dw_biz | Brainstorming: what else would you like to be able to post on DW?

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Brainstorming: what else would you like to be able to post on DW?

So, Mark's been working on the backend for our eventual photo/image hosting offering, and soon it will be time to create the frontend. (Which, as any backend programmer will tell you, is totally the not-fun part, and as any frontend programmer will tell you, is totally the fun part.) As we've been thinking about the design of how we should allow uploads and how we should handle the resulting photos, we've both started thinking that we could do some really awesome things with making images in your space function like entry-like objects, instead of the nearly-entirely-disconnected things they are in LJ's Scrapbook.

So, for instance, in addition to specifying security, you might also choose to allow commenting directly on the image, manage the comments on the image (screening, deleting, freezing, etc), send the image directly to your journal's front page (only if you wanted to, of course!) and have it appear on your readers' reading pages, tag it (and have it appear in your journal when people view that particular tag's list of uses) -- things like that. (I know people will be tempted to ask questions and offer suggestions at this point, but please, hold them -- we'll be coming back to y'all once we have a more firm idea of how we're going to handle things, preferably with things like sketches and workflows and the like for you to give specific opinions on.)

But, my point in posting here was, I got to thinking about other things that might be able to work the same way. And then I started thinking: what if we hooked the concept of advanced reading filters into this concept? Imagine how awesome it would be, for instance, if Alice could bundle together all her Twitter updates or Twitter import posts into one type of update, and Bob, who loves the essays Alice writes but thinks Twitter updates should die a firey death, could set his subscription options to "show me everything from Alice except twitter imports". Or, say Charlie posts gorgeous photos that Donna loves, but hir entries are all about a fandom or hobby Donna doesn't share and is actively repulsed by: Donna could only subscribe to Charlie's photos. Or say that Eva is an mp3 blogger who posts five awesome tracks per day and lovely analytical essays about why she chose those tracks and what they mean to her, but in between the mp3s and the essays, she also giant photos consisting of the album cover art for the tracks she's posting, and Fred (the poor guy) is still on dialup, or is usually surfing from his phone, and downloading huge images is a pain: Fred could subscribe to everything in Eva's account but the images.

I'm totally thinking out loud here -- this is the kind of idea we've been tossing back and forth for a few weeks -- but one thing became clear: once we started thinking of the possibility, we realized there were potentially all kinds of things people might want to include in their DW accounts that aren't "entries", so to speak, but are still some form of content that people might want to share. I started making my own list, and then I thought, you know, some of these "object types" will be more popular than others, and I'd like to know a rough shakedown on how popular those things will be before we even get to the design phase. (As any good programmer knows, it's best to have a full spec at the very latest before you start designing the interface, or else you'll make bad interface design choices.)

So, behind this cut is a poll. The checkboxes for each question are all the things I could think of off the top of my head that somebody might want to put in their DW account (with some help from the #dreamwidth irc channel!) There are four questions:

* Which of these things would you possibly be interested in posting in your own DW account?

* Which of these things would you absolutely not be interested in posting to your DW account?

* Which of these things would you be interested in reading from somebody on your reading page? (Assume the person posting it is at least a friendly acquaintance, and the quality of whatever thing we're talking about is high: gorgeous photos, music that exactly fits your interests, etc.)

* Which of these things would you absolutely not want to see from someone on your reading page? (This is the type-of-content you would want to automatically filter out whenever subscribing to somebody new.) Again, assume the person posting is at least a friendly acquaintance, and the quality of whatever thing is high.

Each question has a "something else, see comments" tickbox. If you tick the tickbox, please leave a comment with two pieces of information:

* The type of content you have in mind that I haven't thought of yet;

* Which of the categories the content belongs in. (There should be two answers there: whether you'd be interested in posting it, and whether you'd be interested in reading it. Please answer both!)

I'm experimenting with anonymous polling, so while everyone will be able to see your votes, nobody will be able to see who you are. In other words, each poll response will appear to come from an anonymous user, but you'll be able to see that anonymous user #1 voted for 3, 5, 8, and 9, while anonymous user #2 voted for 1, 2, 5, and 7.

Poll #7774

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 257

I am taking this poll:

View Answers

Yes, I am!
231 (100.0%)

Things I would be interested in easily posting to my DW account:

View Answers

Shorter entries/status updates (like Twitter)
86 (33.9%)

Photos directly from a cellphone camera
133 (52.4%)

Photos from another source (via my computer), hosted on an external site
173 (68.1%)

Photos from another source (via my computer), hosted on Dreamwidth
226 (89.0%)

Videos hosted on another site
140 (55.1%)

Videos hosted on Dreamwidth
110 (43.3%)

Audio files hosted on another site
108 (42.5%)

Audio files hosted on Dreamwidth
133 (52.4%)

Word processing document files (.doc, .docx, .rtf, etc)
82 (32.3%)

Slideshow documents (.ppt)
28 (11.0%)

Spreadsheets (.xls)
49 (19.3%)

.pdf files
105 (41.3%)

Ebook files (.epub, .mobi, etc)
89 (35.0%)

Bookmarks or collections of links
160 (63.0%)

Location checkins/records of your day (like Foursquare)
11 (4.3%)

Collections of things done (music tracks listened to, books read, movies watched, etc)
125 (49.2%)

To-do lists/checklists/shopping lists/etc
134 (52.8%)

Something else (explain in comments)
13 (5.1%)

Things I would not be interested in posting to my DW account:

View Answers

Shorter entries/status updates (like Twitter)
105 (47.9%)

Photos directly from a cellphone camera
52 (23.7%)

Photos from another source (via my computer), hosted on an external site
7 (3.2%)

Photos from another source (via my computer), hosted on Dreamwidth
5 (2.3%)

Videos hosted on another site
14 (6.4%)

Videos hosted on Dreamwidth
33 (15.1%)

Audio files hosted on another site
19 (8.7%)

Audio files hosted on Dreamwidth
28 (12.8%)

Word processing document files (.doc, .docx, .rtf, etc)
77 (35.2%)

Slideshow documents (.ppt)
108 (49.3%)

Spreadsheets (.xls)
96 (43.8%)

.pdf files
43 (19.6%)

Ebook files (.epub, .mobi, etc)
48 (21.9%)

Bookmarks or collections of links
18 (8.2%)

Location checkins/records of your day (like Foursquare)
175 (79.9%)

Collections of things done (music tracks listened to, books read, movies watched, etc)
48 (21.9%)

To-do lists/checklists/shopping lists/etc
49 (22.4%)

Something else (explain in comments)
3 (1.4%)

Things I would like to read or see from people I subscribe to on Dreamwidth:

View Answers

Longer entries (more than a few paragraphs)
223 (91.0%)

Shorter entries/status updates (like Twitter)
94 (38.4%)

Photos directly from a cellphone camera
179 (73.1%)

Photos from another source (via my computer), hosted on an external site
199 (81.2%)

Photos from another source (via my computer), hosted on Dreamwidth
215 (87.8%)

Videos hosted on another site
174 (71.0%)

Videos hosted on Dreamwidth
181 (73.9%)

Audio files hosted on another site
166 (67.8%)

Audio files hosted on Dreamwidth
175 (71.4%)

Word processing document files (.doc, .docx, .rtf, etc)
97 (39.6%)

Slideshow documents (.ppt)
59 (24.1%)

Spreadsheets (.xls)
70 (28.6%)

.pdf files
110 (44.9%)

Ebook files (.epub, .mobi, etc)
130 (53.1%)

Bookmarks or collections of links
170 (69.4%)

Location checkins/records of your day (like Foursquare)
36 (14.7%)

Collections of things done (music tracks listened to, books read, movies watched, etc)
117 (47.8%)

To-do lists/checklists/shopping lists/etc
92 (37.6%)

Something else (explain in comments)
14 (5.7%)

Things I would likely filter out if people I subscribed to posted on Dreamwidth:

View Answers

Longer entries (more than a few paragraphs)
7 (3.3%)

Shorter entries/status updates (like Twitter)
119 (55.6%)

Photos directly from a cellphone camera
16 (7.5%)

Photos from another source (via my computer), hosted on an external site
9 (4.2%)

Photos from another source (via my computer), hosted on Dreamwidth
9 (4.2%)

Videos hosted on another site
22 (10.3%)

Videos hosted on Dreamwidth
16 (7.5%)

Audio files hosted on another site
12 (5.6%)

Audio files hosted on Dreamwidth
11 (5.1%)

Word processing document files (.doc, .docx, .rtf, etc)
48 (22.4%)

Slideshow documents (.ppt)
72 (33.6%)

Spreadsheets (.xls)
64 (29.9%)

.pdf files
28 (13.1%)

Ebook files (.epub, .mobi, etc)
26 (12.1%)

Bookmarks or collections of links
15 (7.0%)

Location checkins/records of your day (like Foursquare)
166 (77.6%)

Collections of things done (music tracks listened to, books read, movies watched, etc)
74 (34.6%)

To-do lists/checklists/shopping lists/etc
91 (42.5%)

Something else (explain in comments)
7 (3.3%)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If someone's generating multiple small updates, I might prefer them in a collected form, to take up overall less physical and attention space on my reading list, particularly if I'm coming to it well after the fact.

This is one of my issues as well. I'd love to be able to make lots of small entries or frequent annotations on occasion, particularly when turning over an idea or thinking things through, but I'd far rather see these consolidated into a collected form.

That's an interesting idea - could they maybe get appended to each other (for a certain period of time or something) and pop up to the top of the feed when updated?

(Does that make sense? I haven't had enough tea.)

Hmm, I think a magically-reappearing thing would make me stabby, if I were refreshing my reading page.

thinking about it some more, I can see how it would be irritating.

Yes, i really hate it when entries jump around (on G+ they jump with new comments, WTF?)

Yes, this is a major readability problem for me. I read back until I see something I've read before, then I know I'm caught up. Jumpy entries defeat that. (Google+, I am looking at you.)

+1

Automatically aggregating such smaller things posted within a given space of time seems like a good idea to me.

I would like to see daily or even weekly digests available for all types of content, regardless of length, and an option to select it on a user by user basis. There are some accounts I like (including comms and feeds) that I don't follow because they're just so high volume.

Being able to choose a content-based digest would be nice too, like one daily post containing all the music my friends posted that day or what have you.

This would be made of awesome. :)

...that would ROCK.

I would love be able to turn things into digests, too.

....oh, wow, this would be *amazing.*

The difficulty with that is how fine-grained should it be? I've noticed that with Twitter aggregates, they're collected daily at the end of the day, by which time they are mainly confusing and irrelevant, especially if the person has already made a proper post about the events that caused the twits.

Then again, I've yet to come across anyone who likes reading Twitter updates on a journal - if they like Twitter updates they usually subscribe to Twitter directly.

Edited (typo) 2011-08-13 14:52 (UTC)

I like that people post them, because I have a couple friends who are extremely chatty on Twitter, so I can say "oh, no, I read them on your LJ" and don't have to follow them on Twitter itself. Does that count? :p

But do you actually read the aggregations, and do they make any sense, devoid of both context of time and interaction/response of others?

Sometimes and sometimes. If I know something important happened in so-and-so's area yesterday, I'll look at the aggregated tweets for yesterday, or if someone says "oh, just check Twitter", I'll scan through that person's posts for an explanation. Since I very rarely use Twitter anyway - I'll have a few weeks of checking it every other day or so, then I'll forget about it for a few more weeks - it's nice to be able to skim a collection of tweets and see if anything interesting was said.

I'd rather see them dribbled out over time — nothing like a block of concentrated tweets from the same person in an entry box to make my eyes glaze over.

This. This is critical to me, in fact, if they can be identified as such. If they're just making very short Dreamwidth updates...but Twitter inclusion, for example, I vastly prefer to have the "lump in a single post, once a day" mechanism.

Tweet-level entries all through the day? It'd depend on the person. Short-entries-from-the-last-24-hours assuming person of any interest to me? Oh yes I want to se.

I have an alternative solution. Sort of inspired by some Wordpress themes I've seen.

Say i 'tweet' an update here. It appears on your reading page between normal entries as just a single line update, without metadata but with, say, some interaction links and, if we want it, a reduced in size version of the default icon of the poster.

So it's not displaying a full entry, not taking up the space of a full entry (and possibly not counting towards skip X?), and is just an intercession.

EG:
[pic-sm]

matgb: I hope this comment makes sense on the amount of sleep I've had | Link | Reply

So it wouldn't really take up a lot of space but would be instantaneous and in timeline. From what I can see, Wordpress is effectively offering this now as a different 'post type', and I probably need to play around with a new install to see what I can come up with on it.

That makes sense, and that would work to me. It's definitely a nice compromise. I do agree that ultra short posts/tweets/pings would probably need to be a new post type. You'll probably still find you've got to cater for both sets of requirements, the ability to subscribe inline or the ability to subscribe to an aggregator. Having a separate 'post type' would make that more manageable.

The other problem I have with an aggregator is that it's normally going to be controlled by the poster or the system, rather than by the reader, and I can see different readers possibly wanting different degrees of fine control (possibly across different sources). This applies to both a ping aggregator and a more general post aggregator. I might want a daily aggregate, whereas someone else might want an aggregate every six hours / 15 pings whichever comes first.

With your inline method, an aggregate could possibly post multiple entries as a single block, with each individual entry having it's own Link | Reply.

I am so excited! I would be happy with something like I've got on LJ (in fact, it's the only reason I still have a paid LJ at the moment.) Of course I should have known you guys would plan for level:awesomecakes.

The thing I would like very much isn't about content. I would just love to be able to import my massive icon collection from LJ scrapbook. I could live with losing the gallery info, the tags, any meta info at all, but the reason I haven't exported them to any other service is that I can't find one that will do that. I have to save and re-upload every image. Bleh.

This is probably straying from the topic, and I've been lazy about putting a suggestion together.

I would like to have an optional link formating that posts the description meta-data - similar to G+ and Facebook. But opposed to those services, I'd still like to retain the ability to post raw links or html code the link. I'm seeing a DW custom code to treat the link in a specific way.

I would find that really useful both for posting and reading. Sometimes, especially on the phone, I want to link a news article, but don't have the whatever it takes to thumb in a description. Likewise, I see other poster sometimes just post a link with maybe a "read this," leaving me the reader wondering if it's NSFW or potentially spam if their account has been hacked. If they had an easy option for attaching the meta data, it might not be so bare.

And have I mentioned lately how awesome you folks are for the thoughtful way you enhance the site - 'cause you are!

I like the basics of this idea. Maybe, on the update page, a 'post link' button that lets us paste a URL that then autofetches meta and codes it, but that we can then edit after it's done the code?

I doubt I'd, personally, use it a huge amount as I code everything, but I can see it being useful for those that find coding hard, annoying, whatever and thus useful for me to see it.

G+'s linksharing is particularly impressive as it goes to fetch a chunk of stuff including the favicon for the page--I'm less impressed with the way it just picks a random picture, Facebook's let you pick the image thing is better on that (links to my journal always pick my sidebar mugshot first, I've no clue why, I want the post icon damnit!)

I would love to able to import my existing photo galleries from LJ as they are; by gallery, with titles etc. Not sure if technology supports such an action.....the thought of re-creating all those galleries by picking out the photos, saving them, then uploading them again makes me look for the nearest fainting couch. ;)

A way to import LJ photo galleries would be amazing. LJ photohosting is the only place I have to upload images since I let my fannish site hosting lapse a few years ago, and I would really love to be able to transfer it as-is to DW.

I would love for this to happen too, but realistically I don't know if it's possible. LJ doesn't provide any sort of API that lets you download your pics from your Scrapbook, and without the API, I don't know if we'll be able to do it. (We could screenscrape, maybe, but screenscraping is a very quick way to get banned.)

Ah, banning bad bad bad. And I thought what you've said might be the case. Oh well, that's the way it goes. It's good to have a dream though. Alternatively I could pay someone to do it for me...and seriously, I think I might because, ack, have you seen my galleries? Hee! ;)

Oh, actually, there's a full Scrapbook API. It's easy to get all of this:

http://pics.livejournal.com/doc/protocol/

....goodness. I NEVER KNEW THAT EXISTED.

I just told you something I shouldn't have, right? Now we have to implement it, don't we?

Yeah, you really should've thought twice before mentioning that. ;)

This seems to still work...?

More photos would be great, but if I ruled the internets everyone would put the big ones, or multiples ones, BEHIND A CUT TAG OMG.

Except for the daily photos of jack and daniel, of course. :)

Also if I ruled the internet people wouldn't post in fonts that I can't change back to the font I like for my layout.

Hi!

Edited 2011-08-13 12:06 (UTC)

You know about placeholder images, right? On DW and LJ, you can replace all photos on your reading/friends page with a little placeholder, which you click to view the image (or you can just open the link to that entry.) You can also specify if you want that for all images or just the large ones.

I have never had to see another fucking Dragon Cave egg since using that setting.

yes, I use that with one of my browsers, but you see, I don't want to disable all images. Only the big ones and the multiple ones, and especially the banners that break my layout.

Hence my princessy "if I ruled the net"

I also disable animation wherever possible.

I have such picky and impossible preferences, LOL.

You can also specify if you want that for all images or just the large ones.

Oh? I thought it was an all-or-nothing thing.

Any image that's been coded with height/width stats, anyway. fewer people post images with the data defined these days, modern browsers find it less useful and decent CSS structuring works around it anyway, so it's rare you see it actually work, but if someone does code properly it can block large, defined, images only. But it defaults to assuming any image undefined is a large one and blocking it.

Arguably, we could do witha better image posting interface that either prefetches or asks for the dimensions and codes them to modern standards.

Actually, you can set it to assume that undefined images are small or large, as you prefer. So, basically, you have the choice between "block only images that we know are large" or "let through only images that we know are small". (This is a change from LJ.)

I have placeholders on for large images, even though it doesn't work a lot of the time. I also tend to include height and width attributes in any images that I post, just for the benefit of others who use this feature.

The added advantage of proper image hosting and posting as described in the original post is that the height and width attributes could be added automatically, which could make this feature considerably more useful.

(This is a change from LJ.)

And a good one I didn't know about. Mostly because I'd moved out of dial up when DW launched so didn't need placeholders anymore.

TBH, I'd rather placeholder on filesize over image size, a teeny animated gif with lots of frames can cause more problems than a large well optimised png, but I have no clue if we can even possibly programme that.

I checked everything in "Things I would like to read or see from people I subscribe to on Dreamwidth," not because I have a burning desire to see all of those things for their own sake, but because I am sure that the people I subscribe to could do interesting things with those tools. So, the more tools they have, the better. :P

Same here - I don't usually pay attention to certain types of media, but if someone I know really wants to share it, maybe it's actually something interesting or useful.

So pretty much the only things I didn't check were filetypes I don't actually have a reader for. ;)

On the other hand, there are programs for your computer that will read filetypes (like epub or mobi) even if you don't have a [reader platform of choice]!

Yeah, which is why I wouldn't filter them out. But I don't particularly want to read/see them either, since I've not yet encountered anything exclusively in those formats that I'm interested in reading, so I didn't check those boxes in the "things you want to see/read" poll. ;)

I just read the entry, and did the poll (concerning things I'd read/filter out on my reading page: I think you can't necessarily make that a general question, at least not in my case, because I think it depends a lot on the specific content or person you're subscribing to.), and I gotta say that I find this development increasingly interesting - I like things to be in one place, one account, but multifunctional, and in my eyes the things your pondering about are really cool.

I'm especially giddy about the photo feature, because I've been wanting to make a photo blog for a while now, and was thinking about using WordPress for that, since they already have a photo hosting funtion, but the direction you're aiming at seems even more awesome.

I've been wondering about one thing, though, since the discussion about whether or not you should offer photo hosting on DW came up: will this feature be available to free account types, too, or only paid accounts? I'm guessing that with all the space you'd have to buy servers for, it's gonna be paid only, but I'd still like to know.

It's really sad that PayPal ditched you back then, since it was the only possibility for me to get a paid account, though I certainly hope that there will be a way sooner or later for me to reward you for your awesomeness. :)

It's really sad that PayPal ditched you back then, since it was the only possibility for me to get a paid account

You don't have any friends with credit cards?

Nope, sadly, I don't. Credit cards, I think, aren't half as common over here in Germany as they are in the US, at least not in the area I live in.

Oh that must be frustrating!

Not necessarily; having never lived with a credit card, I don't feel like I missed out on anything, since until now, it always worked out one way or another. :)

Just curious, what about debit cards or other automated payment methods? I know while I was in Germany a few years back I never had a problem with paying for anything with my debit card, so they're used.

And a Visa Delta debit card is as good as a credit card for paying here.

Sure we have debit cards here. I don't think I know anyone who doesn't have one. You don't think we pay everything in cash here, do you?

But Visa Delta cards are an UK thing. We don't have that here.

Edited 2011-08-13 17:41 (UTC)

You don't think we pay everything in cash here, do you?

No, that's what confuses me, I know my German friends pay for things like card, so why isn't international payment an option, etc. But then I do recall when Delta was launched we could take it immediately in the shop I worked, whereas Maestro needed new kit, and quick goole reveals that's a more common standard elsewhere.

I guess I'm so used to my visa being acceptable everywhere even though I've not had a credit card for years.

But that's also why UK/US companies are a lot less able to accept IBAN/Swift payments, etc. I remmeber having to look up what they were when I wanted to book tickets for an event in Germany.

As yvi already said, we have debit cards over here, but really the only thing I own is a normal cash card of my bank account, and you can get along with only that pretty well here; only as soon as other countries and currencies are involved, things get a little more complicated.
I already asked the support team once if that was an option, but it doesn't seem to be possible at the moment.

So your cash card isn't a debit card? I think that's what might be confusing me, it's difficult to not get a debit card issued on a cash account here, and for the last 15 years every account I've had has given me a debit card by default. Which does explain why I don't 'get' it, it hadn't occured to me that that wasn't normal.

I don't know the exact details, I'd have to ask my boyfriend, since he's working for a bank, but I'm not sure even he would know exactly how the cash card systems of our countries differ. :) That's probably what makes it even more confusing, all those individual systems.

In many countries, a debit card means a card which you can use in an ATM, or in a shop, to access your savings account.

The kind of debit card you seem to mean is a Visa debit, or Mastercard debit, which is able to be used in all the ways a credit card can be used, but without the loan aspect (or the interest).

Since the rise of internet transactions, this type of debit card is on the rise pretty much everywhere. I know last time I opened a new account I was offered one straight away. But not everyone has them yet.

You certainly don't have to take me up on this offer (I know I'm a stranger), but I've been a PayPal conduit before and I would be more than happy to serve as one for you, if you would like.

That's really sweet of you. :) A friend of mine who's here on DW had already offered me making the transactions for me when she got a seed account right at the beginning of open beta, since I didn't have a PayPal account, but PayPal fell out of the list of payments before I had the money to get that operation rolling. It's a shame, really.

It's really sad that PayPal ditched you back then, since it was the only possibility for me to get a paid account, though I certainly hope that there will be a way sooner or later for me to reward you for your awesomeness. :)

They also take money orders!

While your suggestion is great, the practical aspect of it is a little bit more difficult, since I live in Germany and the fact that I gotta pay extra for currency changing doesn't help, either.
I am planning on getting the credit card thing figured out, though, once I'm finished with my apprenticeship and earn more money, given, of course, that it won't have more disadvantages for me than positive ones. :)

The big thing with credit cards is that if you get one without annual fees and pay off your balance on time every month, you're fine. If you pay only the minimum or close to it, you will pay lots in interest (it's how they make money). If you pay late, they ding you with fees. But if you get a card with no annual fee (a fee for having the card, basically) and pay it off in full and on time every time you use it, then you get the benefits of having a credit card with no extra expense.

Me, I use my credit card for everything, because I do/can pay it off in full every month and I get "reward points" for using my card which I can use to do things like get cash back or buy mp3s and such. As long as you don't fall into the trap of thinking "It doesn't matter if I don't have the money now, I'll just put it on the card and pay later!" you'll probably be fine.

Now, that's pretty much the reason my family doesn't own a single credit card (we're probably pretty old-fashioned that way) - because it's so easy to spend money you don't even have. My mother has always been warning me about it since she thinks it's unnecessary anyways.
Well, she was right until now; DW payment is really the only barrier I've discovered so far concerning my cash card abilities.

But since my boyfriend is a banker, I think I'll let him do all the explaining to me eventually - at least I can count on him not to get me into trouble for money's sake. ;)

You may want to check, also - I do not know if you have the same concept there - but here we can get "prepaid" credit cards (credit gift cards, basically) in a set amount that are basically cash with a Visa or Mastercard number. If you could buy one of those, you could toss the entire value to Dreamwidth in one transaction for points, then spend them on what you wanted over time - and not have an ongoing credit card that you actually had to deal with the risks of.

Most of the ones over here charge a fee if you haven't used them entirely after a certain amount of time, though.

Now that sounds just perfect! I'll definitely have a look if German banking industry has such a thing; thanks a lot for the suggestion! :)

I can recommend the Amazon one. I got that with no problem and can pay it off in full every month and since I buy a certain amount of stuff every year from Amazon anyway, it stays free for me.

Also, I would be happy to provide you with Dreamwidth points if you would be comfortable to make a German bank account transfer to me.

Edited 2011-08-13 17:43 (UTC)

I think I'm gonna look into it as soon as I'm finished with my apprenticeship and have a "real" job. I wouldn't want to get a credit card now only to not get a job next year and subsequently not being able to pay it anymore. - That's why I've been waiting with this.

I appreciate your offer, I really do, but I'm more comfortable with doing it by myself; not that I wouldn't trust you, but it has to do with me wanting to do everything myself. :)

Aside from that, did you just present me with one month of paid time?

Wasn't me :)

*snicker* I love all the people who came along to try to help you out with the payments thing. (For the record, the thing we've recommended in your situation is either a prepaid Visa card -- it works like a debit card, only is debiting from the amount loaded on the card at purchase -- or American Express traveler's checks. Traveler's checks only come in certain amounts, but you can buy points in that amount, then apply the points to a payment once they're added to your account.)

The question of paid vs free is a tough one. Things will almost certainly be released paid-only at first, until we see what the usage is like. We'd like to make them available to everybody down the road, and we probably will wind up giving free users a very very very small amount of space to play with so they can see how cool it is. But we're not sure yet! We'll be conservative at first.

we probably will wind up giving free users a very very very small amount of space to play with so they can see how cool it is.

I like this plan!

Thanks for the information; it seems like that prepaid Visa thing would be the most convenient solution. I'm definitely gonna give my boyfriend (he's a banker-in-training) a hard time pressing every last detail about foreign country transactions out of him. ;)

As for the photo hosting question - yep, that's about what I expected. Another fancy reason for getting a paid account. :)

Seconding the comment that what you would filter out depends on why you subscribed to someone!

Okay, so whoever of you sweet people out there was it who chose to grant me one month of paid account time - thank you, thank you, thank you! <3

Something else: WebGL - to both post and view, of course. And no, I haven't a clue how you'd implement this, or even if it'd be possible. But as sure as night follows day, interactive 3D will come to blog posts some day.

Mostly what I wouldn't want to see is autoplaying music or videos, or large files autoloading, but usually flashblock helps in that regard, and really, if someone else wants to have an entry full of that (or that is that), and it's not flashblock-blockable, that's when I bookmark that journal and take it off my reading list - I don't necessarily need the site saying no for me. :D

+1

Autoplay = BAD!

+lots!

I'd feel less fearful of photos and videos etc if they went behind some kind of 'auto-cut' ....

+1

I think an auto-cut is an excellent idea for media posts.

An opt-in auto-cut determined by the person viewing the multimedia, please, because I'd find autocutting really annoying.

An auto-cut would be nice. Definitely controlled by the reader, and possibly set on each media type, so you can opt in to read always, read auto-cut or read never. That way I could auto-cut videos, which I'd watch in a more controlled manner, but see images normally.

I'd love to be able to autopost something from the Archive of Our Own to Dreamwidth. A lot of that would be AO3's work, but since I think a few of us over there would find this quite a cool feature to offer I figured I'd mention it while you're asking. (Speaking very much on a personal basis here, not officially!)

An autopost when one has added or updated a story would be great! But I agree, that would have to be done at AO3's end, I think.

To the last question:

* I'd like to not see location and things-done, to-do updates at all so would like to filter them out
* sometimes I browse DW from my rather simple phone and would like to create a filter that excludes the large file sizes like video or audio and the stuff that wouldn't be fun on the phone anyway, like spreadsheets, ebooks and stuff. I'd check that out later on the computer, perhaps in another filter that only shows me "the media" I haven't already seen on the phone-filter.

Overall, I really love the idea of a wide array of file types to be posted on DW. Stuff like podcasting, beta-ing with a DW-hosted file, sharing research results or coordinating events with spreadsheets,... *beams*

The reason I would probably not subscribe to Shorter entries/status updates (like Twitter) is because it would be annoying to see so many single or double line entries with the fervor that twitter is updated with.

If they were in collected form, it would be fine on my circle, but I also feel that this is a prime candidate of something that could be worked into the profile - showing the last update with privacy settings the same as an entry on a field in your profile, and clicking on the header for that taking you to a backlog of all the small status updates.

As far as Bookmarks or collections of links - I really love the way Google+ handled it before I deleted my account with them. If you entered a link into the entry, it auto-populated the entry with a small blurb and image of the site or company you were linking. It was fantastic. It made sharing even a single link feel like there was some content behind it.

Edited 2011-08-13 14:32 (UTC)

While we're brainstorming...

Would it be possible to host some sort of collaborative document stuff? That is, one would post something, and other people could annotate/edit it, showing who did what - and the permissions to do so would be controlled by an access filter.

This would be really useful for a number of things: collective brainstorming, fiction writing/editing/beta-reading and so on.

This!

That would certainly be one of the most awesome features ever invented in the history of online journalling. :D

That would be really nice. I'd upgrade my writing journal (probably just for a few months at a time, but, still) if that were a paid feature.

Oh, fascinating. I have no idea if I'd use it, but the idea of grafting that Gdocs-ey/wiki stuff into a blogging tool makes my brain all fizzy.

I really like this idea too.

There are some etherpad clones out there. I'm not up on the tech, but it might be possible to use them in the DW codebase.

I don't see the point to most of it, but I don't care, so long as I can block hosted files via preferences, rather than having to use an external device such as Flashblock. I check my DW on my iPod and at work, and I can't add Flashblock to either of those last two. Right now I block things like youtube, since I don't watch videos, period, end of sentence, and I'm afraid if things were handled differently because it wasn't externally hosted. Because if people are hosting video files or whatever inside longer posts, I can't block the whole post, obviously, but I still wouldn't want to see/load the video/audio/whatever.

You know that you can set it up so that you see a placeholder icon instead of an embedded video, right? I've used it for years.

I have, and I do, that's what I'm saying. That's placeholder for external. I'm worried that that feature won't work the same if it's internally-hosted content.

Ah, then I misunderstod you. Sorry. I can't really see DW not making internally-hosted content blockable in the same way. Not only would it be illogical, it really doesn't fit with my image of how DW's run.

Edited 2011-08-13 18:24 (UTC)

Exactly. A module might be blockable on my personal computer, but I don't want to have to wait for all that crap to load at work, where I especially don't want it, or on the iOS, which is limited enough as it is. Right now I can turn all the videos off, period. I don't want to lose that.

One thing that could be interesting is having DW do aggregation of a variety of short-form social media feeds. The user provides the RSS/Atom/OpenSocial/connections to a variety of sources (locative services, other image services - flickr, picasa, specialized sites like Ravelry, the usual suspects - twitter, tumbler, public feeds on FB & G+) and DW provides an aggregate of the day.

This produces a diary of sorts with time stamps.

Yes, this.

I'd like to be able to point DW at any RSS feed and have it automatically product a daily post of all new content since the last daily post.

(Or check it hourly, and if there are more than 10 items then post, otherwise wait for the 24 hour point and post however many items there were.)

Oh, and it should allow me to set the tags for each type of post, so that people could leave my delicious links up, but hide my twitter feed (for instance).

Edited 2011-08-15 20:27 (UTC)

Much, much later, but I had to comment saying this would be really wonderful, yes. I use Twitter and Tumblr, I like their interfaces a lot and don't particularly want to shift that activity back to DW directly, but I would dearly like to be able to use DW as an archive of my online activity elsewhere because in terms of digging through archives, I'd much rather do that on DW where I know the infrastructure far better (and the infrastructure is much, much better designed for digging through archives, anyway!).

I both checked the "subscribe to" and "filter out" for videos on and off DW: I am quirky about what videos I will actually watch both due to personal taste and internet connectivity speed on average.

I checked "shorter entries and status updates" but I would probably only actually subscribe to that depending on how they were handled.

I violently hate automatic checkins at places like foursquare, but I am aware that mine is a minority opinion in certain userbases of the internet.

I would really love content aggregate substreams on the rlist equivalent somehow.

I checked "shorter entries and status updates" but I would probably only actually subscribe to that depending on how they were handled.

> refinement: depending on if they were chunk viewable, separate aggregate stream, whichever.

One of the many things on my lists of "LJs great big failures" was not turning the voicepost mechanism into a decent podcasting setup very early on. It's still difficult to find a decent podcast host today, despite audio files being much easier to deal with than image files.

Jennie podcasts a bit, I keep planning on starting, but the hassle of finding a host and/or coding every update, just puts me off.

A decent multimedia platform that's able to aggregate and host a vast variety of different stuff, with tags &c for optin/out, would be a useful little niche to fill.

I didn't tick "DW hosted videos" although I think it would fit, for the simple reasons other sites do that well and normally allow embed, but if the decision is made to go multimedia ignoring vids would probably not work.

But I definitely want to be able to host podcast style audio files, preferably with a little auto player similar to LJs voicepost player.

Oh geez, all of this is awesome.

Two things:
- Polls should be added to the list of specialized post content types.
- I would like Dreamwidth to treat all of those(*) as collection types in the Atom Posting Protocol, so they can be posted and retrieved from client apps.

(*) Or whichever of them get eventually implemented.

I put in a ticky box for something else I'd like to post.

I don't know what exactly you were thinking when you were listing "Location checkins/records of your day (like Foursquare)," but I would like to be able to post geographic information, rather than textual information. I would be interested in posting GPX, KML, and KMZ information that could be displayed graphically, rather than as a listing of locations or addresses. DW still does not support the embedding Google Maps, which makes it difficult to do this without further DW support.

An example of the kind of elaborate maps I like to make is shown in this post, which includes a link to a KMZ file, and a link to Google Maps displaying it. But I'd also be interested in updated GPX files that have collections of waypoints or continuous tracks.

I would also be interested in subscribing to information presented in this way.

There are a number of places where I can see people's stream-of-consciousness updates (twitter feed, photos directly from a cellphone or similar camera, location check-ins, etc.). I wouldn't object to one or two aggregation posts in a 24-hour period which include all of this stuff, but I come to DW and similar sites to see content where people have invested some thought and effort.

If I could essentially filter the stream-of-consciousness updates out with one or two clicks or checks, I could live with that. If I had to spend more than 15 seconds avoiding those updates, I'm far more likely to just stop reading the journal they're posted in altogether.

On an unrelated note, while I think that allowing PDFs, eBooks, and other documents has the potential to be fantastic, I'd like to see some sort of 'help' feature on what to do — and what not to do — so that they're as accessible and readable as possible.

I'm probably speaking from a very small minority, but if DW is going to offer to host media, limiting the filetypes that can be uploaded is going to be... annoying. I for one have had the thought of "OK, this I want to share with people" from stuff I have built in Minecraft, but that would have to be shared as an archive (zip, or tgz, or 7z, etc) which does not fall into the available list. Also, stuff from Lego Digital Designer (Yes, I'm a geek, you know this denise) is sharable, and creative, and not on the list. I can completely understand not wanting to write code to cover metatdata for every possible filetype, but not having it available to post as would be.. kinda crankymaking.

I agree with this. I know some people who would probably be interested in sharing subtitle files (.ass and .srt), which aren't included in the above list either.

It's important to whitelist instead of blacklist, though, for security purposes.

...I was nodding in agreement with the above comment, read this and went 'oh crap, it is'. If you do multimedia hosting, a FAQ explaining why it's done that way and how to suggest additional types might be a very useful thing.

I knew there was a good reason for this, though I couldn't put my finger on it. (And I hope this doesn't veer too far towards next steps, and too far away from the actual topic.)

It's the distinction between multimedia hosting and file hosting, isn't it.

Multimedia hosting is much more restrictive, because you are whitelisting individual file types, presumably also validating those file types (as much as is possible) and having more control over how they are displayed in line in entries, as well as then being able to post a finite list to the reader so that they can manage which of these types they actually want to see or don't want to see. It feels like it becomes nicely integrated into the site content and the site culture.

Filehosting is much more open and much less...inclusive. You can include a link to the file that's hosted, but that's about it. The difference in emphasis means that you also have to factor in people using Dreamwidth for offsite file storage which increases storage requirements and data transfer volumes. (Even with the 10Mb file size limit I've been known to use gmail for storing files temporarily or easily transporting them between computers)

The other issue is that you have no way to validate the content, within the context of viruses, malware, etc. I don't know how needful this is, but it probably means that particularly in a file hosting light you would need content warnings, which means asking "do you trust the user that you downloaded this file from". "Why, no, I don't. I mean, I trust them enough to tell them my most intimate fantasies about Jack Harkness, but I don't trust them not to send me malware" (Double negative, lose twelve coding points)

I was considering adding a request for archive file formats (tar, compress, gzip/zip, rar, etc) which gives you the best of both worlds, an easy ability to block that collective file type if you don't want to see it, and an easy backdoor into uploading any content file type, with the associated risk. I think in the end I'd prefer to see a more restrictive multimedia based model, even if it means the ongoing maintenance overhead of adding file types over time. (Well, it keeps the

dw_suggestions community thriving)

I'd be interested in using (and reading the fruits of) a reblog/retweet feature that lets you spotlight/share interesting stuff with all its original context preserved. This can be a problematic feature sometimes, especially in its native turf on Tumblr, but it can REALLY accelerate network effects, and I think it's a great way to be introduced to awesome stuff from outside my normal hunting grounds.

If it does end up hosting documents, spreadsheets, etc. - please please please also the OpenOffice equivalents.

I have no interest in posting them, and my interest in reading them would be entirely depending on what the individual person was using them for. But OpenOffice as a free alternative to Microsoft Office is very important to me, and I think it rocks, and I think it should be included if going that route.

I use OpenOffice too.

Thanks for bringing this up, I use it and I agree.

+1 (and if you could also include the gnomeoffice/koffice equivalents, then DW would be THE VERY BEST.)

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Brainstorming: what else would you like to be able to post on DW?

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