Migratr 0.9.3 has been released which fixes numerous bugs which were discovered after importing a large photo collection. These fixes include, SmugMug importing, Crashing on the beginning of export, and some other wacky stuff. Alex has also posted a feature poll where users can tell him what features they would like to see added to the program. Download the latest release here.
Cool Stuff
Migratr Adds Phanfare Support
Migratr, the software program which I covered in this article, Migratr – Backup And Migrate Your Online Photos has released a new version which adds support for Phanfare. The newest version contains three bug fixes as well as three new features. One of those features includes the resume download/upload option which is now functional.
The three bug fixes worth noting are listed below.
- SmugMug was not authenticating properly.
- Faces.com support is now fully functional: There was an issue where the API didn’t return photos that weren’t in albums. The Faces.com team were very helpful in fixing that and keeping me up to date.
- Exporting to Picasaweb would create albums even though ones with an identical name existed.
If you’ve been waiting for support for Phanfare, or want to backup your online photos, be sure to download Migratr 0.9.0
FireFox Has Its Own Sports Car
Check out this decked out sports car which is littered with all sorts of FireFox references. This thing has a very slick paint job. How many chicks do you think you’d be able to pick up with this baby?
Click on the image to see a larger version. Taken by nobihaya
On a side note, I was reading the comments on Digg and I finally read a comment which had me laughing my ass off.
by oneoverzero 4 hours ago The IE car must have crashed.
Create Your Own Twitter Shirt
Reactee.com gives users of Twitter.com the chance to design a shirt where the text can be customized to suit your purpose. The shirts are $20.00 each and come in the following colors: white, light blue, organic, pink, silver, asphalt, olive and black. T shirt sizes range from small to extra large and are made out of 100% cotton, so you may want to purchase one size bigger than you need to compensate for shrinkage.
Creating a shirt is a 6 step process. Users begin by choosing a topic for their shirt. In my case, I chose Technology. The next step is to choose a slogan. Although Reactee provides quite a few slogan templates pertaining to the category, I decided to take the custom route and created my own. “Blogging The Webolution”
The next step requires me to provide a Reactee Keyword which is used for contacting my shirt. Not sure what that means yet but I’ll look into it as I’m sure, shirts can’t talk. Next to the Reactee Keyword tab is a Twitter tab. If you have a Twitter account, this is where you put in your Twitter username. Next, we have the option of choosing an image as we all know a picture is worth a thousand words. I chose an image of the United States. The last step in the process is to provide additional text which is also optional. I selected the text template “To Subscribe” for my additional text template.
Now it’s time to activate the shirt. Apparently, this shirt is alive. If users send a text message from their phone to my Reactee TShirt, they will receive a response with my Twitter Status. After completely activating the TShirt, Reactee then gives me the option to order the shirt.
Interesting service which gives users the ability to customize their own Twitter shirts. The idea of text messaging a shirt is rather strange but whatever floats your boat I suppose. I’m thinking about purchasing the shirt I created because I sort of like the design. Tell me what you think.
20 Awesome Free Icon Sets
Smashing Magazine has put together a list of 20 plus icon sets that are not only eye candy, but they are also free. Some of the sets featured include: iPhoneSketch OpenPhone Pack Social Bookmark Iconset and Feedicons
I know there are still quite a few people who are looking for Web 2.0 based icons, especially those that were featured in this post Web 2.0 Icons but unfortunately, the link for those icons has been taken down. I have emailed who I believe are the creators of that specific icon set, but I have yet to receive a reply back. Some of the sets featured by Smashing Magazine do have Web 2.0 characteristics. Look at a few of those before you continue your search.
Animator Vs Animation
The Flash interface makes for a battle of ages between the Animator and Animation. It took Alan three months to produce this animation but I think he did one hell of a job with it. Thanks Alan for the good entertainment.
Web 2.0 Search Engine And One Thousand Links
Web 2.0 Search Engine is exactly what you would think it would be. Use the search engine to search for any Web 2.0 specific terms such as Ajax, mashups, blogging, viral videos, tagging, ect. The web 2.0 search engine even provides their own definition to the term although we all know O’Reilly has that claim. I decided to give this search engine a try and just for fun, I typed in Jeffro2pt0. Unfortunately, there were no results found.
The search engine also provides a link to their top 1,000 web 2.0 sites and services, organized by categories. An insane resource of Web 2.0 goodness, all on one page.
Let me know what you discover by using this search engine.
Migratr – Backup And Migrate Your Online Photos
I discovered this application via The Global Geek Podcast Episode 59 It’s called Migratr. Migratr was originally developed to allow you to download all of your photos from one web service, then import them into another. But, as Dave mentioned on the show, this tool has a dual purpose.
It can also be used to download all of your photos from a supported online photo hosting service such as Flickr and allows you to create a manual backup. In this how-to article, I will be illustrating how to use this application.
The first thing you need to do is download and then install the Migratr application. Migratr uses the .NET framework which makes it compatible with Windows only. The latest version of the .NET framework which is 3.0 can be downloaded here
Step 1. is the authentication process. As it stands, Migratr supports the following photo services: Flickr, Zooomr, 23HQ, SmugMug and Picasa Web. Since I use Flickr, thats the option I’ll choose. After clicking the Authentication button, the Flickr homepage will load letting me know that Migratr wants to link directly into my Flickr account. At this point, your going to want to click on the blue OK, I’LL ALLOW IT button. Now that Migratr is authorized, it’s time for step 2.
Step 2. Click on the Finish Authentication Button
Step 3. Now that the Flickr account is authenticated, I can begin the Import process, which will download all of my photos that are currently within my Flickr account. After clicking the Import button, you’ll be given the opportunity to select where the photos will be stored. For simplicity, I’m going to select a newly created folder on my desktop. Since I have over 700 images, this ought to be interesting.
It took nearly 20 minutes for migratr to download 783 Flickr photos. The amount of time it takes for your Import will vary depending upon your Internet connection speed and the number of photos in your account.
Along with all of my photos, Migratr also produced an XML file. This XML file is the important asset that allows for the importing and exporting to different services. The XML file contains all of your tags, album titles, individual image titles, and image descriptions. Essentially, all of the meta data that is associated with your account.
At this time, you can either continue with the program to import your photos into a different service, or you can close the program, with confidence that you now have a full backup of your photos that you can store on an external hard drive or DVD. You never know, some insane virus or technical failure could wipe out Flickr. It’s better to be safe than sorry.
For the sake of this article, I’m going to create a brand new account on 23HQ and see how the exporting process goes.
Step 4. After your import is finished, click on the CONTINUE TO EXPORTING button. Since I created a new account on 23HQ, thats the one I am going to select. Click on the authenticate button to begin the authentication process.
Step 5. Click on the Finish Authentication button.
Step 6. Click on the Export button and select the folder where your imported photos are located. That is precisely what I did and it took an insanely large amount of time to upload photos. My upstream connection is only 512K. The lesson here, if your going to import photos into a another service, make it an overnight affair.
The photos that uploaded into my 23HQ account looked as though they retained all of the information that was attributed to them on Flickr. Migratr seems to have done it’s job and it did the job fairly well. Before I let you go, there are a few more things that you should know or at least consider before making any hasty moves.
The first is that I use a Flickr Pro account. This means I have the ability to upload an unlimited amount of photos. Unless you have a pro account for any of the services that are supported by Migratr, you won’t be able to move your entire account over to a new service in one try. Secondly, Zooomr appears to be supported even though their API has yet to be released. As it stands, Zooomr does not support mass uploads. If you try to export your photos to Zooomr through Migratr, you will be presented with an error, telling you that the authentication failed, try again later.
Even though the program works now, it’s been awhile since Alex has posted anything on his Migratr site. I really hope he continues to support and improve upon this product as it’s BACKUP functions are enough for me. Alex, if your out there, let us know what’s going on and thank you for producing this awesome application.
YAML – Web Based Visual Site Builder
I always envisioned a day where web site designs were considered puzzle pieces. Those days look like they have arrived.
YAML Builder stands for (Yet Another MultiColumn Layout) builder. This online design builder gives users the oppurtunity to create an awesome design without ever having to touch the code. The small control panel gives you the oppurtunity to choose between different Doctype standards, base elements for the site, number of columns the site should have, CSS management, the ability to add elements such as H1, H2 or Paragraph, different column sets and different content boxes.
At the end of the day, you can click on the GET CODE button and YAML generates all of the code you would need in order to place the design onto your site. It also gives you the oppurtunity to fine tune the code, in case you wanted to do something a bit more extravagant.
I’ve been waiting for the day when designing websites would be this easy. I’m happy to say, those days are here. If you happen to create a design using YAML Builder, or another similar service, by all means leave a comment with a link so that we can take a look at the design to see what these builders are capable of.
Twitter Blocks – A Different View Of Twitter
Twitter has an interesting new page called Twitter Blocks, which allows you to view recent status reports from friends, and the people that follow them.
Twitter Blocks gives users the oppurtunity to take a deeper look at their network of friends. The light blue blocks refer to your own account, the red blocks are your updates while the grey shaded blocks contain updates from friends of friends.
The Twitter Blocks page is sponsored by Motorola, so it’s nice to see that Twitter is finding different ways of making money.
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 