Simple tool for postcard project
June 5, 2019 10:58 AM Subscribe
I have a friend with a lot of old family postcards she'd like to transcribe and put online. It's a manageable project but she's wondering if there's a better tool than Flickr?
In her dream world what she would like is a way to put the images online, somehow group front and back (though she could put these in one image if necessary) and link with the brief transcription and then add metadata like the date/sender/recipient and have the content be sortable by any of those things. This is an example of the content she has.
My suggestion was Flickr and tagging/albums for grouping, but I bet there is something better (no need to tell me about Flickr's uncertain future, I know). Maybe a WordPress theme or a simple hosted solution? Or some other photo site? Does not need to be free but should be cheap. Anything that requires server access, script learning, or other installables more complex than a WP theme will not solve a problem for her. Please let me know if there is some great option that I am overlooking. Thank you.
In her dream world what she would like is a way to put the images online, somehow group front and back (though she could put these in one image if necessary) and link with the brief transcription and then add metadata like the date/sender/recipient and have the content be sortable by any of those things. This is an example of the content she has.
My suggestion was Flickr and tagging/albums for grouping, but I bet there is something better (no need to tell me about Flickr's uncertain future, I know). Maybe a WordPress theme or a simple hosted solution? Or some other photo site? Does not need to be free but should be cheap. Anything that requires server access, script learning, or other installables more complex than a WP theme will not solve a problem for her. Please let me know if there is some great option that I am overlooking. Thank you.
What's wrong with the Wordpress site you linked to? Is she not employing tagging on her posts? I was going to suggest a Blogger site with one postcard per entry and tagging by date/sender/recipient etc.
Instagram would also work with tags and short text descriptions.
Google Photos lets you input metadata, short text descriptions, and tags, and uses folders.
posted by irisclara at 1:18 PM on June 5, 2019
Instagram would also work with tags and short text descriptions.
Google Photos lets you input metadata, short text descriptions, and tags, and uses folders.
posted by irisclara at 1:18 PM on June 5, 2019
Response by poster: I think she was hoping to be able to include dates encoded as dates so that you could sort in various time-based ways. Does blogger let you add "historical" dates (i.e. something in the 1890s) by changing the date on a post?
posted by jessamyn at 2:31 PM on June 5, 2019
posted by jessamyn at 2:31 PM on June 5, 2019
We have come to the relatively unhappy resolution that we'll be financially plugged into the Amazon Prime machine for the rest of our lifetime. Assuming it stays at $119 for the next 40 years or so, that's about $4800 bucks for free 1-2 day shipping on almost everything they carry, but we've come to appreciate more and more all of the other services we get included for that price - namely their digital content and more recently unlimited storage for our photos.
I'm in the process of migrating from Flickr to Amazon now (it's not easy, you have to DL everything then re-upload to AZ). It doesn't have tagging like in Flicker but you can create albums and groups. The metadata is easy to see but you can't change all of it, just some. You can't add comments in the metadata but you can when you are sharing a photo or album. If you made each postcard its own album, you could upload the front and back photo with no need for additional work, I think. You can edit date taken metadata and then sort based on that.
One thing that is kind of cool is that they seem to be using some kind of computer vision image recognition AI to allow you to categorize photos by things like trees, cars, animals, etc. - the people category then further breaks down by who it thinks the person is. Cool but kinda creepy.
posted by allkindsoftime at 4:18 PM on June 5, 2019
I'm in the process of migrating from Flickr to Amazon now (it's not easy, you have to DL everything then re-upload to AZ). It doesn't have tagging like in Flicker but you can create albums and groups. The metadata is easy to see but you can't change all of it, just some. You can't add comments in the metadata but you can when you are sharing a photo or album. If you made each postcard its own album, you could upload the front and back photo with no need for additional work, I think. You can edit date taken metadata and then sort based on that.
One thing that is kind of cool is that they seem to be using some kind of computer vision image recognition AI to allow you to categorize photos by things like trees, cars, animals, etc. - the people category then further breaks down by who it thinks the person is. Cool but kinda creepy.
posted by allkindsoftime at 4:18 PM on June 5, 2019
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posted by sizeable beetle at 12:55 PM on June 5, 2019