I can't replicate that problem here, but I will keep an eye on it.
Are you guys on windows or mac? (if Mac, do you have Growl installed?)

Any news regarding ths IS poller ?

Yep, it should be working in this one, and any breaks should be fixed quicker in future.

Thanks to everyone who has put their voice in

It looks like I'm going to go forward with the project.
Will be up in beta soon (maybe by the end of the week) and will share more as soon as I know more

Any other issues/concerns/request please add to this thread and I'll try and incorporate into the build.

Excellent response Seb, I'm very sorry to see you guys going, but thank you for the honest info on what happened.
Best of luck in the future, if there's ever anything I and picNiche can work with you on, you have my fullest attention

I've spoken to Hugo (the iSyndica boss) several times in the past, he's a great guy. I was planning to add integration to the picNiche toolbar for iSyndica.

I've not heard specific details about why they are closing, though I'd be willing to venture a wild guess that it wasn't profitable enough for their investors, just in investigating the setup and running costs I'm finding it hard to see how they were running the service so well, and maintaining an excellent website when selling packages at that price, especially with a staff and board to worry about. Even with their popularity it's my view that it just can't have been making enough money to feed everyone long-term. < *disclaimer: total speculation AND my own opinion*

I've sent Hugo a query to see if he has any interest or objection in this replacement project though I'm not looking to buy since I'm not a big business here... everything I do is shoestring, sometimes it works well and sometimes it doesn't, but the only way to find out is to try

Please stay on topic in this thread

That's why I need everyone's feedback, if it's going to work well for everyone, I need all the info, suggestions & requests, issues and concerns I can get

Some verry interesting questions and issues raised, it's looking like there is some interest, and I'm investigating what I do with it from here. Please keep the feedback coming

Illustrations, again same as footage, yes for certain, though maybe not day 1 (which if I decide to do it will be soon).

I can say with some certainty that it won't be based on a flat monthly fee or subscription, and footage is highly unlikely to work on that model.
Both of these are for the same reason: for it to be both reasonably priced, and cost-effective to run, setting a single fixed cost without regard for usage would mean that either one of these 2 conditions must be met:
a) People using it less pay more per file, and people using it more pay less per file.
or
b) The price would have to raise after the 'honeymoon period' when the realisation of how nearsighted that pricing structure was.
Either of the above would not be fair to anyone, and for those of you who've worked with me in the past you know I like to keep things as fair as possible
I will put in stone now, it will not be a fixed fee service. I may however offer discounted pricing for bulk purchase (which would be more relevant to high quantity producers and footage artists), this option offers more of a balance between a happy customer and a productive and long-term operation (if you see what I'm saying

The per-file pricing I mentioned is by no-means final, just envelope figures. and yes, my storage calc was off by a factor of 10 or more
It would also have a referral programme of course, though I'd be unlikely to have a substantial 'free trial' beyond maybe a couple of images to check out the control panel.

Hey All

very sad to read about the closure of iSyndica today, but hey, I like problems to solve

I'm considering setting up a simple service to replace iSyndica, and I need to know whether it's something worth my time away from other projects.

It will be a simpler tool, and work like this:

• You upload to a 'picNiche' FTP
• You login and review received images
• You set the destinations via unlimited 'custom FTP channels', and will add support for others via http upload in future
• You pay per task...

for example: each file transfer will be about 2-4 cents depending on file size, storage will be priced about 1-2 cents per day per file so you can use it as a backup if you want.

It will be primarily for microstock, though i may add 'social' stuff if there is a demand.

What do you think? Please let me know cos it's quite an upfront outlay I need to know if it's worth it.

Cheers

Are you using iStock in english language, and is your balance display on the toolbar enabled in your iStock control panel? If so, what error does it give you?

Was probably my server hiccuping, it's been having some problems this week. It's working fine for me now though.

Quick update here for anyone who may be interested.

The success of the api-for-agencies project has been, hmm... limited at best. I've had some useful feedback, but no firm committments to provide APIs for contributors (with or without the agencyKit). Things may develop in future, but there is unlikely to be any agencies adding contributor apis in the near future (most of them don't think it's worth it but I'm not going to get started on that now).

This means at this stage that the "Image Deck" is unlikely to ever come out of beta, as without half-decent automated systems to build it on top of, it's just too much work for me to do alone.
I'm not cancelling the image deck project, but for a while it will be taking a back-seat to all the stuff that was requested in the picNiche survey earlier this year. This will most-importantly include detailed earnings tracking and a toolbar-api so sites like microstock charts and lookstat can request secure access to your earnings data for charting and analysis.

I can't give a definite 'when' on that yet, but I'm currently building a redesign of the site to bring all the stuff which has developed over the last 2 years together (It think you'll all agree that picNiche.com is looking a bit dated and random now). Once that's up and running I'll have a better idea going forward

Not sure if anyone is interested in that, but there it is for those who are Any questions/comments/requests/insults/jokes?

Aye, the iStock poller is currently not working due to the ongoing changes at iStock.
I'm postponing fixing it for a few days until it either settles down, or I get chance to make the authenticated pollers autoupdatable without having to put out a whole new version of the addon.
I'll figure out which over the weekend

I've just run a few tests and have noticed the iStock poller may be failing sometimes, not sure why yet, but will update sometime today/tomorrow. We can expect this quite a bit until they stop fiddling with F5 so I may leave iStock a few days each time it breaks for the next couple of weeks just so I don't end up putting out a patch every single day.
I'm working on setting it up so site changes don't need a brand new version, but will take me a month or so till I can roll that out cos I need to test thoroughly for any potential security issues.

I'm not seeing any problem with popups or notifications in the sidebar, it's likely another addon interfering with something in the firefox core and causing picNiche to error when it calls the function to make the popup. Would you mind PMing me a list of your extensions so I can check them out. You could also check the Error Console (Ctrl-Shift-J or Tools/ErrorConsole) just after you make a sale and see if it's reporting an error, that would help a lot of it is

Thanks for the info btw