo page"... These feature are blocking users from being able to do the things they expect to be able to do with a site like pixie, so they are currently taking priority...

Hopefully we can make do with this forum/thread for a few more weeks until we get to building our own. We have already identified some possible open source candidates that may provide a starting point which should make the job of integration relatively easy for us.

Marcus

[bigeoino]

Originally Posted by iampixie

This is a funny one actually! I sat in a presentation by Cal Henderson (Flickr Architect) where he stated that spending time writing a internal messaging system for Flickr, was in his opinion, a wrong move... But it would seem that this is actually a common feature request, so we will have to push it up the list ourselves!

I think the issue here is that there isn't much of a way to build up any sense of community... There's no forums or message boards..
You can't even send (or I can't find it!) someone a comment or request...

Even Contact form which send an "email" via a simple bounce through a hidden address might suffice (which only works if you're logged in, has appropriate anti spam fields, and the from address is the senders profile address) so that the recipient's email address is never even made public.

[Pix.ie: Marcus]

Originally Posted by bigeoino

I think the issue here is that there isn't much of a way to build up any sense of community... There's no forums or message boards..
You can't even send (or I can't find it!) someone a comment or request...

Even Contact form which send an "email" via a simple bounce through a hidden address might suffice (which only works if you're logged in, has appropriate anti spam fields, and the from address is the senders profile address) so that the recipient's email address is never even made public.

Okay, no problem... We'll see what can be done sooner rather than later.

[WexfordMusings]

Well, I for one am happy with this free product. i have only started uploading all my pics so it will take sometime. i have in the past used the Kodak website which is slow and cumbersome and on my bebo page but this is even slower, only allows you to upload 6 pics at a time and sometimes times out half way through.

To get down to the nitty gritty, I have just uploaded 148 photos in one huge swoop, (94.6mb in total) although it will take a little time to title and add tags but I am looking forward to that. It took exactly 34 minutes on a broadband connection (I dont know how anyone on dial-up would manage).

All-in-all, a nice simple program for beginners to use that at the end of the day does the job. Well done!!!

As I become more experienced (by about next week) I'll let ye all know how I am getting on and if I have any negative comments. In regards to other points raised, this forum is great and maybe pix.ie could continue to use this for now. I have used other boards, but this is the handiest and most reliable (along with gaire).

As for a search facility, does the tagging of photos not do this?

Contacting other members through pix.ie might allow people to exchange pics that are not legal so this would have to be monitored otherwise pix.ie might/could be held responsible for same.

toodles

John

[Sebzy]

Marcus might want to put a size upload limit on files as I just uploaded a 13MB file.

iIf you want to know why a 13MB file then save it and rename it to .rar and open it up in winrar for the surprise.

http://pix.ie/sebzy/342405/size/0

[Valentia]

Originally Posted by Sebzy

Marcus might want to put a size upload limit on files as I just uploaded a 13MB file.

iIf you want to know why a 13MB file then save it and rename it to .rar and open it up in winrar for the surprise.

http://pix.ie/sebzy/342405/size/0

If it wasn't marked as private I might

[Morlar]

Originally Posted by Sebzy

Marcus might want to put a size upload limit on files as I just uploaded a 13MB file.

iIf you want to know why a 13MB file then save it and rename it to .rar and open it up in winrar for the surprise.

http://pix.ie/sebzy/342405/size/0

Does this have anything to do with sex dwarves ?

[Pix.ie: Marcus]

Originally Posted by Sebzy

Marcus might want to put a size upload limit on files as I just uploaded a 13MB file.

iIf you want to know why a 13MB file then save it and rename it to .rar and open it up in winrar for the surprise.

http://pix.ie/sebzy/342405/size/0

Hi Sebzy,

Your account is set to private so nobody can see your images...

Anyway... with regard to file size, following a large number of requests on the previous thread, we increased the photo file size from 4MB to 16MB per file.

Uploaded files go through a series of security checks and general validation before they are saved to our storage sub system. Previously, one of these checks included a check for steganography (which is what I presume you are refering to with this file?), but it wasn't foolproof and sometimes produced false positives. So we removed it until such time as it worked 100% of the time.

People will always try to hack or game a service, we just need to ensure that we build this into our costs and protect ourselves whenever and whereever possible. If this kind of abuse becomes an issue, rest assured, we will deal with it!

While I'm glad to see your giving pixie a good once over, maybe when the demo is over... you might be so kind as to remove the offending file!