Posted by Darlene Bouchard — 10 Nov 2009
We each have a different perspective, which is what makes every photograph unique. There's no question that we all have different viewpoints and experiences, and different tastes in when it comes to art.
When we decided to change the guidelines on JPG to include nudity in all of its forms we thought long and hard about the issue from every angle imaginable. We all know nudity has been in art for centuries, including the downstairs variety. Who among us has not seen Michelangelo's masterpiece
David, which dates back to the 14th Century? By not allowing certain body parts in your photographs we felt that we were restricting your artistic expression, and in a way passing judgment as to what art, life, and beauty is and isn't.
We also recognize that some people don't want to see nudity for a whole variety of reasons.
So, we created a tool people can use if they don't want to see nudity on JPG. It's called the "Safe Filter" and here's how it works:
-In your profile you can go into your settings (under edit profile) and simply check 'enable safe viewing' to activate the safe filter. Photographs that have been tagged for the filter will be obscured during regular browsing and removed from Spotlight and search results.
-In addition, each member can indicate whether their photo should be included in the filter because it contains nudity. You can do this upon upload or by going into the photographs information and checking the 'filter from safe viewing' box.
Yep, its easy to turn on and off, and this way everyone in the community gets the experience on JPG they want. While the safe filter is ready for you to use should you decide to, we do hope to add a few new features to it as soon as we can find the time! When we do, well be sure to give you an update.
If you have any questions that we haven't answered here, make sure to check out our
FAQ page!
Posted by Devin Hayes — 14 Oct 2009
Um, Hello!
Anyone attempting to purchase Spotlight credits or JPG+ over the last 8 hours (3am - 11am PST) would have noticed that they hadn't received their awesomeness in a timely manner. This would be due to PayPal making an unannounced API change in the IPN validation. Since all failures are sent to Troy and myself, we were able to add the transactions manually and patch the code to the new specifications.
All is well. BUT! If for some reason your purchase wasn't acknowledged or fully processed (e.g. missing credits on your JPG+ purchase) please contact support and we'll get you squared away. Yes, I have logs and transactions records, so I'll know if you're right and I'm wrong and vice versa. Just sayin'. :)
Thanks to you! Cool folk at JPG.
No thanks to you! PayPal yucko stinky jerks.
Posted by Devin Hayes — 25 Sep 2009
Howdy!
Geeky stuff abounds. We'll need to restart a few machines around 10pm PST, Friday September 25th.
It shouldn't take more than 15 minutes or so.
Just a heads up!
---
Update: Hardy-har-har internet Gods. 15 minutes my eye. The new kernel decided to throw a curve ball, an anomalous mystery wrench in the gear, by switching the network devices. eth1 had eth3's MAC address and vice versa. BUT! Our awesome, AWESOME team at RackSpace were able to identify the problems and banish Gozer the Gozerian back to his own dimension. I told you it was geeky.
Posted by Bri Hunziker — 19 Aug 2009
Have you ever looked at a photo on JPG and thought, "Yeah, that's pretty great, but I just wish I could see it on a background that wasn't so... white!"
Well, I'm happy to announce that we've just added a new feature for JPG+ members that allows your photos to be viewed in a special mode we're calling "The Lightbox" — your photo against a user-selectable background, from black through various levels of grey!
It's the sort of feature that we should have implemented long ago, because truth be told, it was pretty simple to build. :)
So how does it work? Here's a brief rundown:
If you're a JPG+ member, go to one of your photos (and make sure you're logged in). In the grey bar above your photo, there's a new button, labeled "View in Lightbox." Click this to toggle Lightbox mode on...
Ta-da!
Black is the default background, but you have choices: Clicking on any of the swatches in the upper left side of the window will toggle the background to that color. Each one of the colors has a separate URL, too, which means you can link to your photos on whatever background you choose. Rad!
For example, I think my "Cubes" photo is much better viewed on black, to better reveal detail in the shadow areas. Here's a link to that photo on black:
http://www.jpgmag.com/lightbox/1846909/a
On the other hand, I think "Caught Between" appears more balanced against a medium grey. I can link to that background as well:
http://www.jpgmag.com/lightbox/213760/c
Super neat!
Here are a few technical details, for those so inclined:
The URL for your photo in Lightbox is essentially the same format as for the standard photo page, but with /lightbox/ substituted for /photos/.
There are 6 backgrounds, from black to white, which are represented by the letters "a" through "f" from darkest to lightest. If you leave off the letter from the end of the URL, it defaults to black.
Any member can view any JPG+ member's photos in Lightbox, and if you're a JPG+ member, all your photos are now available in this mode.
We intentionally left the interactive elements — commenting, voting and the like — out of Lightbox, to avoid creating a parallel universe in terms of site interaction. To get from the Lightbox back to the standard photo page for commenting, you can either click on the photo, or use the link at the top right of the window.
I'm sure will find ways to tweak and improve this feature over time. Please don't hesitate to let us know how we might make this better. In the meantime, enjoy!
Posted by Devin Hayes — 6 Aug 2009
Yup. You betchya. You are now able to tag all your photos (right hand side, below your photo), up to 10 tags per photo, which become a sort of meta data, or folksonomy, for increasing the relevance of your photos for entered search terms.
The search engine, built on Xapian, is far, FAR more advanced than our last little ditty. It has things like word stemming (beach to beaches), spelling corrections, and boolean terms like AND, ADJ, OR, NEAR and NOT. Not only that, but it's lightning fast and scales incredibly well.
Here's a few of my favorite search results thus far:
Another bit on the fastiness front is the CDN. We've moved all of the photos on JPG into a "Content Delivery Network" which basically serves images from locations nearest you improving load times by reducing the distance the image has to travel.
Spotlight others! What?!? If you have credits to spare and you want to give your friends the gift of exposure, now you can! Just click "Spotlight this!" and we'll deduct one of your credits and add their photo to spotlight. Nifty huh?
Issue previews! Bri put in some late night hours giving the issue previews a much needed facelift. Anyone familiar with the issues section would have noticed a few inconsistencies in how the previews were displayed. Consolidating our issues into a single and very, very perty issue browser also enabled us to move all of our assets into a single shared location, our CDN.
Oh yeah, looky here! A development blog. We'll be posting site changes here from now on.. In order to keep the geeky stuff away from all the perty pictures.
That's it for now! More info soon!
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