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Google Chrome Experiments

As a short aside from the normal Pixaria related news, I came across an interesting new project from Google today named Google Chrome Experiments which is intended to showcase the capabilities of the fast, new JavaScript engines inside Chrome, Safari 4 (beta) and Firefox 3.1 (beta).

If you're using the latest version of one of these browsers, check the site out and marvel at the bouncing ball that can be dragged, bounced and thrown from one window to another or the ball pool where you can click to squirt new balls into the window and even shake the window to jiggle them around. If you've got plenty of time to kill, definitely give Twitch a try, it's insanely addictive but be warned, you be at it for hours!

Although it's definitely a bit of fun, the serious point being made here is that JavaScript is a powerful tool with capabilities far beyond merely popping up new windows and validating forms before you submit them!

As this is intended to show off the fast new JavaScript engines in Chrome, Safari and Firefox, you won't be surprised to hear that none of these work in Internet Explorer which, even in today's brand new IE8, lacks a fast, standards compliant JavaScript engine.

New Pixaria Website

As you are probably aware if you're reading this, the much promised redesign of the Pixaria.com website is now live. I've spent a lot of time trying to make the site easier to navigate and I hope the result is a cleaner look and feel which works better for newer browsers and larger displays. One area where the content is unchanged is the documentation but with an improved editing tool for me, I'm going to begin the process of updating this over the next week or so.

As the release of this website constituted the first major milestone on my roadmap for 2008, my next project is to complete an interim update to Pixaria Gallery which I hope to release within the next four weeks or so. Watch this space for more details!

If you find any bugs or broken links, please let me know and as always, any comments are welcome.

Getty and Flickr Announce Licensing and Distribution Deal

The big news in stock photography circles today is that Flickr and Getty Images have announced a distribution and licensing deal that will see selected images from Flickr become available to license via Getty Images.

Flickr and Getty said (via ZDNet):

Getty Images will continue to build this collection over time by inviting select Flickr members to participate. Members who choose to participate will benefit from the global reach and distribution power of Getty Images to help market their images, as well as its unmatched expertise and experience in rights and clearances of digital media.

With Getty's acquisition of iStockPhoto, the company now has a high degree of control over the entire stock industry with offerings spanning the low end market on iStockPhoto to the very high-end through its own Getty Images website.

The good news for smaller and independent libraries is that the market for stock images seems to be doing well at the moment and in a gloomy economic climate, it's all about good value for money, something that Getty isn't always known for.

The long term implications of this deal are a little unclear at the moment but with Getty's influence in the stock imagery industry becoming increasingly inescapable, I expect that the move will be a popular one with the many semi-professional photographers using Flickr.

You can read more about the deal on the original news story at ZDNet and on Yahoo! Business News.

Development Update

With the new Pixaria.com website set to launch this week, my thoughts are now turning to the next item on my roadmap which is Pixaria Gallery version 2.6.

This release is intended to be an interim update on the path to version 3.0 and will include a number of important new features:

1. A new, user friendly, Flash powered web based upload tool. Currently this is working very well as a stand alone script but I've not integrated it with the Pixaria code yet.
2. Search engine optimisations for Google images.
3. Language picker for the front end.
4. Cooliris RSS media feed support.
5. (Hopefully) a 'mouseover' image preview for the front end thumbnails.