The PixyBlog platform has a search facility that helps people find photos on photoblogs.

Is it important to have a search function on a photoblog? Some photobloggers might think it is not important. After all, a photoblog is only a way to show some photos and that might be enough...I personnaly think it is very important. Why?

This is my first tip about PixyBlog.

What's PixyBlog ? PixyBlog is a great photoblogging platform and community. I already talked about PixyBlog in previous posts.

PixyBlog's platform is well designed and very powerful. One of the nice particularities of PixyBlog is that it integrates a scripting language, NVelocity, which gives users a very powerful tool for customizing their photoblogs.

As promised in my last post, I am going to explain the technical part of my recent photoblog migration, which was also described on PixyBlog's website. I know that many users of OneReaction Photoblog (the software I used to run my photoblog) are not software developers. Thus, the following post might be a bit too technical for them. I apologize for that. Software developers (even those who don't care about photoblogs) who want to know more about LINQ to SQL and see some real code in action might be interested by this article.

Hello,

This post is about the migration of my photoblog from my own server, using OneReaction Photoblog software, to Pixyblog, a new photoblog hosting platform and community.

A bit of history: back in 2004 when I started to look for a good photoblogging software, I choose OneReaction Photoblog, which was the only photoblogging software running on the Microsoft ASP.NET platform. Developped by Ryan Pardue, OneReaction Photoblog was originally working with an XML back-end and then with an SQL Server database. It had many interesting and original features. One of these features was a companion Windows application, called OneReactionSendTo which allowed users to post photos without having to log on the web site.

I am almost converted to using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom version 2 (LR2) as my main photo management software, after using (with some frustrations) iView Media Pro (now Microsoft Expression Media) since 2005. One of the problems in LR2 that I discovered while exporting some photos is that pre-existing keywords (ie keyword created with a previous version of Lightroom or imported by it from already tagged files) are not exported with the photos during an export process. As explained in Adobe's tech support page, you have the choice of either editing each and every keyword and checking its export options or, more easily, download and install the script that Adobe has released (see previous link).

I chose the later solution and it worked perfectly (much easier than manually editing around 500 keywords!).

I upgraded this blog to GraffitiCMS version 1.1. without any major problem. But unfortunately, the migration procedure as indicated on Telligent's website doesn't mention that the web.config file is overwritten during the migation process and that the database provider is reset to the default one, which in my case isn't the one I am using. This, unfortunately, made this website down for about fifteen minutes...until I discovered and fixed the problem.

It might be subjective, but I think the site is running a little bit faster than before.

This post is a follow-up of my previous one concerning the FAT 32 formatting of hard drives bigger than 32 GB under Windows.

For those who think I'm speaking hebrew here, let me explain briefly :

I have recently been confronted to the need of digitally recording live endoscopic / laparoscopic surgery procedures in the operating room (OR). This challenge had several constraints such as :

• the system should be small and easily tranportable in and out of the OR
• the system should be compatible with most video endoscopy standards and connections used in ORs

As I wrote in a previous post, I have setup accounts at Fotolia and Dreamstime. My experience so far is that both sites have nice and intuitive interfaces. They both exist in several languages, although Dreamstime non-english languages are still in beta and sometimes translations aren't accurate. This is not a problem for me as I use the english version of these sites most of the time. Fortunately, both sites let you upload photos using FTP, which makes your life easier when you have a series of photos to upload.

Here are some remarks about this personal experience:

Hello,

My apologies to those who come visit this site regularly to see if new stuff has been posted. Sorry for the silence during these past few weeks. I have been so busy at work that I had almost no time left for anything else. Things are cooling down a little bit now and I am going to post here again more frequently.