If the crumb trail box worked as intended it has one useful feature that you didn't have before - the ability to drop one search term from a many word search string without redoing anything. Those little circles with x can be clicked wherever in the list they occur.

You could - if it worked - type 8 or 10 words into the top box and then add or drop terms from the box on the left. And you could from that panel on the left remove Vetta or add illustrations, or look at only vertical or...

I don't see any reason why the top box couldn't work just like Google and still have the panel on the left fill up with all sorts of useful refinements (like collections, size, media type, etc.) you could make if you wanted. Best of both worlds.

There but for competent software engineers we would be now...

This is just one of the many site bugs. I don't think it's sorted although I do recall an update a while back that caught up some earlier files so they showed E+ or not correctly. I think they didn't fix the bug though, just did some sort of manual update.

As far as money issues are concerned, I have a pile of subscription sales going back two weeks that I haven't been paid for (and sjlocke's pile is 157 subscriptions as of this morning some time). Supposedly we're to see something by the end of this week - but they promised that last week and we've only got one day left of this week where they're working.

You can send them a support ticket just to keep track of it, although they may close it (that happened with a different problem earlier with mine and some others' tickets - they pointed to the forum thread as a resolution even though no money had actually been paid out).

They are floundering.

The basic search problems (type red white blue into the top search box and see the mess you get in the crumb trail box) have been there for nearly two months. They fixed some problems with the layout of my_uploads and about a week later pushed fixes for other things and the broken layout came back. That sort of thing really smells like poor development procedures with checkin/checkout of code and one person's changes overwriting someone else's fixes.

I could go on. Point is that your problem is but one of many and some very serious ones are still unfixed, so I think you may be waiting a while.

I don't know who loop is, but he/she generally steps in to say that iStock isn't as bad as everyone is making them out to be. What you wrote in your post was very clear that it was the Getty reps saying that, not you. I don't think loop an admin - Lobo is pieman here and rogermexico is himself. Kelly Thompson would be instantly recognizable for his ability to stick his foot firmly in his mouth with every post

What a muddled mix of infomercial and about 3 different stories! Leaving aside whether stuff like this hurts or helps us, it was just incoherent as a story.

They could have talked about a new generation of technology trying to provide users with a new way of getting what they want in a photo (although I think it's naive to think that most snapshot takers even know they want a blurred background in their shot).

They could have done a business story about how changing technology and sourcing of photographs has affected photographers and agencies.

They could have done a review of Panasonic's camera, micro 4/3, compared to DSLRs, or some combo.

But they mushed all these into one without really tying them together. They also didn't show whether any of the sold photos were taken with the camera they were profiling. I checked on the boy with a fish image they showed - it was taken with a Nikon Coolpix 8700 in 2006. In the US, the largest size (3264 x 2448) goes for $340, but this may be Getty's pricing games, that means it goes for more in other countries.

Well, Marisa, I always knew you'd come to a bad end

I do sort of get the request to be banned. I've been trying to stay out of the train wreck/car crash that is iStock these days, but like many an addict, I can't help myself. Seems to me that all respect for contributor concerns has gone out the window. If they were being ruthlessly efficient and the site was humming like clockwork, I'd be a bit sad, but would probably adjust to the new reality. But this keystone cops farce is just embarrassing.

Now when Leaf starts sending you PMs warning you about your posts here...

If you look at the reports here, this has been going on for a while - things seemed to really ramp up in November and early December. There were reports from much earlier in 2010 if you go back a few pages.

There's a reason that I hang out over here (beyond the fact that I did when I was independent and old habits die hard

Lobo has an account here (as does rogermexico) but they don't get to lock or ban, only read and (very occasionally) comment. It's useful to have an off site place to be able to compare notes about various sites and to talk in ways that none of the sites permit on their own forums.

I saw your posts and although I don't see why you were banned, I haven't entirely understood some of the other banees' banishment either. I understand that it's their playground and their rules, but you can't call yourself a crowsourced site with a community and then muzzle or otherwise intimidate contributors into silence or a chorus of woo yay.

I'm sure iStock is feeling a bit pressured and beleaguered right now - they've behaved very badly and are getting a deserved earful from their suppliers. Possibly Lobo's trigger finger is a tad itchier than usual as a result.

At any rate, welcome to Microstockgroup.

I believe the biggest number was sjlocke who had $3,400 removed

The thread on iStock has ballooned as contributors are furious that there's a spread of several weeks over which the chargebacks have happened - only for December. There were some worries about January sales so it's not clear it's over yet.

Given that the fraudulent purchaser was permitted to download the content by iStock - through their incompetence - it seems to me that they should bear the burden of the fraud unless they can get the files back (which I doubt they ever will). They did belatedly offer a payment plan for anyone who wanted to contact contributor relations.

The money went from accounts before the e-mail showed up - really a low blow not to do the e-mail first.

Not to mention some contributors are reporting that the file numbers listed weren't downloaded on the days the IS e-mail said. Given how badly they handled the backpayments on the missing 10% EL bonus (they calculated the amounts incorrectly) and how subscription payments are being delayed, and subscription download amounts are being rounded incorrectly for certain royalty levels, I don't know why anyone would trust that their accounting of this mess is even correct.

So they're taking legitimate money from the current week out of accounts to repay money they claim (no documentation of any sort other than the e-mail) was incorrectly credited back in December. They're also saying they jumped on it, but (a) it was a contributor in the forum who first brought it up - Kelly said on December 28th ". iStock�s fraud detection systems (and client relations--thanks Joy!) picked it up when it started happening last week, and we jumped on it."  and (b) it kept on going after that because whatever they were doing wasn't working to prevent the problem.

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=298792&page=1

Have to say I'm not very excited.  Wish they would hold off on new features until they've fixed the ones that are broken.

+1

Interesting how even with the increase in IS exclusives completing the survey that income from IS came in at 4th place.

IS exclusives aren't included in that pie chart - there's a comment up top to that effect. That's just how independents fared - and I assume includes those independents who don't submit to IS at all. Those who do lots of raster illustrations and composites often skip IS as they reject such a high percentage of that sort of thing whereas FT and SS lap it up and sell it.

There's probably also an effect for the larger independent contributors of their smaller IS portfolio (which is true for many, I think). Plus a lot of those just starting may be skipping IS because of a perceived difficulty in getting accepted.

For 2011, I'm sure the IS percentage of the independent total will go down - other than Yuri, all independents got a royalty cut and no price increase to speak of.

Thanks for the initial blog post Tyler. Much appreciated.

One comment about presentation would be that it's very hard, particularly with the pie charts, to tell which of the big 4 is which as they're all shades of green. I know in the bar chart you said they read left to right and top to bottom, but not sure how to apply that to the pie charts.

If the big 4 were visually very distinct colors (red, yellow, blue, green, for example) it'd make mapping the teeny squares to the pie charts a lot easier.

I did fill out the survey, but I don't remember if you asked about portfolio growth over the year as well as income growth. I wonder if it's worth tracking income growth against portfolio growth?

Regarding the income growth, would it be possible to have a few brackets and then report growth within those brackets? What I'm wondering is whether people over $50K a year are seeing one growth rate, people $20K to $50K something else etc. It's relatively much easier for someone earning $1,000 one year to earn $3,000 the next, versus someone to go from $20K to $60K which is quite tough.

These aren't full size images, but even so, it's possible to see posterization and white balance problems with many of them. I wouldn't apply with any of these.

If the composition is excellent, some minor flaws or a little over zealousness with post processing will probably get overlooked in the application. I don't think any of these are likely candidates - sorry.