Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog and photo

Easy photo blog software and system for elderly person.

jcdill — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:08:22 -0800

I'm trying to find the easiest photo blogging software for my father (age 74) for his travel blog. My father has a MacBook Pro. He is using iPhoto for his photos. I am trying to find a REAL EASY way for him to incorporate his photos into a travel blog. Budget reasons mean we can't use expensive hosting services where he has to pay $$$ every year. I already have a website where I can install blog hosting software (such as wordpress etc.) but the complication of using one program to upload photo here, then get the online link for the photo, then incorporate photo link there (in the blog) then publish the blog entry is just way too many steps for him. We need a simple solution on the Mac where he can drag-n-drop the photos into a blog entry, type his text, then click "publish" and the software will upload the photos where the photos need to go, upload the text for the blog entry, make the image links automagically.

The photos can be uploaded to the website, or to flickr, or to smugmug - whatever works with this EASY to use blogging software, which MUST run on a Mac. Ideally the Mac software would be free or inexpensive. Open source is ideal, if it is EASY for an older person to use. (It doesn't have to be easy to setup - I can do the setup for him.) Suggestions?

How to handle media upload when traveling far and light?

XiBe — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:09:12 -0800

My little brother will in a few months embark in a year-long trip around Asia (India, Vietnam, Thailand...), towards Australia as final destination. He asks me to set up a blog for him - easy does it, I'm a WordPress translator. But what about media? And in general, what should I not forgot to make sure we get the best from his experience while not making it hard for him to communicate? See, he'll be traveling light (so no laptop) and potentially deep in unknown territories, where there's little chance he'll cross any Internet cafe, let alone a computer with broadband - I might be wrong, of course, but I'm speaking with the experience of a friend who works at a resort in Laos valley, and he has limited (monthly) bandwidth at his workplace.

So, while it's gonna be easy for him to update said blog with text, media are another matter, and I have a few advices to ask for.
- How should he handle his files? With limited bandwidth, he cannot upload full size image, but he cannot edit them down either to take as few Mb as possible. Likewise, I don't want him to take pictures at minimal resolution just for this reason, since he'll certainly want to get them full size and on paper once he gets back home.
- He'll be carrying more than one X Gb cards for his camera, but those will run out quickly if he cannot dump them from time to time. I know there are dedicated card-dumping portable HDs these days, but I hear they're not reliable. Anyone has experience on this?
- Any tips on a light, good and sturdy camera, with standards cards that he can buy over there by the dozen?
- Videos are bound to be made, but weight way more than pictures. Should he avoid making them?
- More generally, what should I setup for him to ease the message transmission between his faraway land and the whole family back home? - again, with as little bandwidth use on his side as possible. Should I use my own server for hosting, or rely for instance on Flickr and it's (I suppose) many CDNs in the region?

Lastly, what are the cool traveler/around-the-world blog that you know?

All the lovely ladies who haven't gone to porn

reenum — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:34:43 -0800

Looking for sites with non-nude pictures of beautiful women I have long admired female beauty. So, I decided to try and find some non-nude photoblogs or sites with pictures of everyday beautiful women.

Unfortunately, porn has overtaken this realm and I can't seem to find too many good sites with pictures of non-celeb and non-porn beautiful women.

I've tried Flickr, but I'm looking for a site that might aggregate the content from sites such as Flickr, Webshots, etc. or has people submit pictures of beautiful women. If they're wearing skimpy clothes, that is fine. But, the pictures need to be of women who are fully attired. So, topless shots are out.

I know beauty is subjective, so please give me links to sites of women you think are beautiful. I can take it from there.

Thanks, MeFi!

Best non-Flickr Collaborative Photo Sites?

clever sheep — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:44:33 -0800

Do you remember a global online photo project where individuals took pictures of themselves in their room? If it's still out there, I need to find it, as well as other examples of collaborative, possibly community-building blog-style photo sites that aren't Flickr. My Google-fu has failed, although I did find some neat things along the way (laundry swapmeet, tabblo). Help me, o hivemind!

I am trying to convince my somewhat skeptical big'n'traditional employer that two work teams, separated by distance and culture, could possibly feel a bit more connected if they had access to a corporate-sponsored place pooling voluntarily shared images and a bit of explanation about why a particular poster is offering up a particular shot. I'm looking for models of intriguing & inspiring but work-safe topics, clean and thoughtful presentation interfaces, and any administrative best practices you can share from experience. Thank you in advance for your help as I try to give some good people a chance to get to know each other better!

What is the best way to live-blog a cross-country road trip??

tarthur — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:40:01 -0800

What is the best method & location for live-blogging a cross country trip using a MacBook, DSLR camera, DV camera, t-mobile EDGE and intermittent wifi? I'm about to drive/move back to Southern California from Central Florida with my boyfriend and we want to document the trip with photos/video 'live' as we progress across the United States. Our travels will bring us up through New Jersey, Chicago, Denver with a stop at the Grand Canyon.

I have a t-mobile phone capable of EDGE (slow but useable) data transfer for the Mac and plan on stopping at wifi equipped locations to upload video/photos. A GPS type hookup would be sweet but I'm not familiar with doing that with a Mac.

It would be nice to have some type of map showing progress (GPS preferred but manually updated OK), the ability to post photos, gas prices, mood and other utterly useless information.

Has anyone had any experience with this type of blogging? I'm trying to determine if it would be best to use my limited skills to build some type of moveable type/wordpress with google + flickr or use something like Vox.

Thanks!

Oh, SNAP!

Glitter Ninja — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 10:32:38 -0800

PhotoBlogFilter: Tips on starting a photo journal? Oh, snap! There's I've been in love with photography for ages, and am trying to work on honing my skills without just taking loads of meaningless photos. I've also tried to commit myself to blogging every other day- but that's never worked in the past. I thought a photo diary might be a great way to combine them both, so I though I'd ask for tips here- What do you guys thing the most interesting things to look at are? This diary wouldn't include pictures of me (since I'm obviously the ninja behind the camera) but I'd like to be able to tell a story about my day without using words if at all possible, save for a couple of place captions. Also, how can I commit myself to my every other day regime? I figured AskMeFi would know, if anyone would. Thanks in advance, guys, and please give me any other tips you can think of, or words of wisdom.

How does Dad easily show his paintings online?

blueberry — Wed, 24 May 2006 12:41:02 -0800

My father is looking for an easy way to showcase his paintings online. I'm thinking photo blog. My father is looking for an easy way to showcase his paintings for friends online. Right now he been playing around with Google's Googlepages but, while it's dead easy, it may not be quite enough.

Googlepages gives him a free site but only allows up to 100mb of space and 100 files total. We think he's going to run over this quite soon. Plus, I think it would be cool for him to have things like keywords and an "all of my paintings" thumbnail page (perhaps in chronological order). Although he's leaning towards a MacBook as his next laptop, until probably next year he's running Windows XP on Gateway laptop.

Here's what he'd like as far as blog features go:

- a reasonably simple-looking template (right now he uses the default Googlepages theme as it allows the focus to be his work, not the cool template)
- an easy web interface where he can enter a title, perhaps a description, choose the image, click "publish" and have it be online a few seconds later—keywords would also be a plus
- all of the standard links built in (next, previous, home, about, etc)
- more space (I'm thinking that 500mb would be fine)
- the ability (if possible) to find and delete files that are not (or no longer) linked to anything—files just taking up space for no reason.
- the ability to add comments might be nice if there was a way to preemptively weed out comment-spam. Maybe something where posted comments were emailed to him to be OK'ed before being posted?
- clicking on an image shows a larger version, but without any stuff like Flash or Java taking over
- no advertising
- in a nutshell, a simple to use, pretty plain-Jane photo blog site

He registered a domain a few years back but no longer has a host for it. If he signed up with a photo blog service could he have his pages hosted by them, but accessed through this already-registered domain?

One last request: if you recommend a blog-provider could you also mention the suggested plan name and pricing. Thank you very much in advance.

Geophotopodcasting my way across the USA

superboy422 — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 11:39:00 -0800

At the end of next week, I will be embarking on a move from the New York City area to San Jose, California. I have this brilliant (or slightly overzealous) idea to "geophotopodcast" my way across the country using a combination of different technologies, so my friends back home can keep up with my adventures. What suggestions can you offer me for making my high-tech travelog cooler / easier to execute? I'm totally open to any technologies I haven't considered, so don't worry about cost or practicality when making suggestions.

Here's what I'm envisioning so far:

My travel companion will take (tons of) photographs with my dSLR (a Nikon D70) as we travel along. At the same time, I will be tracking our route with my USB Earthmate GPS. I plan to figure out a way to tie the photo timestamps back to the GPS log to geotag the photos on flickr (and Google Earth).

During the day, I also plan to co-host a podcast with my companion by hooking up two USB headsets to my laptop. Perhaps we will interview truckers or diner workers, tollbooth workers, or a random vagrant here and there. I will edit these and make them available 1-per-day the following week.

I also will write a textual blog entry at least once every day so that I have a written log of the trip also.

I know it sounds tedious, but I think it could be a really fun project -- especially the podcasts. If anyone can provide me with any tips for making the project even cooler (or easier) I would be eternally grateful.

Oh, and assuming I actually get it done, it will be posted at www.squeakytoy.net. Thanks in advance. :)