What's Interactive Image Discovery?

Today's post is not about the who, what, or where in our nature photographs but answers lots of the questions  you raised on my deterring online image theft post.  What I showed you earlier in the week is officially called Interactive Image Discovery and it's only a matter of time before we'll be scrolling over images all over the web to see what else there is to discover.  More and more brands in the future will be grabbing our attention with their products this way.. ......so why not be one of the first to utilize this new tool with our own images? 
  
Thank you so much for all of the emails you've sent me on the subject.  I could answer some of your questions immediately but others I forwarded to Stipple for 'their official answer' and one or two I'm still waiting an answer on.

Here are a selection of questions that I think you'll find very interesting...........

• Question 1:  "The cynic in me has to ask what is to stop someone else from using stipple to put information on a non tagged photo and claiming it as their own?"

Stipple Answer:

Hi Rosie, 

First and foremost, thanks again for the post. Your reader does have a great question. The counter to the situation you describe is for the original content owner to initiate a counter-claim request to the erroneously claimed image. Once this process is initiated, the person who has falsely claimed your content gets notified that you wish to claim the image as yours. They can then either unclaim the image and release it to you or raise the issue with our support group. Needless to say, a photo can have only one owner so when we are made part of the discussion, we ask for proof of ownership in order to resolve the dispute.  So in summary, Stipple offers peer-to-peer resolution capabilities of erroneously claimed images or can work with you to ensure that your images rightly carry your attribution by moving the claim back in your name after ownership is proved.  Hope this was helpful. 

Nitin

• Question 2:  "Is Stipple Free?"

Stipple Answer:

Hi Rosie,

Right now Stipple is in a trial/beta period and as such will be free for general consumers. Only our non-consumer customers (brands, merchants, etc) are in paid projects with us during the beta phase.  Once we are out of beta, for consumers, Stipple will offer a few different models (one of which will be a free model but with diminished features) and our user community will be able to chose a model that will fit their needs. 

Nitin

• Question 3:  "Can I stipple directly from my blog or do I have to stipple by uploading to the stipple website first of all?"

My Own Answer:

You can save yourself lots of time by adding the javascript code to your html blog template. Just make sure that if you're using Wordpress that you use either the Wordpress Stipple Plugin or the piece of code that Stipple supply but not both.  Once the code is on your blog you can stipple tag directly from your published blog post as long as you're logged into your Stipple account.  You'll not need to edit your post and nor embed any photographs as the .js does it all for you.

When you click on the sites icon to the left of the dashboard and then photos  in the sub menu you'll see lots of your photos that Stipple could find on your blog. You might need to visit some previous blog posts while logged into Stipple for the images to copy across.   Even though I hosted the screen shots from my previous post on Photobucket  the javascript from Stipple was on that blog post (not my html blog template) and those pictures have now automatically been copied over to my Stipple account.  

If you want to share the blog images  that have stipple tags with your stipple followers stay in that same sub menu and click on Settings - just above where it says 'add a new site' and you can tick the box there to share the images.   

• Question 4:  "How did you add the Google map to your image?"

My Own Answer:

I don't have GPS enabled on my camera or smart phone for security reasons and usually I add the name of a town in my meta data in photoshop.........but nothing very specific.  A few months ago +Simon Grew from the +UK Photography Community created a video to show  the members of that photographic community how to extract the co-ordinates from a location so that we could add our landscape photographs to the community map. 

I in turn used that same method to add a map to my stippled image and if you've never worked with google maps before then here's how I do it.  

#1 Go to Google Maps and in the search bar type in the approximate location that  your photograph was taken.

I searched for: Holy Island, Lindisfarne Castle, Northumberland, England.

#2 Then I zoomed into the image to locate the street I photographed from.

select ' Centre map here' on the menu

#3  I placed my mouse cursor over the spot, right clicked and a menu box appeared on the screen

#4 Then I selected 'Centre map here' and clicked to centre the map.

#5 Then I right clicked again and selected 'what's here' and clicked and  my green place mark appeared on the map.

select 'What's here' on the menu

If you make a mistake and don't select the correct place then repeat #3, #4 and #5 and your green place mark will move.

#6 You'll then see the co-ordinates appear beside your green place mark and in your search browser bar but to get the link to them you need to click on the link icon to the left of the screen next to the printer icon.

how to get the link to your map co ordinates

#7 Another  menu box to the right of the icon will appear with the links  - choose to copy either the short or long link.

Add the link to the URL on your stipple tag

#8 This is the link you add to your stipple tag URL section and as soon as you add this link stipple will recognise that it's a map url and the map will appear in your stipple image.

Interactive Image Discovery: What the viewer will see when they hover over the stippled map tag on your image.

Try it yourself and scroll over the image.......

Red Admiral butterfly nectaring on Verbena bonariensis blooms in October

• Question 5  "How easy is it to edit the information in a tag?"

When you click on the tag you'll see a little grey arrow in the lower right hand corner - click on that to reveal the edit | delete menu.

How to edit or delete a stipple tag

• Question 6:   "Can you move a tag around a photograph"

Answer from me: 

No, you have to delete the tag (see # 5 above) and make a new one in the new position.

• Question 7:  "I can't see my tags on Pinterest, Facebook or Flickr in either firefox or chrome even though I have installed the browser extension - how long does it take to show those?"

The official answer from Stipple is pending! 

I'm still waiting to find out about this as a few of you have contacted me with the same problem.  Even I have the same problem and I've asked a few of you to check the links to facebook and Pinterest that stipple have given as examples.  Not one of us can see those tags working in those accounts.   

I know that the stipple browser extension is definitely working for me this afternoon as I turned it off and tried to view a stippled image in this blog and it wouldn't let me - clicked to turn it back on and I could see the tags again.........so the problem seems to be with certain accounts.  

I've even had to turn off the extension while working on this blog post as things keep moving about in this draft  page layout now and again but cease once the extension is turned off.

I've just been sent the answer from Stipple dated 13th January 2013:

The Viewer is being debugged due to some issues so for the next week or so, the functionality will be limited and so that's why you are not seeing the dots on Flickr. Once it's up and working again, yes, you should see tags on any site that is using your images and those images have been uploaded into your account on stipple.com.

Edit to add:  Stipple images are now showing on Facebook.  If you upload a photograph to your stipple account and share it to facebook it will appear as an interactive image.

When you click on the arrow the picture will open and as you scroll over the image the tags will show without the viewer having any browser extension downloaded.

I guess with everything still in beta it's something we have to expect and as we keep reporting these problems to the design team the functionality of the tool will improve.


If you've any more questions you're welcome to leave them here in the comments or add them to the help community over on Stipple.

Thanks for stopping by and if you decide that Stipple is for you then make sure you follow me on stipple!

Interested in this topic?  You might enjoy another article called:

• Know and expose your enemy!

Rosie is a passionate wildlife gardener, perthshire photographer and writer.  She enjoys soaking up nature in her own garden and is easily distracted from doing the weeding by anything that buzzes, creeps, crawls or flutters. Connect with her on Google Plus  and Facebook. © 2009- 2013 Leavesnbloom ~ All Rights Reserved.

Enjoyed this post? Get more just like it by subscribing to my RSS feed and by email.  

Feel free to share it with others using the handy buttons below.