As I was dropping my EC this morning on the SocialCardsters Blogroll I came across one of my favorite Bloggers, Chica and her blog Photo-Projectz. Chica has run into a snag that I bet a number of bloggers have at one time or another. She signed up for a photo hosting account on Flickr and then uploaded a 201 photos which put her over the 200 photo limit. Great! Now What?
Well, like Chica, you have a few options.
Option 1 - Just keep uploading, I mean, who is gonna look at those older photos anyway. (Not Recommended)
Option 2 - You can buy a pro account for yourself at $24.95 for one year or $47.99 for 2 years.
Option 3 - Explore the world beyond Flickr...
If you are on a budget and paying for photo hosting is not part of that budget then you might want to try one of these alternatives.
Buzznet - I've been uploading images to Buzznet since 2003. At one point I got a pro account there and was able to make as many different galleries and folders as I wanted. I still upload my Photo-A-Day to this site because the Photo-A-Day Widget that I created is based on the RSS feed from a gallery on Buzznet. I don't think you have to pay for a pro account anymore and so you can upload a ton there.
Pros - Uploading images is free, you can upload an original full sized image and choose from a bunch of sizes for your blog. You can also easily post to 20 different blog related sites including blogger and myspace. The site is also social so you can give other images 'Buzz' (Mark them as favorites), you can comment on images, add friends, make galleries private and password protected too. I don't think there is a size limitation but there is a monthly upload limit which is 300 images.
Cons - It seems a bit spammy. I've gotten over 400 friend requests from people who are not photographers, who have not photos on buzznet and I think the age range is something like 14-22, so I am an old dog on that network. I upload my one image a day and go.
A Closer Look - You can set specific privacy for your account and if I tighten it up it should cut down on the spammyness, But I am still too unhip for participating in that community.
Zooomr - Zooomr is as close to Flickr as you are gonna get. It looks pretty similar but the major difference is that you have unlimited uploading capabilities. So you will not run out of space, ever.
Pros - Unlimited Uploads, easy geotagging, labeling and you can put a url of a Zooomr image into Pownce and have it show up automatically. You can upload whatever size you would like and Zooomr will make sizes for your blog. You can also generate smartsets of not only your images but other images as well. The site is mainly for serious photographers who want to learn from each other. That is the impressions I get from the place. But that certainly doesn't mean that if you are not hardcore into photography that you can't have an account. Heck you might get some great comments from those hardcore photogs as well.
Cons - No 'one click' posting to your blog. Not many features beyond the unlimited uploads. Yet
Photobucket - I just signed up for this one for this post so I am not as familiar with it. This is a photo hosting site powered by Google, there are a few of them out there, Picasa is another. Once you upload there are a bunch of places where you can automatically post the image. You can sign up for a free account and then you can decide to go pro at $25.00 a year.
Pros - Free up to 1GB of space. Multiple ways to share the image.
Cons - I found the interface clunky. I also just started playing with it today.
As you can see the quality of the image is the same across each hosting site. It doesn't really matter where the image is located. What you have to decide is what features are you looking for in a photo hosting site. There are many other options to chose from when deciding where to host your images. My advice would be to scout them first, sign up for each one and try them out. Upload a few images, see how each interface is, look at the features. What is most important for you when choosing a hosting site for your images? Do you want to interact with other photographers/bloggers. is the hosting site a weigh station for your images before you post them to your blog? Do you post images to multiple blogs? Go through the questions and then decide which one of these options is the best for you. If there are other photo hosting sites that you are interested in please leave comments on this post.
Drew writes four blogs, is an avid kayaker and a Transformers fan, he also does a mean cake plow. He recently completed taking 1000 consecutive photos in 1000 days. You can visit him at The BenSpark, The Wired Kayaker, Read To Me, Dad, Google is not God.
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If you've spent any time on IZEAFest.com then you know it's going to be a blogging event like noneother. I mean, have you seen the folks who have already signed-up to speak?
Maybe you've been considering registering for IZEAFest but have been holding back for some reason. Well, here's something that should be that extra push to go ahead and book: we've extended the "Early Bird" special to the first 100 people who register. That's a $15 savings per person! And just think, if you purchase two tickets you'll be saving $30. Three tickets...$45. You get the picture. Not a bad deal, eh?
We're close to halfway to 100 and the offer is only valid until May 14th, so you have to act fast! After you register don't forget to pick-up your "attendee badge and post it on your site, so to let other bloggers know you're making an appearance at IZEAFest. Hey...if you happen to see this badge posted on a blogger's site--or even a speaker's site--drop 'em a note and tell them you're looking forward to seeing them in Orlando.
Have questions? Feel free to drop us an e-mail at IZEAFest[at]izea[dot]com, or check-out the IZEAFest forum on the IZEA Message Boards.
Technorati Tags: Advertisers, blog conference, IZEAFest, Orlando, Posties
This weekend I spent on my own as my wife and baby girl went up to Vermont for a Girls Weekend. I spent the whole time doing all the guy things that I've wanted to do on a free weekend like watch movies, eat food bad for me but oh so tasty and play video games to all hours. I'm married with a kid now and so weekends are full of family things these days. I wouldn't trade that for the world because, in addition to loving my wife and child dearly, if I was still young and single I'd probably not survive these weekends when I overdo things.
Some of you might already know that I went and saw Iron Man because I mistakenly sent a post through Utterz to all of my blog connections, including this one. I had forgotten that I set up a connection to the Postie blog through Utterz for a previous Guest Post. So there was an accidental review of Iron Man that got automatically posted here. Thanks to the anonymous "postie power" for the heads up, I fixed my Utterz account so that won't happen again.
I attended two community events during the weekend that inadvertently helped me get out and work on becoming a better blogger and photographer. I followed my own advice from another guest post and took it offline. On Saturday I got out there and met people. I gave many people, that I met, my blogger business card. If you don't have your own blogger business card by now there really is no excuse. There are many avenues for you to obtain cards, even free ones. There are even some opps every so often for free business cards. I suggest you order some for your blog and keep them on hand when you go out.
The first community event that I went to was called Strut Your Mutt. It was a fund raising event for the local animal shelter. I brought my camera and a stack of blog business cards with me to hand out as I took photos of the different pets. I noticed something, it is much easier to ask someone if you can photograph their dog than it is to ask for a photo of the person themselves. However, I would ask if I could take a photo of a person's dog and then say, "Would you like to be in the photo with your dog?" This would open a nice dialog with the owner of the pet. After I took the photo I handed them my card and told them that the images would be available on my Flickr account and they could download them for free.
Just by going out and talking to people and giving them my card I was able to make some great connections in the local community. From that one event I may get a couple of photography gigs. I also got an inspiration about something I could do to help our local animal shelter. I met a beautiful dog named General at the event and I really want to help the shelter get him placed in a new home.
General needs a home.
I had given the shelter my card and they contacted me to tell me that they liked my photos. I pitched my idea of photographing one of the animals each week as a Weekly Adoption Spotlight post on my blog. While we can't adopt all those animals ourselves maybe I can point someone to the shelter to adopt them. I think in the back of my mind I had been a bit inspired by Skeet's most recent Guest post about Posties Doing Good.
The other part of my handing out cards to people in the local area was to try and expand my reader base. Right now my readers are primarily other bloggers, online photographers and my family. I've been writing sponsored posts for a while now about people and places far from me. I think I could use that knowledge and my blog to connect with people in my own back yard as well. To do so I need to get out there and spend some time in the community.
The second event was a fundraiser for our local YMCA. It was called the Wing Off and it was all about which local restaurant had the best Buffalo Wings. I went from station to station photographing each team and their wings. I gave them my business cards and talked to each person for a little while. From this I might get some additional readers and photo gigs. I also got an idea for a series of posts where I go to each restaurant to rate the wings in the local area.
My Favorite Wings, hot spicy and delicious.
Between these two events I got inspiration for future posts, possible visitors, great photos and tons of tasty, tasty buffalo wings. More and more when I take the virtual blinders off and step outside both my home and my comfort zone I find inspiration that I can use to become a better blogger.
Drew writes four blogs, is an avid kayaker and a Transformers fan, he also does a mean cake plow. He recently completed taking 1000 consecutive photos in 1000 days. You can visit him at The BenSpark, The Wired Kayaker, Read To Me, Dad, Google is not God.
Hello everyone. How y'alls been? Even though it's been a while since my last post, I'd like to dive right in with a little discussion of web hosts. In the three years I've been running OhGizmo.com, I've gone through a motley crew of hosts that offered everything and the kitchen sink. After a long search, I finally found a home for the site.
In this post, I want to share my personal experiences. And to make it interesting for everyone, it would be cool if you could leave comments with your own.
Dreamhost.com
Ok, so this is technically not my first host. But the first real one was so small, it's barely worth mentioning. Dreamhost, however, is HUGE. And the thing they don't tell you is what kind of a dream they're talking about. Yeah, that's right, they should rename themselves Nightmarehost.com. Support was slow, the site was sluggish and the ability to have tons of bandwidth was moot since you'd drive all your potential readers away from having such a slow site.
Of course, early on, I didn't know any better, so I thought this was normal. The price was right, and I stayed there for way too long. It wasn't until they got serious downtime, for weeks on end, that I decided to look for a new home.
Bluehost.com
This was a definite step up. To this day, I can't remember a faster server. Things were lightning quick, and I thought I'd found a permanent home. The price was right. Things were fine and dandy until the first day I got a story featured on Digg while on this new host.
No one had told me about CPU cycle quotas! So even though I could have tons of traffic, and the site loaded fast and everything... if too many people were reading the site at once, it would get disabled for five minutes. After five minutes, it would come back on, only to get disabled within seconds because the load was still too high.
This wasn't working. I needed something that scaled.
MediaTemple
They promised something they called The Grid. An array of servers who could distribute the load during traffic spikes, so that nothing would come crashing.
Things crashed anyway. Not only did they crash on the base plan, they crashed on the more expensive VPS. See... and this boggled me... the VPS actually was not on The Grid. Meaning it didn't scale. But no one told me that. I had to find out by being ridiculed on Digg with endless Database Connection Errors... Shameful.
Plus, service was slow and painful.
So I moved to my last home, the one I'm at now.
Mosso.com
Mosso is definitely more expensive than anyone above. It's $100 a month. But for that price, you worry about nothing. I've never encountered such service. They have an 800 number... Guess what happens when you call it? A human answers! Whatever the issue, no matter what time of day or night, someone can help you.
What's more, they've built their offering on Rackspace infrastructure. If you don't know what that means, just take my word for it: it's great and reliable!
Just last week, we got featured in a bunch of places. Ended a 24 hour period with about 110,000 pageviews, a single day record for OhGizmo. And we were down for exactly: 0 seconds.
So that's it for my tales. It would be great if you could share your own experiences in the comments.
There seems to be some confusion, for SocialSpark posties, on what to do when you get to step 5, Paste the HTML code of your post, on the take opportunity screen. Hopefully, this will clear it up.
If you've taken a sponsored post/opportunity, then you have seen this screen:
Using blogspot, I will show you what needs to be placed in step 5. Here is what the screen looks like when you write a post. Look familiar??? There should be an option to view the HTML code for the post.
If you click the "Edit HTML" or "View HTML link, you will then see this:
This, 3rd image, shows the HTML of this post. This is what needs to be copied and pasted into the box, under step 5, of the take opportunity screen.
I hope this helps clear up some of the confusion.
There are so many generous-spirited posties involved in community projects, causes and charities that I don't think we'll ever run out of material for our new Izea blog feature about posties doing good. We have to start somewhere, and I've made an arbitrary decision to focus today on two posties. Both are involved in animal welfare and both have created blogs dedicated to supporting some of their favorite causes.
Pelf is The Turtle Lady. She's dedicated her academic pursuits towards preparing for a career preserving the critically endangered river terrapins. She must be pretty good at what she does, because she's visiting the US on scholarship as I write this, studying with some of the foremost experts in her field. She talks a lot about her beloved terrapins on her personal blog, but there are other subjects dear to her heart, too. She created The Giving Hands to publicize worthy causes and projects. It was through Pelf that I first learned about Chemo Angels, an organization that offers support for people with cancer. Last fall she blogged for an entire month about environmental issues, and she's recently shared information about how you can help with children's immunization campaigns and help women start businesses that will lift them out of poverty. If you're looking for a cause to support, check out The Giving Hands. Pelf has already done the research on many wonderful organizations for you!
HoundsGood is another virtual volunteer, with a primary focus on helping to solve the problems of abused and neglected domestic animals. The blog can be heartbreaking to read at times, as HoundsGood focuses on shelter pets which need to be adopted into good homes before their time runs out. Animal rescue organizations and volunteer opportunities are regularly featured and provide a tangible way for you to help. Explore HoundsGood to find out about rescue and spay and neuter organizations working to solve the problems of pet over-population and abandoned, abused and neglected animals. You'll also find some great tips for keeping your own pets healthy and safe.
Have you caught a postie doing good? Send a PM to Ashley or me and tell us about it so we can let the whole Izea community know!
This is such an exciting time to be a part of the Izea community. SocialSpark is our new reality, with innovative concepts for promoting our blogs and lively new revenue streams we can tap into. Change can sometimes be a little scary, but this one has so many positive aspects to it that it's easy to embrace it. The good folks at Customer Love have been working overtime to ease our transition anxieties through their quick responses to tickets and their presence on the Message Boards. I'm a bit of a Luddite (okay - more than just a bit) and don't adapt well to new technology, but Pete and the development team have incorporated so many user-friendly features into SocialSpark that I haven't had a single panic attack as I've begun to explore and learn my way around. If you know me at all you know how extraordinary that is! Some things haven't changed, though, and never will. I'm glad of that.
This has always been a warm and giving community, as I discovered when I first came on board with PayPerPost. There was a puzzle contest going on at that time and each of us wanted to be the first to find all of the pieces and win the prize. The competition was fierce, yet posties were sharing their puzzle pieces and helping each other out with puzzle grids and search tips. That generosity of spirit has remained one of the most attractive features of our community and is something that I know will never change. If you've ever posted on the boards about a technical problem with your blog or asked for help getting a stubborn link to show up, you know just what I mean. Posties promote each others' blogs with Stumbles, linky-love and Entrecard drops, and show up in droves whenever someone needs a hand. Try asking for help yourself if you doubt it. Posties with Propellers really are standing by, and they are willing to give generously of their time to help you out.
That same helpful involvement is also evident in the online and offline lives of many posties. Ashley and I had an email discussion about this recently. We have both been impressed by the number of posties who work actively to support community efforts, charities and social causes, and both of us want to do something to recognize those efforts. We decided that featuring those posties and their causes on the Izea blogs was the way to go. The release of SocialSpark delayed things for a bit, but I'm excited about getting started, so I hope Ashley won't think I'm jumping the gun by asking for your help. I'll be doing my first post for this new feature shortly, but it's not possible for any one of us to know all of the wonderful ways that posties are making the world a better place. You can nominate a postie or a blog for recognition by letting me or Ashley know what they're doing. Drop us an email or a PM and let us know who you've caught doing good. We'll take it from there!
Shrek and I are very similar, we are like onions, and we have layers. Except I my layers are not emotional or anything like that, my layers are creative and in Photoshop... Elements that is.
One very powerful feature of a good photo editing system is the ability to generate multiple layers in your images. Layers can help you do many things. With a layer you can seamlessly put someone into another image. Take for instance this image.
Can you tell who shouldn't be in the image, of course you, eh hemm, can't. I look like I have frosted tips, not just a frosting covered face, man I get some mileage from that shot. But you get the idea. So how did I do this? Well I took my original image and pulled it into Photoshop and I immediately went to the layers box and right clicked on the background image. When an image is brought into photoshop it shows up as background image on the layers palette. It is good practice to duplicate the background layer and use that new layer as the one you will work with. Why is this good practice? Well if you go crazy adding filters and making edits you can always go back to the background to get a clean copy of the original image.
So I pulled in the image of the circle of young ladies. Then I duplicated the background layer. Then I opened the Cake Plow photo of myself and dragged that image to the image with the circle of young women. To do this I selected the move tool, clicked on my cake plow image and held the mouse button down and dragged the image to the other image. This created a new layer on the 'circle' image. See image below.
Click for full size image.
I then spun my cake plow image 180 degrees and moved it to the top of the ‘circle’ image. I also moved the 'cake' layer between the duplicated 'circle' layer and the background layer. I set the opacity of the duplicate 'circle' layer to 50% so that I could see the 'cake' image. See image below.
Click for full size image.
Now the cake layer is too small to be part of this image so I have to do some stretching. It is preferable to have two images of the same size and resolution for this to work smoothly. I have done this a few times with images that I took back to back where in one everyone was smiling but one person. I took their face off one image and put it on the other with no visible distinction between the two. That is why when I shoot I do 3 shots right in a row so that I can make sure people are in relatively the same body positions, makes merging images much easier.
Okay so I stretch the cake layer so that my head is about the same size as the head of the person I am replacing. Making the top image 50% opacity lets me see where the layer underneath will appear so I can do the line up and sizing correctly. See image below.
Click for full size image.
Luckily the 'cake' image has a solid background. I can use the magic wand selection tool to select the background of that image and erase it. I do a few other things to clean this up. Then I select that entire layer with the magic wand tool. This selects everything but the cut out of me. See image below.
Click for full size image.
I then click on the layer duplicate layer of the 'circle'. The selection should still be intact. I then push the delete key you remove everything on the duplicate circle layer that was in the selection area that just happens to be the same size as my head and shoulders. See image below.
Click for full size image.
Now turn each of the image layers back on. You will see that my head is now part of the 'circle' image. See image below.
Click for full size image.
However this still looks a little funny. So I then use a few other tools to remove the ear of the person I am covering. I also used the blur tool to smooth out the edges around my image so I blended better into the image. It isn't perfect but it is pretty good for something I cranked out sitting in the Atlanta airport with no Internet access and few images on a three hour layover to get home.
Here is your assignment. You know by now that Ted Murphy is a fan of the Cake Plow. At Postiecon I had a great image taken of with Ted in our Cake Plow Faces. Let's see where you can seamlessly add either Ted's face or mine. Please be tasteful and have fun. Leave a link to your image in the comments of this post. I will showcase the best ones in a future post next month.
Click for full resolution image (300dpi)
Drew writes four blogs, is an avid kayaker and a Transformers fan, he also does a mean cake plow. He recently completed taking 1000 consecutive photos in 1000 days. You can visit him at The BenSpark, The Wired Kayaker, Read To Me, Dad, Google is not God.
The Postie-cards keep comin' in...and we love it! Soon we'll have enough to start our display here in the IZEA office. Veronique and I have a creative idea of how we'd like to display all the postcards we've been receiving, but we'd like to see if you have any interesting ideas. If you do please leave it here in the comments field -- we might actually use it!
The cards we received today are from Des Moines and Las Vegas.
The first card was sent by Postie Jody, who manages three blogs:
- Iowa Geek
- The HKWT Blog (nominated for "Best Travel Blog" at the Blogger's Choice Awards)
- Fab Food Friday
The second Postie-card comes to us from Postie Julie by way of Las Vegas. Here's Julie's blog:
Like many of you, I spend way too much time in front of my computer. I blog (ya think!) Twitter, Drop Entrecards, Add friends on Social Spark and watch tons of podcasts. Many of the things I do online are to help me improve my photography skills. However, there is only so much you can learn from reading and watching podcasts before you have to go out and do it.
My wife has been part of a group on a site called Meetup.com. It is a website where you can find groups that do all sorts of different things. She is part of a mom's group that has meetups in our area. Through that she has met some very nice people and has had some very nice experiences.
Back on March 2nd I got a flickrmail from another user who was interested in my New England Photowalking Group. This was a group I set up so I could go photowalking with other people in New England. This is something that never really came to fruition. Why? Well, I didn't follow through. So here is this e-mail asking me if I want to join up with New England Photo Expeditions, a group on Meetup.com. I said heck yes. Why? Well, it accomplishes what I wanted to do, get together with other photographers in my area and photowalk. That way I could discuss photography, and learn tips and techniques from other enthusiasts and professionals. And best of all I didn't have to be the organizer (I am always the organizer and let me tell you, it isn't always fun.)
So this past Saturday Allison and I took Baby Eva with us into Boston to go on a tour of Boston churches. The group was about 22 people strong. We were the only couple/family in the bunch. That didn't matter as Eva became the subject of many photos during the day, she was a dream child (but I digress). During the course of the event I met Paul, a guy who is new to digital photography (I mean months into it) but he is totally decked out in the latest gear and the sweetest camera. We got to talking and hit it off, he let me try out some of his lenses and I looked out for him as he got separated from the group multiple times. He finally lost us entirely, but not to worry, I had my business cards (From VistaPrint none the less) and when Paul got home we exchanged a few messages and will meet up on our own sometime to do some photography.
The main thing I took away from this experience is that finding a group to send time with offline is great for blogging. Let me explain, because of my offline experience I have a great set of photos from Boston Churches and memories of an awesome day with new friends. And because of that I have many great new ideas for blog posts and new people to go photowalking with.
So, if you want to make your blog a little more interesting get out and do something that you find interesting. Then blog about it. Or even better, start a group of your own for bloggers in your area or something like that.
Drew writes four blogs, is an avid kayaker and a Transformers fan, he also does a mean cake plow. He recently completed taking 1000 consecutive photos in 1000 days. You can visit him at The BenSpark, The Wired Kayaker, Read To Me, Dad, Google is not God.
