Archive for March, 2008

Last Chance Saloon

March 28th, 2008
Gwyn Headley

by Gwyn Headley

Managing Director

At midnight next Monday, March 31st, the last black hole in the World Wide Web will be plugged.

From April 1st, anyone who upgrades to or joins as a Platinum fotoLibra member will get a staggering 100 — count them, ONE HUNDRED — 100 gigabytes of storage and selling space.

It’s enough to satisfy the space-hungriest photographer.

But what this doesn’t tell you is the little slip we made when we created Platinum membership. We promised UNLIMITED storage.

And of course that still holds true. All existing Platinum members will continue to have unlimited storage on fotoLibra for all time, or as long as they remain members, whichever comes sooner.

But we couldn’t maintain the offer for ever. So we’ve put a time limit on it, and that expires at midnight (GMT) on Monday.

That means that any individual who upgrades to Platinum between now and Monday night will still be getting UNLIMITED storage for as long as they remain members.

It’s too generous an offer to last. Sorry about that.

But it’s still open!

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Safari & FileChucker

March 26th, 2008
Gwyn Headley

by Gwyn Headley

Managing Director

Safari v. 3.1 was launched today, and for some reason Apple failed to consult fotoLibra during its development.

After the problems everyone had with our new FileChucker upload system and Safari 3.0.4 you’d have thought they’d have been all over us like a rash of hives. But no, they went their own sweet way without consultation.

And you know what? It still works! You can use our FileChucker with the new Safari without worrying. Alles klar, as we like to say in Frankfurt.

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More excitement than we need

March 25th, 2008
Gwyn Headley

by Gwyn Headley

Managing Director

You had a Picture Call from Jacqui last week, for the tomb of Gertrude Bell in Baghdad. Here’s what one fotoLibra member wrote to us on Easter Sunday:

I’m in Baghdad now – and the cemetery is on our list of places to re-visit, but it’s in a difficult part of town, with a risk of being stopped and kidnapped at fake checkpoints.
It’s also rather noisy here today – lots of explooding Easter eggs (mortars and rockets aikmed at the Green zone), so we’re keeping a low (indoor) profile out here in the city for a few hours.
But I will keep trying – however it’s unlikely in time for this deadline.

The deadline (perhaps too literal in this case) has passed, and this time we have disappointed the client.

But hey, did our fotoLibra members try, or what?

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Safari issue resolved

March 19th, 2008
Gwyn Headley

by Gwyn Headley

Managing Director

It’s taken a while, but it was a little bit out of our hands.

When we launched the new FileChucker upload system in fotoLibra Version 4.0 in December, we’d thoroughly tested it on all browser platforms. That day (it seems to me) Apple ‘upgraded’ its Safari browser to version 3.0.4.

It did everything it did before, except it wouldn’t work with FileChucker. I don’t know if many of you have experience working for a small company and trying to get through to a mega company to get them to change something that’s not going to benefit them at all? It’s quite hard.

Anyway, we’ve rewritten the code and we’re happy to announce that FileChucker now works superbly on all platforms, including Safari.

Our Support team now have nothing to do. It was the only question they were ever asked.

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You can’t photograph here

March 17th, 2008
Gwyn Headley

by Gwyn Headley

Managing Director

Rajesh Thind was filming crowd scenes in Oxford Street when he was approached and ordered to stop by two community policemen. In the wake of the spoof petition on the No. 10 web site protesting against the banning of photography in public places in the UK, this is an alarming snippet of how the combination of a uniform and ignorance can lead to confrontation, anger, misunderstanding and perhaps worse. As the filmmaker says, we are continually watched — Britain has more CCTV cameras than any other country — why shouldn’t we watch back?
It’s worth watching this.

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Gwyn Headley

by Gwyn Headley

Managing Director

We talk to picture buyers daily, if not hourly, and we always like to ask what they’re working on at the moment and if there’s anything we can help with.

Usually we can. With hundreds of thousands on images on line, and the ability to understand our customers’ wishes without them having to semaphore their intentions to a call centre in Bangalore, we not only find the pictures the buyers need but also throw in some suggestions from left field to surprise them. Mostly they love it.

The requests, as I wrote in the last blog entry, are usually specific but sufficiently general to allow wide interpretation — cycling, Orang utans, haircuts, that sort of thing — but today we got one that really threw me.

A client wants pictures of “something in the wrong place at the wrong time”. What a great concept! What a terrific challenge!  The square peg in the round hole. I’m scratching my head. We have one picture with wrong place, wrong time in the keywords so that’s being offered, but how does one convey the concept so that one look tells the whole story?

Any ideas and suggestions gratefully received.

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Gwyn Headley

by Gwyn Headley

Managing Director

Simple — PLEASE STATE YOUR MEMBER ID FOR ALL SUPPORT QUERIES.

You’ll find it under the “My Details” tab in your Control Centre.

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