PixCede: Thoughts on how to proceed

I haven't done any "real" work on PixCede since late last week, but I've done a lot of thinking about it -- which is probably a lot better than implementing without thinking. I've also been using it myself more than I thought I would be, which is really exciting. I've told a couple of my friends and collected some feedback, but Zach is the only one who started really playing with it.

I've thought a lot about whether or not to allow emails from non-phones through. The main concern is the potential for abuse -- who's to stop someone from writing a script to constantly spam the front page with whatever? Zach had a good suggestion of getting a short SMS number (like GOOGL) and only allowing pictures to come in through that. Then, I realized that getting a picture from one of my computers to the other meant emailing it to myself, which for some reason just seems like a huge pain in the ass. I used GMail to email PixCede a picture of myself on the Half Dome, and just retrieved it through the web site on the other computer. Yea, still email on one end, but on the receiving end, I felt incredibly less inconvenienced. Therefore, I think I'm going to implement a simple file upload feature to PixCede so that you can post a picture from one computer quickly, and retrieve it from another computer quickly -- without the hassle of logging into email on both computers.

I know what you're thinking: great idea! TinyPic had that idea YEARS ago! Short answer, yes, long answer... not quite. For one, I really am going to try to model this site after PasteBin more so than TinyPic and other similar services. I really like the dead simple usage of PasteBin, and I also like the content expiration too. I feel like that would discourage people from using PixCede as an image hosting solution -- which it is not. PixCede is a simple way to transfer pictures from one device, be that a cell phone, a workstation, or something else I don't know about, to another. So in that respect, I hope to differentiate myself from TinyPic and Flickr -- this is more of a PasteBin fork.

So, speaking of PixCede, I realized that the owner made all of his code open source. I love not re-inventing the wheel, so I'm going to start reading his blog and poking into the source code. I've briefly scanned his blog, and I was happy to see that he switched from a database back end to just a plain file system -- a decision I arrived at with PixCede a week or so ago. For something this dead simple, a relational database is really overkill. It just seems like the common decision to "my web app needs to persist information" is to just cram it into a database without really thinking about it. A well designed file structure will work just as well in this case.

PixCede: First working version!

It now seems that PixCede is "working enough" to justify putting up that blog I've been avoiding. Thanks to Simple PHP Blog, I was able to get one up really quick without having to install database software.

After fighting with the mailparse extension for PHP, I decided to switch to the PEAR mimeDecode module. From what I understand, it will run a little slower than the extension, but it has the main advantage of working. The move to mimeDecode follows the initial proof of concept that used procmail to pipe new messages to the command line utility munpack, which was being called from within a PHP script. Currently, procmail pipes to a PHP script that does the MIME decoding in the same script. The only other thing I'm doing is creating a thumbnail for the main page, renaming the image, and storing it to disk.

Like I said, functionality is basic right now. I don't have a database running; images are just renamed to {timestamp}_{md5 of content}.jpg. The naming convention takes care of order of submission, and throwing the hash at the end makes sure that unless two people submit the exact same image at the exact same time, there won't be any collisions. But, then again, if the image is the same, and the submission time is the same, would you really need it stored twice anyway?

I still have a huge todo list:
* Allow images to be directly accessible
* Automatically update the main page when new pictures are submitted
* Video uploads
* Confirmation SMS with direct URL
* Browse by time periods

I'm not sure what the "final" product is going to end up looking like; it will just be a continual evolution. While this is completely open and anyone can use it, I'm assuming it's still going to be people I tell by word of mouth for now. If you have suggestions or comments, please let me know!

Introducing PixCede

PixCede is an idea I came up with on the bus into work one day. I've been doing some development on it in my free time, and finally put up a working "proof of concept" last week. There's a development blog on the site, but I've decided to mirror PixCede posts on this blog.

(ripped from my about page)
What is PixCede?
Take a picture with your cell phone camera, send it to submit@pixcede.com, and check pixcede.com to see your picture. Additionally, you can directly view your image using the submission code sent back to your phone.

Ok, that's what it does, but what is it?
PixCede is defined in purely functional terms because I don't care what you use it for. In fact, I'm very curious to see what kind of pictures show up on here. I'll worry about how it works, you worry about what to use it for.

That sounds dumb. Can't you think of anything to use it for?
Sure, I'll tell you exactly what I'm going to use it for: I take pictures with my cell phone camera, and then they just stay there. I'm just going to use this as a sort of Pastebin for my pictures, between cell phones and computers. I'd imagine a lot of the pictures I submit will be either things I think look cool, cool cars, or funny things. But seriously, you should use it for whatever you want. I'm just providing the tool.

Sounds like a cheap way to host pictures!
PixCede is not a traditional image hosting site. I am paying for bandwidth out of my own pocket. If you need a dedicated image hosting site, use S3, Flickr, Picasa, or any number of other services designed for that

So what are you getting out of it?
Entertainment. I, hopefully like you, am interested in seeing what kind of pictures get submitted! A couple of months ago I saw a site about a guy who took a disposable camera and tied it to a park bench with a note that said something to the effect of "take a picture of whatever you want, I'll develop the film once it's all been used." This is my virtual camera-attached-to-a-park-bench.

Am I giving you my pictures? Will you make money off of selling them?
First off, I really don't know who you are -- by design. But I certainly don't think it's right for me to own them either. By submitting a picture to PixCede, you are putting it into the public domain.

Are you making any money off of PixCede?
Not right now. If it really takes off and I have to start putting up AdSense to cover excessive bandwidth costs, I'll let the community know beforehand. For right now though, I'm taking a barebones Craigslist approach.

What does 'PixCede' mean?
The 'Pix' part is pretty obvious: pictures. The suffix '-cede' means to transfer. Altogether now... 'picture transfer.'