Birders, This email announces a photo sharing site at which you can upload photos to share with the birders@umich.edu membership and view photos uploaded by other members. You need not have any special computer skills to use this site. My thanks to Allen Chartier, who suggested that a photo sharing site for members of birders@umich.edu would be useful. Bruce Bowman birders ADMIN bbowman99@comcast.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- INTRODUCTION Birders@umich Photos - a bird photos album at Grove Street GroveStreet.com is a photo sharing web site. Members of birders@umich.edu can upload bird photos to the "Birders@umich Photos" album there and view photos that others have uploaded. Ease of use was an important factor in selecting a photo sharing site. Grove Street is very easy to use for both visitors and contributors. You can go to the following address anytime for access to the photo sharing site, for general info (this document), and for instructions on how to upload to the photo gallery. http://www.umich.edu/~bbowman/birds/index.html#photos This announcement is being sent to all current subscribers to the birders@umich.edu listserv list except for the three archive subscribers (virtualbirder, birdingonthenet, and surfbirds). I'm not sending it to the public archives since it contains username and password information that should be known only to list members. Go to http://www.umich.edu/~bbowman/birds/se_mich/photos.html for a quick look at the Birders@umich Photos album with some example photos. (Be sure to come back to finish reading this email!) In the album click on any thumbnail to view a larger picture. Click on Back to return to the thumbnails page. (What's a "thumbnail"? Nearly all photo sharing sites display photos in columns and/or rows of reduced-size images. These are called thumbnails. Clicking on a thumbnail will produce a larger version of the picture although still not always full sized.) The URL above takes you directly to the Birders@umich Photos album at the Grove Street web site. The target URL (shown below) includes the Grove Street album viewing parameters I have selected as being the best for bird photos. DESCRIPTION Birders@umich Photos album - Photos uploaded here are shared photos from members of birders@umich.edu. Any member of birders may upload appropriate bird pictures. (See Rules and Guidelines below.) A specific username and password are needed for uploading to the album or for editing photo descriptions, etc. For uploading or editing click on "Login" or "MyGS" (My Grove Street), which you'll see at the top of the page, and login with username = ******** password = ******** Birders members may email me for username and password information. Bruce Bowman Note - Photographers: Your uploaded pictures must be in either .jpg or .gif format. To view photos you do NOT need to login. Just go to http://www.umich.edu/~bbowman/birds/se_mich/photos.html If you expect to be contributing photos to the album, please keep this email for reference. The above link currently transfers you to the URL below after a one-second delay: http://www.grovestreet.com/jsp/picview.jsp?album=59334 &view=detail&sort=date_added&ord=desc&showtrash=1&ppp=80 You may save either of the above URLs as a bookmark/favorite but I recommend the first one since it's simpler and, more importantly, because if there is sometime need, I will modify the photos.html file as necessary to take you to whatever URL is best. Conceivably, the transfer might at some time in the future NOT be to Grove Street or perhaps the Grove Street parameters will be modified. RULES AND GUIDELINES 1. Photos should be of birds that present identification problems, birds that are uncommon in Michigan, or birds that are interesting for some other reason. In most instances the pictures should be of birds in or near Michigan. * Do not post pictures of common birds unless there is some particular reason that the bird is interesting. * Do not post pictures of extremely poor quality; for example, post no "speck-in-a-tree" bird pictures. * Do not post pictures of birders. This album is for pictures of birds. * If you are uncertain whether a picture is appropriate to post, don't be concerned--post it. You'll suffer no public or private rebuke. 2. Please do not upload huge pictures. Pictures of 1MB and larger quickly use up our allotted file space. Pictures displayed at the Grove Street site are never larger than about 35kb regardless of the size of your upload, so you gain nothing by posting larger pictures. That said, it is not necessary for you to spend time downsizing photos to get your upload to 35kb or less. If your photo is 350 or 400kb or smaller, say, go ahead and upload it, but, please, no pictures of one, two, and three megabytes. If you need to resize your pictures, I suggest using the free program FastStone Photo Resizer 2.9. Get it at http://www.faststone.org/ . 3. If you have your own photo sharing site, you'll probably want to continue to put photos at your own site. All birders members are welcome to put pictures of interest into the Birders@umich Photos album, but please don't use this site for your own photo gallery. 4. You may, if you wish, contribute a photo and include in its description a link to your own web site or photo sharing site where you have additional related pictures. 5. No photos may be put up at the site without an associated email being sent to the birders@umich.edu list. 6. Add a photo by clicking on "Add Picture" at the bottom of the thumbnails page. (Login first; see above.) You will not need to create an album. Simply add pictures to the ones already in the Birders@umich Photos album. To delete a selected photo click on "Edit this picture" and then, at the top of the edit page, assign the picture to the Trash album. (See item 11 below for full details.) 7. In the album please assign a title for each photo you upload. Also, you must identify yourself in the photo's Photographer field or Description field. You can put your email address in the Description field if you wish. 8. You should always include information in the photo's Description field unless all that needs to be said has already been said in the Description field of the first photo of a series. Always note briefly where the photo was taken: e.g., "Belle Isle, Detroit" or "Washtenaw Co., MI, Sharon Valley Rd." 9. You may use html tags in the Description field and others, but do this only if you know what you're doing. 10. Do NOT edit or delete photos except your own. See item 11 regarding deleting photos. 11. If you put a picture in the photo album and later want to delete it, do the following: a) Go to the album and Login. b) Find the picture you want to delete (one of YOURS) and click on "Edit this picture". c) In the top line of the next screen, in the Albums line, click on the arrow next to "Birders@umich Photos". d) Assign the photo to the trash folder by selecting "Trash". e) Scroll down on the screen and click on "Submit". f) When you are finished deleting, adding, and editing photos, go to the bottom of the screen and click on Logout. 12. Do NOT edit (or delete!) the album, account, or profile. 13. If you login (for uploading and editing only), be sure to logout at the bottom of the page. 14. The description that's at the top of the photos page includes the web site address for the site. If you're so inclined, you can copy and paste the address into the email you post to birders to announce a photo you've uploaded. (There is now, however, a link to this address in a sig attached to all birders postings.) The description looks like this: Album Description: bird photos from birders in and around southeast Michigan - use address http://www.umich.edu/~bbowman/birds/se_mich/photos.html 15. From time to time I will remove pictures from the album. This will sometimes be necessary because of space constraints; we are limited to 100MB of file space for the album. Also, however, I will at times remove pictures deemed inappropriate or of marginal or no interest (e.g., pictures of common birds). Additionally, pictures once of interest may not continue to have relevance after passage of time and so may be removed. A consideration in not allowing the album to become too large is album download time for users who do not have high-speed connections to the Internet. ABOUT GROVE STREET Grove Street was selected over other photo sharing web sites for numerous reasons. These include ease of use, a pleasing display, thumbnail sorting options, and the fact that date, photographer, description, etc., can be displayed with thumbnails as well as with the larger picture. Grove Street features Main page: http://www.grovestreet.com Price: free Usage: login with username and password to create album, upload pictures, or edit; need not login to view album File formats allowed: jpg, gif File space limit: 100MB Thumbnails layout: column Thumbnail sorting: ascending and descending sorts on title, date of upload, date of photo, date last modified Photo descriptions, etc., with thumbnails: yes Large pics: full size or as large as possible Download blocking: no Multiple albums per account: yes Ads: yes (unobtrusive) Other: * very easy to use * pleasing display * can display 10, 20, 40, or 80 thumbnails per page * seven types of "view" for thumbnails * skins (color schemes only) * html tags can be used in descriptions (for example for line breaks, making bold text, specifying font size and color, MailTo, URLs, ...) * can start at thumbnails with any view or sort options * recommended: especially for applications in which full descriptions as well as photo titles are needed with thumbnails; HereMy.com is a very good alternative if thumbnail descriptions are not needed and row/column layout is preferred PHOTO SHARING SITES For those interested in finding a good free photo sharing site, I highly recommend Grove Street: http://www.grovestreet.com. I investigated over 20 (mostly) free sites. This one was a clear winner, although HereMy.com is also very good, especially for applications for which titles alone are sufficient for describing the thumbnails: http://HereMy.com. I found no other sites worthy of mention. [Note: On 11-22-2005 I discovered that HereMy.com no longer exists. A Google search did not uncover a reincarnation of the site.] My thanks to Allen Chartier, who suggested that a photo sharing site for members of birders@umich.edu would be useful. -------------------------- Bruce Bowman bbowman99@comcast.net November 4, 2004 Revised: January 30, 2005 Revised: June 13, 2005 Revised: December 14, 2006 Revised: September 18, 2007 Revised: March 6, 2010