So...now what????

I had noticed a problem with photos...here and there, kinda randomly, photos were disappearing from the blog posts.  They ...just weren't there.

Then I clicked on a photo from one of my reviews...one that was linked to my  collection of review photos in Picasa.

And got a 'this page is missing' notice.

Odd.

Then I noticed that my entire album of review photos was missing.

Now that'll give you a sinking feeling.

Then I noticed a yellow box at the top.  'An important message from Picasa.  Click to learn more.' it read.

Well.  Here we go again.

After much thought and consideration, we’ve decided to retire Picasa over the coming months in order to focus entirely on a single photo service in Google Photos.

Yahoo photos went away.  Photoworks went away.  Now Picasa is going away.

But Picasa is the host site for all the Blogger photos.  What is going to happen to all of the photos linked to the blogs????  

Oy.  This makes my head hurt. 

And I still don't know what happened to the missing photos... 

Here we go again

I wanted to check fit on a couple of jackets to compare with my latest muslin...I thought the quickest way to do that would be to just look at the photos with the reviews.

So I went to one of them and clicked and...the Photoworks link was broken. Again.

Sigh. I clicked through and started to look for it, when suddenly a phase that had flashed by on the home page registered.

'Photoworks is closing. But we've found a great place for your photos!'

(*Beats head on desk. No! No! No!...*)

They have a transfer to Shutterfly all set up and ready to go; I had to create a Shutterfly account and then hit transfer. The photos won't be available for a couple of days whilst the transfer is taking place.

But the issue is...I've got to relink all those photos. Again.

Sigh.

Changing the Photo Plan -- Maybe

I learned something today...

I've always wondered where the pictures that were uploaded to Blogger went. Guess what? A Picasa account gets created for the Blogger account and any uploaded photos go to Picasa albums.

Basically, all that I needed to do was create a user name for that account and...lookie, there are my pictures! Accessible to Pattern Review and everything!

Okiedokie, then. If I switch to Picasa, I won't have to upload photos twice and there should be no repeat of any unexpected requests...it looks like Picasa allows photos to be public but not searchable.

Much better. Except...

There's pretty much only one size available for viewing. Flikr allows the photos to be viewed in a larger format. This is going to take some thought.

Oh, well, I've got until I upload the first review photo to make up my mind.

Meantime, I've got some housecleaning to do on Picasa. There are several photos that were uploaded, then I lost the link while writing the post so I had to upload them again. I need to delete the duplicates. ;)

Photo Woes...part umpteen...

I logged onto Yahoo photos yesterday and discovered that they were encouraging folks to move the photos...so I clicked on the little box and moved everything to Flickr. Flickr was most appreciative and gave me the three months pro account, which is good, so I've got a little time to do the housekeeping that will be necessary as I don't intend to pay for that account unless it hits the point where I just have too.

But, of course, it broke over a year's worth of photo links to my reviews, which I need to go back now and correct. It probably wasn't a good idea to do it just before we leave town for vacation, but, oh well. I'll try to work on it a little at a time, starting with the most recent and working my way backwards. Then, hopefully I'll meet myself somewhere in the middle, where I'm still working from oldest forward to replace all the broken links from Photoworks upgrade a couple of years ago.

And I'll cross my fingers that, once it's finished, no one will dump the links on me again... ;)

Photo Woes Once More

If you go to Yahoo Photos, the login page comes up, with solicitations to sign up for a free yahoo photo account...but, once logged in, this little message appears in the lower right hand corner:

Yahoo! Photos will be closing this fall so we can focus our efforts on Flickr

That means all those pictures and links will be going away!!! (So why are they still inviting people to join up???)

And I was JUST getting used to the New Yahoo Photos...which has been up and running for what, 4 months now? I'd even begun relinking last year's pictures to their respective reviews.

The Yahoo people are recommending everyone move to Flickr (or Photobucket or Kodak or one or two more that I don't remember). I went ahead and opened a Flickr account, and I'm pleased that the one photo I have uploaded so far looks very sharp, and it can be viewed in more than one size, but there are bandwidth limits with the free account, and only the most recent 200 photos can be viewed (although they're still there...I guess they're archived? That wasn't really clear). So obviously Flickr is not going to be the Final Answer.

I think I'm just going to have to use Photoworks as a backup...they still don't allow linking to a single photo, but if I link the whole album with a note as to which photo is the one that goes with the review, at least the picture is there. It works for the older reviews (the ones from '02 and '03)...so if I just use Flickr for the new pictures and Photoworks for the old ones I should be able to keep everything linked to a photo.

But it's going to be a pain in the patootie all the way around. And, although Yahoo says that all we have to do is request the new photo host to transfer our Yahoo photos, I couldn't find anything anywhere that told me how to make that request.

Grumble, grumble....

Photo Link Woes (again)

This time last year I was agonizing over which photo service to go with for the review photos; ultimately, I picked Yahoo because (1) it's free (2) I could link individual pictures to a review and (3) it's free. But I had (still have) a huge backlog of reviews (I got 2002 and a bit of 2003 updated...but I still have most of 2003 and 2004 left) with broken Photoworks links that I need to go back and fix. But Yahoo upgraded their photo site last year too and...the old links don't work there, either. Well,let me correct that, they sort of work; it'll go to the homepage, so a determined review reader *could* click around until the correct photo was located, but I'm sure it's frustrating. I know it bugs the stew outta me.

And, with the 'upgraded' Yahoo photo site, it is necessary to click through about 2 additional windows in order to get a photo uploaded to a correct album. It seems to me I *should* be able to upload directly to a specified album, but my attempts to do so have resulted in creation of a new album with the same name and one photo in it, instead of the new photo added to the exisiting album. So everything gets uploaded to the 'All Photos' album, then copied to the correctly labeled album. And it's not enough to have the album flagged as public...each photo must be individually tagged 'public' in order for Jane Review Reader to see it. Now, I know that by using the tags I could create 'smart albums',so maybe Yahoo is trying to discourage folks from having a bunch of albums and substituting the tags instead? Or do you suppose they're deliberately trying to get us to visit as many windows as possible in order to maximize the advertising opportunities?

All I know is that it has become a longer, more tedious process to upload photos...and I've got a bunch of links to add to the 'fix this' list.

But it is still free and I still can (eventually) link an individual photo, so I guess I'll learn to live with the headache.

Posting Pictures

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things
Of ships and shoes and sealing wax, and whether pigs have wings...

and what to do about posting photos for pattern reviews.

Since I started posting reviews in '02, I used Photoworks to host my photos. Load them to an album, select one or more photos from the album to link to a review, email them to myself and post the link. It was a little awkward, but it worked. Then in fall of 04, Photoworks decided to revamp their whole site. My photos were hostage to the conversion for something like 6 - 8 months, and of course all the old links no longer worked. (I'm still in process of re-linking the old reviews...previous to Nov. 04...it's a long and tedious business). But now I cannot link a single photo to the review, I can only link 'albums'. Consequently, I have a BUNCH of albums with one photo in them; and I can't put a 'see this HERE' type link in any review. It's cramping my style. It doesn't work for me anymore.

So I decided that, with the new year, I'd look around and see if there are any more review-friendly photo hosting sites out there. Um, maybe I'd better rephrase that: I'm looking for FREE review-friendly photo hosting sites. I've got access to Yahoo, and I may end up with that, but I know Yahoo gets aggravating from time to time, too. I am a 'Friend of PR' and have an album there, but at the rate I sew I'd fill it up in no time flat so I'm sort of using it for the backup. I've probably got a week or so before I get the First Review of the Year done, so I need to make up my mind pretty quick.

So I'm soliciting opinions...anybody got a favorite free photo hosting site? :D