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Picture Galleries with Gallery

I’ve finally got a system for sharing pictures without having to worry about dealing with anything too technical – at least after the installation of Gallery.

In order to get this to work you need a windows or *nix server. I was unable to get it to install on my Mac system, but fortunately had plenty of linux server space I was not using. Gallery lets you set up a template and easily creates web pages to share your pictures. You can utilize slideshows, thumbnails, EXIF data from your pictures and even get prints done through Shutterfly or several other services. The sites you create are managed through CSS as you might expect these days which makes it relatively simple to make global changes to your gallery site.

You can upload pictures to your system via a traditional web interface, a java app and now a direct export from iPhoto thanks to the terrific iPhotoToGallery. This installs an export option into iPhoto (I’m using with iPhoto 4) so you can upload pictures into new galleries or add pictures to existing ones you’ve been working on.

I was messing with a few other set-ups for sharing pictures with my family but felt that this system was the easiest to use for the full level of computer users (total novice to advanced) I expect to be viewing our shots.

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Adobe Could Do for Imaging What iTunes Did for Music

So other industries are now taking cue form what Apple has done fo the music industry: Adobe CEO is pondering an iTunes-like store: Adobe believes it might be able to bring a similar service to its army of creative professionals, offering the ability to download stock photography, design templates and the like from a trusted source – and of course for a fee.[nthoctave]

Interesting and possibly amazing addition to design studios and ad agencies everywhere. I think this could go a long way towards simplifying the use of stock books and CD Collections…

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First look at Flickr

Stewart Butterfield is giving me a demo of flickr. Real-time media sharing. Collaborative drawing. Real-time Photoshop contests. Uploading samples. Playing with the media we all generate.

Free, ad-based. Expected to see “pro” accounts. Stewart wrote the user interaction/UI for it. This is impressive.

It was turned on on Tuesday. Already a couple thousand users. Real launch is next week.

[Scobleizer]

I signed in last night and the UI it seems pretty slick. I just need some online buddies to share with… ;(

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Sizing Up the Rumored Windows Code Leak

The leak is apparently real

This afternoon, news sites are abuzz with rumors that some or all the source code for Windows NT and 2000 leaked out onto the Internet.

I find it hard to believe that source code would leak. After all, companies put source code under lock and key, typically with no outside access available. Microsoft apparently is treating the leak as a rumor based on someone having seen unidentified code suspected to be Windows.

That said, any leak–whether minor or substantial–would be devastating for Microsoft. [Microsoft Monitor]

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Need a mobile dictionary?

ArsLexis has released iNoah a 79kb Palm app which lets you do live lookups on connected Palm devices like the Treo 600. You could also go to dictionary.com, but this seems to be optimized for the Palm. Currently Free in beta mode… worth a look.

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Somniphobia

I love stuff like this…

This is a quick note to invite curious people to check out Somniphobia, a web experiment I’ve been working on.

It implements some of the ideas I talked about earlier about combining blog and forum style viewing of messages. I’m interested to see how well that does (or doesn’t) work with an actual user load.

As an extra perk, it also provides a server-based RSS aggregation service. You can subscribe to RSS feeds and view them from any browser, without seeing repeats of things you’ve already read. Added bonus for Hiptop owners: it will serve up a stripped down version that loads very quickly. Feeds get updated hourly. I use this every day to read blogs on the bus. You can even import your OPML subscriptions list from NetNewsWire, or whichever desktop aggregator you use.

Finally, there is a “blog cosmos” experiment in progress. Everyone can see which feeds everyone else is signed up for. You can preview other people’s feeds and subscribe to them too if they look interesting. I hope this will prove to be an interesting way of discovering new feeds. It also provides an opportunity to collect feed statistics, including a feed popularity chart.

This is the first public test of the site, so make sure you’re feeling adventurous. Things are subject to change, breakage, or divine act. I have lots of other crazy ideas for this micro-community, if it becomes popular enough.

[~stevenf]

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OmniWeb 5 Public Beta

Certainly a different perspective than my earlier bit… Not sure I would use what John finds so interesting though I guess I can appreciate the tech inside. I still can’t see myself paying for a browser at this point, which will be be a serious factor for Omni to be more than just a niche player.

A review of OmniWeb 5.0b1 — which has the potential to be a smash hit. [Daring Fireball]

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Safari 1.2 delivered…

Safari 1.2 is out… improvements include:

Improved compatibility with websites and web applications

Support for personal certificate authentication

Full keyboard access for navigation

Ability to resume interrupted downloads

Support for websites that use LiveConnect for communication between JavaScript and Java applets (requires Java 1.4.2) – also out today.

Software Update should take care of it for you.

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OmniWeb Beta 5.0

The OmniWeb Beta is out today and I’ve been messing with it a bit…

Since it is built on WebKit, the same technology as Safari many feature and even key commands will be very familiar to Safari users. I like the addition of tabs within the sidebar, especially with the addition of a visual thumbnail, though managing tabs in the traditional sense never proved challenging or even hard to deal with. This new feature may even add some weight to the application which is not necessary other than to show off.

Bookmarks import flawlessly and your passwords for sites are also immediately auto-filled if you had previously saved them in the Keychain. This is a wonderful bit of consistency and something I wish more browsers and applications made use of. If you like to test or switch between things it is often a pain to deal with password management.

While it looks nice, this is a hard sell and yes it is being sold. Safari 1.2 is supposedly right around the corner with fixes and a possible feature of two up its sleeve and will be free. While OmniWeb will at least work with all the same sites (though also probably carry the same issues) you’ll have to pay for features like ad blocking (something I am not testing).

All in all a nice piece of work, but I’ll be sticking it out with Safari for now.