Etched Pixels Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 There is a way to make them non right-clickable, but I have yet to find it. It might only be available to those who pay to use the site; I'm only using the free one at the moment. It doesn't actually do anything useful btw except annoy people with legitimate reasons to right click on the image (eg to zoom it). They simply have to go into Firefox settings and do - javascript off - reload right-click happily - javascript back on. So the non right clickable stuff is and always has been snake oil. If you are concerned about images being borrowed you would probably be better using watermarking of some form,although as UK copyright law stands nobody small can afford to bring a case anyway, especially as the standard big media response is to countersue claiming the image was stolen from them. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Etched Pixels Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 DM did provide me with the 0870 number given; it was unobtainable. I did some other searching and those numbers too are unobtainable. That doesn't look healthy or a positive approach to engaging with their customers. Be cautious about assuming the unobtainable numbers are a bad sign with a hosting company. They generally take their phone and internet feeds off the same fibres which means a catastrophic failure tends to take out both. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dudley Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 Chaps, Please, for the sake of all of us Fotopic users with bad nerves: if you add a post saying you've heard ABC on this forum or XYZ on the other please would you give specifics otherwise it'll just sound like idle speculation which ain't helpful at present. Thank you, Dudley Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mow Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 What has hacked me off is that lack of specific news from Fotopic's owners about what has happened. But in the greater scheme of things the loss of the hosted images is nothing in the light of the problems for many Japanese. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coombe Barton Posted March 14, 2011 Share Posted March 14, 2011 Fotopic info - go here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fotopic.net#March_2011_Downtime Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 14, 2011 Share Posted March 14, 2011 I must have a batch of Beast's invisible ink, I already posted that info directly to the thread... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mow Posted March 14, 2011 Share Posted March 14, 2011 thanks for the info. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dudley Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 Found at www.companieshouse.gov.uk - Company number: 0659 1552 - Status: Active Snappy Designs Ltd, 17 Hertford Avenue, East Sheen, London. SW14 8EF. Director: Mr Stephen Gerard Crispin Dyer. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 Something else to remember before panic sets in however is this. Even if they have gone bang the huge size of the collection and userbase would almost certainly mean that someone would buy it lock stock and barrel from the receiver, someone like Google or Yahoo would probably love to pick it up. Very true although Yahoo and Flickr seem to be going through a turbulent patch at the moment. TechCrunch can be a bit "News of the World"ish at times but just posted this http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/14/flickr-head-out/ Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickL2008 Posted March 16, 2011 Share Posted March 16, 2011 Yes, does seem to be a nuisance that Fotopic has gone down AGAIN! over 4000 pictures, and ive had so many good and encouraging comments by other people who visit my site, sorry to sound bit arrogant. It is a shame Fotopic couldnt temporaily come back online so those of use who have pictures on there and havnt backed our images up, can then gather them from the site and remove them all, timely process but at least then have the ability to get the images back... Thing is with Smugmug is the $40 will us english people from jolly olde england be able to pay that via Paypal. Personally myself creating a website from scratch and then finding a web host is the easiest way when you think about it; your pictures are backed up, no worries about said host going down because of X Y Z reason, only cost involved will be to host the website, membership upgrade can remove unwanted adverts etc, choice of own domain name... NL Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arpleymodeller Posted March 16, 2011 Share Posted March 16, 2011 I think fotopic has gone for good, every link to a fotopic gallery on google returns with NOT FOUND !!! I had only just started a fotopic gallery as well Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold beast66606 Posted March 16, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted March 16, 2011 I think fotopic has gone for good, every link to a fotopic gallery on google returns with NOT FOUND !!! I had only just started a fotopic gallery as well It will do if the servers are down, wait for confirmation before assuming Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arpleymodeller Posted March 16, 2011 Share Posted March 16, 2011 I havent been able to view images since around November,its a bit of a mess really. Since the start of last year it has got worse and worse with it taking too long to respond/load or not returing any results. If I was one of those who paid for listing on Google and other extra bonuses I would be rather angry with fotopics downfall. Maybe it will re appear on a new server but there was no announcement on the existing website. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold john new Posted March 16, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted March 16, 2011 no worries about said host going down because of X Y Z reason, The above is roughly an OK statement provided everything you put on-line is just a slave copy of what you had at home. However any commercial business model can suffer financial failure so you can still lose your web site and then have to search around for another provider. Re fotopic - hope it comes back I like their gallery site layout but everything I had on there was a copy with master files and a 2nd back-up at home. Some users have used it as a place to store their sole image masters, with that tactic they would be just as vulnerable to a business failure in their choice of ISP as they were to this whatever it proves to be taking out fotopic currently. They key lesson to learn from this outage (I learnt it the hard way through a power surge and hard disk failure years ago) is that buying the extra storage capacity and fitting surge protection plugs are cheap options compared to the loss of a lifetime's memories or all your work files and records. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
karabuni Posted March 16, 2011 Share Posted March 16, 2011 It will do if the servers are down, wait for confirmation before assuming OpenDNS says: Results for fotopic.net United States Chicago, Illinois, USA NXDOMAIN Dallas, Texas, USA NXDOMAIN Los Angeles, California, USA NXDOMAIN Miami, Florida, USA NXDOMAIN New York, New York, USA NXDOMAIN Palo Alto, California, USA NXDOMAIN Seattle, Washington, USA NXDOMAIN Washington, DC, USA NXDOMAIN International Amsterdam, The Netherlands NXDOMAIN London, England, UK NXDOMAIN Singapore NXDOMAIN NXDOMAIN = "not in domain name system" or "NXDOMAIN means no such host or domain". None of our locations could resolve this domain. Three possibilities: Domain does not exist in DNS. Domain's nameservers have problems, temporary or otherwise. There is a problem with a record on OpenDNS servers. (not very likely) DNS Stuff also says: 13 parent nameservers all give - [Reports no A record (NXDOMAIN)] fotopic.net seems to be pretty unfindable - a long time for servers to be down? Apart from Google etc. not being able to find sites, it will also cause links to give 404 not founds, which will show up in Google Webmaster Tools "web crawler errors". I'm not sure if Google disses sites that have a lot of links to pages that don't exist, but if anyone links to fotopic from their own site/pages, it would probably be better to remove them. It won't annoy your visitors either! Barry Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickL2008 Posted March 16, 2011 Share Posted March 16, 2011 The above is roughly an OK statement provided everything you put on-line is just a slave copy of what you had at home. However any commercial business model can suffer financial failure so you can still lose your web site and then have to search around for another provider. Re fotopic - hope it comes back I like their gallery site layout but everything I had on there was a copy with master files and a 2nd back-up at home. Some users have used it as a place to store their sole image masters, with that tactic they would be just as vulnerable to a business failure in their choice of ISP as they were to this whatever it proves to be taking out fotopic currently. They key lesson to learn from this outage (I learnt it the hard way through a power surge and hard disk failure years ago) is that buying the extra storage capacity and fitting surge protection plugs are cheap options compared to the loss of a lifetime's memories or all your work files and records. True John, about half my images are backed up, recent ones ive taken im uploading as we speak, which are from the past couple of months albeit with a few missing here and there. Weve yet to hear an official statement, so hence why I like some others, am hoping Fotopic comes back online in the near future, but this time I shall back up the missing chunk of my pictures, so in case of something like this happening again, ill be better prepared, and will have all of my images backed up and ready to transfer to a new service provider NL Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
backwaterscotland Posted March 17, 2011 Share Posted March 17, 2011 Apart from Google etc. not being able to find sites, it will also cause links to give 404 not founds, which will show up in Google Webmaster Tools "web crawler errors". I'm not sure if Google disses sites that have a lot of links to pages that don't exist, but if anyone links to fotopic from their own site/pages, it would probably be better to remove them. It won't annoy your visitors either! Barry Previously, a google search for "fotopic" would return fotopic.net as the first result, then fotopic.com (an unrelated site) then various fotopic.net sites. Now google no longer returns fotopic.net as a result so it looks like google's algorithms have looked at it and demoted the site in the results. Andy B) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 17, 2011 Share Posted March 17, 2011 Thing is with Smugmug is the $40 will us english people from jolly olde england be able to pay that via Paypal. It looks like Debit/Credit cards only at the moment. Haven't checked that at other providers though - if that puts you off Smugmug then other ones worth looking into to my eye are: http://www.zenfolio.com/ http://photobucket.com/ Obviously have a look, try em out, read reviews etc before deciding. And worth keeping an eye on for the future but sadly not quite available at this moment (but due very shortly!) is this one: http://www.pikfu.com/ - Which is being created by Joel - the guy who originally started fotopic. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 17, 2011 Share Posted March 17, 2011 Is it a light at the end of the tunnel, or just an oncoming train...we'll find out I guess... http://twitter.com/Pbigland Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickL2008 Posted March 17, 2011 Share Posted March 17, 2011 It looks like Debit/Credit cards only at the moment. Haven't checked that at other providers though - if that puts you off Smugmug then other ones worth looking into to my eye are: http://www.zenfolio.com/ http://photobucket.com/ Obviously have a look, try em out, read reviews etc before deciding. And worth keeping an eye on for the future but sadly not quite available at this moment (but due very shortly!) is this one: http://www.pikfu.com/ - Which is being created by Joel - the guy who originally started fotopic. Hi Martyn, I found Zenfolio, it seems to be a good site, decent quality but only a free trial I am on, until it asks for th all important dollars, which I assume will be converted from GBP once paid via Paypal. Still to work on and hopefully without turning this into a plug for my site but I created aemporary site using Zenfolios service at: http://mrnsphotos.zenfolio.com/ , Ive still to recover over 3000 photos that are still on Fotopic currently, so heres hoping it does come back NL Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 17, 2011 Share Posted March 17, 2011 From buying stuff from the states, if they accept paypal then it gets charged to Paypal in $ but then Paypal converts it to £ before recharging your card/bank. Nice & easy and without the really nasty fees that some banks put on overseas transactions. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 17, 2011 Share Posted March 17, 2011 Is it a light at the end of the tunnel, or just an oncoming train...we'll find out I guess... http://twitter.com/Pbigland Apparently just an internet hoaxer spoofing Paul's information - not real info, please disregard... And if anyone wants to give a slap to the hoaxer behind it then fine by me... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Belgian Posted March 17, 2011 Share Posted March 17, 2011 I have also found that links to Fotopik don't work, and have every sympathy to those whose work is currently inaccessable. Perhaps those with knowledge of these things might like to comment on my take on all this, which is as follows. I do feel that this apparent failure is the inevitable result of the modern expectation of getting everything for free. As the old saying goes, you don't get something for nothing. RMweb is a prime example: Andy Y set it up and has spent an enormous amount of time and money running it, but it has cost him money for which he has, at times, had to seek some recompense, usually by voluntary contributions. We all owe him a great debt and I hope that the new RMweb Market will generate the necessary funds to underwrite it in the future. That seems to be a very effective business model. But "free" sites aren't. I understand that Fotopic had some additional features which required a payment, but that obviously wasn't sufficient. The problem is that the "Google Advertising" model doesn't work except for massive sites, and small-to-medium sites don't generate sufficient traffic to make it pay. If a "free" site becomes popular it involves its owners in vastly more work, unpaid, and eventually this overpowers many of them, the result being failure. Surely, someone has to pay for it all, don't they? Or is "free" the right thing for everyone, should we all give our time and money away for the benefit of everyone else? (Sounds like the Communist way to me, and that eventually failed). JE Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Etched Pixels Posted March 17, 2011 Share Posted March 17, 2011 . But "free" sites aren't. I understand that Fotopic had some additional features which required a payment, but that obviously wasn't sufficient. The problem is that the "Google Advertising" model doesn't work except for massive sites, and small-to-medium sites don't generate sufficient traffic to make it pay. If a "free" site becomes popular it involves its owners in vastly more work, unpaid, and eventually this overpowers many of them, the result being failure. Surely, someone has to pay for it all, don't they? Or is "free" the right thing for everyone, should we all give our time and money away for the benefit of everyone else? (Sounds like the Communist way to me, and that eventually failed). JE This seems like speculation unless you have the fotopic accounts and company filings to hand ?. Fotopic was successful when Joel and co ran it. I don't think you understand communism either btw 8) Anyway in the case of sites like fotopic "free" is market forces. There are lots of quite profitable businesses with "free" models, and fotopic could trivially have upped their margins by reducing the free account features, space, bandwidth etc.and I suspect most of the other big sites would have followed. Far more curious is the near complete radio silence from the tech news world. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted March 17, 2011 Share Posted March 17, 2011 I understand that Fotopic had some additional features which required a payment, but that obviously wasn't sufficient. Just as a point of order - we still don't know for sure what has happenned to it. There has still been no word from the company, or the parent company, or it's directors. Surely, someone has to pay for it all, don't they? I'm minded to agree. One of my thoughts (although far from the main reason) with setting up on Smugmug is that their business model requires everyone taking part to pay - excepting the short free trial. Yes that probably keeps the site smaller. But it does mean the money I pay for the service at least theoretically goes to running the service i'm using, and isn't diluted by subsidising the costs attributed to other users using the site. Certainly both Smugmug and Zenfolio which are pay sites only seem to have a much better level of support for the user... Whether or not the current outage is to do with finances it's noticeable that Fotopic seems to have few staff, possibly as low as 1, has apparently had no money spent on development work, has features which get switched off on a long term basis rather than being repaired when there is a problem and so on...Flickr also offers "free" and isn't too bad but has signs that it may go the same way if it's owners (Yahoo) don't keep a tight rein on it... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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