<span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Inspiring discussion here. I wish every university science and engineering student knew to subscribe to this list.</span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Here's a synopsis of image hosting options I wrote for another international listserv, <a href="mailto:orthopod@googlegroups.com">orthopod@googlegroups.com</a>,</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">===================================================</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Quick synopsis of </span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" class="nfakPe">image</span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> hosting options on the web today<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Talking
about what you see is something that makes sense to the human mind.
Unfortunately, for the machines tasked with the job over the internet,
there are two problems with sending images over email: it's
unpredictable and it's inefficient of bandwidth and storage. With millions
of mail servers around the world, there is nearly infinite variability
in what size of files your recipients may or may not be able to send or
receive over email. A single mail server may be the only one available
for a large number of people, bandwidth may be expensive, storage may
be expensive. Depends on the population in question. So, when
addressing an international group, you really can't predict what any
individual will receive other than text. Secondly, while email servers
are extremely good for asynchronously sending a few bits assembled into
very dense information, like words, mail servers are not a very
efficient way of transmitting many bits assembled into low density
information, like pictures or audio files.
</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Fortunately, web servers are a very efficient way to transmit large amounts of low density information asynchronously. I'll focus on first-in-class options for each class (the classification being my own arbitrary thing, it is certainly incomplete and inaccurate).</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">When we google for free </span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" class="nfakPe">image</span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> hosting (</span><a style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" href="http://www.google.com/search?q=free+image+hosting" target="_blank">
http://www.google.com/search?q=free+<span class="nfakPe">image</span>+hosting</a><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">), </span><a style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" href="http://imageshack.com/" target="_blank">imageshack.com</a><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> is the top result, which is very commonly used to submit pictures to even to the biggest forums, like </span><a style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" href="http://reddit.com/" target="_blank">
reddit.com</a><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">.</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">simply follow the link and, from their site, browse to the </span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" class="nfakPe">image</span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
you want to upload and imageshack will upload it and host it for you
and provide cut-and-paste links for any number of purposes. For this
forum, I recommend grabbing the link from the bottom, "direct link to </span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" class="nfakPe">image</span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">" and paste it into your </span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" class="nfakPe">orthopod</span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> message, like this:
</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><a style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" href="http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/1847/stethophonefq4.jpg" target="_blank">http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/1847/stethophonefq4.jpg</a><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">That's
the easiest way to circumvent storage and bandwidth limits. A much more
sophisticated service (arguably the best on the web) is </span><a style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" href="http://flickr.com/" target="_blank">flickr.com</a><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">, which
will allow free accounts up to 200 photos at up to 5MB each. Paid
accounts can store an unlimited number of photos, each up to 10MB.</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Another common way to host images is using a public blog tool, such as
</span><a style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" href="http://blogspot.com/" target="_blank">blogspot.com</a><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">, which is what the pulmonary and critical care folks do at </span><a style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" href="http://pulmonaryroundtable.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">pulmonaryroundtable.blogspot.com</a><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">.</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Finally, the googlegroup itself will host up to 100 MB of images (there's a link on the right of the post page (
</span><a style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" href="http://groups.google.com/group/orthopod/post?" target="_blank">http://groups.google.com/group/<span class="nfakPe">orthopod</span>/post?</a><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">)), but I don't see a readily available static link and, of course, it is of rather limited capacity.
</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Summary of web service models for images<br></span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">(best viewed in monospace font)</span><br>
<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">service access max photo size max photo count<br>========== =================== ============== ================<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
</span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">imageshack anonymous 1.5MB unlimited photos</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">flickr free account tied to email 5 200 photos</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">flickr paid account tied to email 10MB unlimited photos
</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">googlegroups tied to group account group limit = 100MB</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">blogspot I have no idea</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">For every service named, there are many, many similar alternatives. Of considerable significance for some: Secure Computing and other large-scale proxy services block many of these first-in-class services by default.</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">===================================================</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><div style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Ian Daniher <<a href="mailto:it.daniher@gmail.com">it.daniher@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Hi All, <br>As list admin, I have to ask people to try and use links to images instead of attaching or embedding them in messages to prevent cluttering inboxes and to be nice to OLPC's server. If people need some place to stash their images, I can likely create an anon FTP web site through a third party.<br>
Keep the great discussion flowing!<br>--<br><font color="#888888">Ian Daniher<br><br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;" clear="all"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">-- </span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Niels Olson</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Tulane School of Medicine</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Class of 2009</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><a href="mailto:niels.olson@gmail.com">niels.olson@gmail.com</a></span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">h/c: (410) 212-1281</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">alt: (443) 221-4648</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><a href="http://nielsolson.us">http://nielsolson.us</a></span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">This message may contain private information for persons named above. Please don't share that information with anyone without a need to know. If you received confidential information without a PGP wrapper, assume it was compromised, delete it, tell the sender, and try to tell the victim. Please don't send someone else's private information if you're not reasonably certain the recipient has a need to know and that the message will be kept private. Plain email is not private. In some cases, such as health information protected under the US HIPAA law or information protected under the US Privacy Act, plain email may be illegal. If you must relate a person's identity to their private information in email, use Hushmail or insist your recipients provide you their PGP public key. My public key is here: <a href="http://nielsolson.us/contact.html">http://nielsolson.us/contact.html</a>.
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