Some Blakepics caption stats

“Nothing motivates people more than celebrating achievements along the way”. I found that on the New Jersey Association of Partners in Education site (NJAPIE for short), so it must be true.

Anyway, I’ve written another of those Gallery2 modules to show some stats on how the 2008 captioning is going. It’s more for my own curiosity and to stop me copying huge reams of SQL into Query Browser. But you never know, you might look at it and say “oh” as well. So, if that sounds like fun you can click Caption Status either here or on the Blakepics left nav.

Nokia N95 as a wireless webcam

There is no end to this phones capabilities, it seems – so this evening I’ve had my trusty Nokia N95 working as a wireless bluetooth webcam and sending real-time videos across MSN.

* You have invited Alison to start viewing webcam. Please wait for a response or Cancel (Alt+Q) the pending invitation.
Alison says (22:21):
you doing something kinky?

I’m not sure where I got this undeserved reputation from, personally. But anyway, if you’d like to try this yourself, it’s compatible with all kinds of Symbian S60 phones, so head over to motvik’s web site and download wwigo. It’s free, and it’s cool – what else could you ask for?

Auto-captioning photos with CAPTCHAner

I quite often have completley unachievable ideas, that have no basis whatsoever in fact or reality. So, it’s no surprise that a conversation with Craig, down the pub on Friday has sparked another of them.

It’s become a bit of a theme this year, and after my last posts on the subject – we got to talking about captioning photos. Many of my photos exist on the basis of seeing something shiny, and then taking a picture. I often have no idea what said shiny thing was – but quite often make the effort usually on Google, or Rough Guides to discover its secrets afterwards.

I encourage any account holders to tag as many photos as they want on Blakepics. But mine is a very small community, and Flickr shadows it with even its tiniest fingernail. So, why should you have to tag your own photos? Aren’t there plenty of other people out there that would do that for you?

And I got thinking about the recaptcha project. They use scans of words to present the user with captchas that will help their digitization of old texts. These “unknowns” are combined with”known” text, and the answers compared against previous users results.

So, why not the same for photos? A known photo could be presented to the user “Dog”, “Cat”, “Llama”, or even a traditional captcha. Combine that with an unknown photo, and invite users to give it a caption. According to recaptcha, there are 60 million captchas being solved every day – it’s about time we put all that to good use.

Or perhaps CAPTCHA might just become another word for blackmail. Sure, you can login to your account – but you have to do something for me first. I just like the way Captchaner, sounds (Captcha, Captioner – see what I did there?). Maybe one day we’ll see this on all of our logins.

Meerkat on a Plinth!

Today was the unveiling of the six options for the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Sq. The winner will be chosen by a committee later in the year, and receive a quarter of a million to turn their miniature visions into reality worthy of the coveted spot.

Now, it would be rude of me to abandon Mr Gormley after loyally supporting his work and the enjoyment he’s given through his previous installations… But, I think I speak for everyone here when I say, Meerkat on a Plinth!

Your pictures … everywhere

Whilst researching Gallery 2 extensions today, I stumbled across the news that PictureSync now supports Gallery2 as an upload medium. I like having all my photos on my own site, so I can do what I like with them without having to pay through the nose to get at the originals, or worrying about migrating them when the next big thing comes along.

That said, I think I often miss out on some of the more social aspects of photography that networks like Flickr, or Facebook provide. So personally, I’m looking forward to the Windows release of this product so I can try it out for myself. Have any of you Mac users out there tried PictureSync? What did you think?