Ken - use of smileys here and there might help me!

At present, we are adding images dynamically to the database.   This causes a "re-indexing" of the image-keyword table.  As the site gets more images, the delay in re-indexing is what you're seeing.  It's getting close to the tipping point where we'll have to re-index offline in batch mode.

In terms of go-live, I haven't a date right now... it's very dependent on having a reasonable selection of results for common keyword searches.  The quality (as you would expect with our approach) is extraordinarily high. 

Thanks for the very constructive feedback.   This board is one of the best.

Tom

Hi Tom -

I really, really like being able to just drag a folder of images into my ftp client and upload mass quantities at a time but on the other end there is enough of a time lag after hitting "submit" that I sometimes think my computer has locked up or your servers are down or something.  I mean with my 20,000+ images and 3 million model releases (yeah, lots of people in each of those shots) I may have to wait until all the bugs are worked out  - oh no, wait, I guess it's more like about 1,000 images that would meet your site's high quality standards - so I'm getting there.  Looking forward to having all my portfolio available for you whenever this site goes live.  Any new projections or updates on when that's going to happen?

Ken

Tom, My image "El Capitan" is two times in the approved image list. I don't see anywhere a possibility for me to delete one of them. Please can you take care of this for me?

Will do..

Tom

Zeus - we have a batch release attachment tool.  It's not in a good enough shape just yet to put it on the contributor web site, but if you upload your images and releases and send me a spreadsheet with three columns:  imagefilename modelreleases propertyreleases (releases being comma separated) I'll auto attach them for you.  Same for anyone else who has a large number of images.

Tom

I sent a 1000 on a DVD and uploaded another 700 or so. All seems to be working well. Some have been accepted another 1100 or so in Pending queue. The only complaint I have is with attaching releases. the mouse over feature causes a large thumbnail to obscure the button you are trying to click sometimes. I also wish there was a batch release attachment tool like Crestock. Every click we don't have to do is time saved and makes for a happier contributer.

Flemishdreams...  we uploaded a new release of code last week which contained a bug in IPTC extraction.  Ironically, it was a change to the code to implement your excellent suggestion to honor a "newline" as a valid leyword separator in imbedded IPTC data.

The bug has been fixed and we ran a routine to (hopefully) identify all images that were affected and correct them.  If you're still having issues please post here or send me an email and I'll investigate immediately.

The 13 character password issue is also being re-worked.  We are extending it to 20 characters and are going to limit the number of characters that can be supplied as a password on registration.

Thanks for spotting these bugs and suggesting improvements.

tom <at> vivozoom.com

One month later...

I uploaded a test batch 3 weeks ago. I had to copypaste the IPTC keywords since they weren't accepted during upload. Then I suddenly couldn't log in any more. My passport copy was expired so I sent a recent copy. Still couldn't log in.

Used the "forgot password" option and that worked, but I still couldn't log in. Forgot all till today when I got a reminder. Seems that they accept a 13-character password but it doesn't work (without warning) but a 6-character password does.

Uploaded 2 batches of 10, one by FTP, one by the HTML form. The FTP-ed shots don't show up, the HTML-uploaded do, but the IPTC keywords are still not imported. It's not a question of separators since I used both 1-line comma-separated keywords and newline separated keywords with the same result (no import).
LO had the same problem end of 2006, but they eventually solved it. I fill in the IPTC with Irfanview.

Anybody submitting to Vivo and had the same problems?

Oboy... getting back to on the emails getting flagged as spam.

Have requested a valid email address as you suggested of "[email protected]".  This will be live very soon.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Tom

Charles... looks like something else was triggering the timer before the 30 minutes had elapsed.

Developers have now isolated the email timer into its own category.

Let me know if it happens again.

Thanks for reporting this.

Tom

Charles - a bug. 

We set a timer of 30 minutes.  If you haven't uploaded any images via FTP for thirty minutes, we send an email with the results of the upload.

Clearly this fantastic piece of thinking isn't as good as it should be.

I'll forward to the developers and please pass on my apologies to your mail host.

Tom

Ken - thanks for signing up.

The primary drivers are keyword-match and date for best match.

Our "pre-alpha" also has "oldest-first" and "random" as alternatives.

I'm sure it will change over time, but as Sherlock Holmes said "It's a capital mistake to theorize before one has data."

For example,there's no technical obstacle in offering a ranking by downloads (for a given set of results) without giving away the actual number of downloads, but it's not implemented.

Tom

oboy .. thanks are due to you and others.

Your choice is to persevere with us or give up.  I would more than understand that (in a crowded world) you might choose the latter.  You didn't, so thanks again.

Tom

Microbius et al - we are in agreement.

We will have no facilities that allow others to rate your images nor see how many downloads an image has had.  Those things have no place at VZ.  All these decisions were supported by a vocal but passionate group of microstockers who gave us some great feedback in 2007.

In retrospect, these "gimmicks" might seem like bad ideas, but at the time, the great pioneers like Bruce and Jon were trying to build a new model without a rule book.  The "community" model lent itself to so many great ideas that we've all benefited from.  A few on the otherhand, have passed their sell-by-date.

We won't get everything right, but we're trying.

Tom

Racephoto - "adding categories"?  Not us.

Over a year ago I asked a bunch of microstockers via the Yahoo microstock group what they liked and didn't like about existing sites.

Almost everyone said "don't implement categories!".

We listened.  There are no categories on VZ. 

Tom

Magnum - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!  Anyway, we're building an image business, not a nuclear device. 

Tom

Leaf - it was the back-tick in your file-names that caused our FTP script to ignore the files.

The images should now be in your MANAGE queue.

We have modified our ingestion system to accept back-ticks but will display them in your account area without the back-tick.

Thanks for reporting this,

Tom