Ever have that, "oh, if i could only do that," moment and you set about googling for the right approach, at times ready to give up? That was me for the last two days. I stumbled upon PhotoCrank, a nifty little mashup that allows content to be blast, or "Crank'd", on a layer above an original image on a website, and I knew this would be a great addition to my main site and mobile site. Since most of what I blog on my mobile site is on the run and mostly images captured from my iPhone, having others Crank the images would draw people to the site and keep them there as well as promote the blog as they may want to share their cranks.
I started out by installing the requisite javascript code on both sites and voila, the main HansonHarmony site worked just great on a couple of existing images. But the mobile site's post images were not "crankable." I uninstalled and reinstalled the javascript to no avail.
About this time, Hup, the self proclaimed "Crank'r Evangelist Numero Uno", sent me an e-mail welcoming me to the CrankTown posse and to send him some feedback. I did just that and he offered some suggestions which I tried. To no avail.
The main problem was the image size of the mobile image posts were too small to be crankable. But blogger's Mail-To-Blogger feature doesn't allow for the customization of the image size being posted. It always formats the thumbnail according to it's liking and not according to the will of the blogger. Bad bad bad Web 2.0 design. Don't they know the user is in control?
The solution? Flickr
Something that Hup mentioned in an e-mail made me think I could yet again make the blog do something else than what was it's original intention. With a little investigative research on Flickr, I found out they have an e-mail option as well but their integration with blogger is good enough to post directly to a designated blog with customizations. Bingo! Not only could I e-mail, but I could customize the post, add body text and tags for the post. Mother load!
So in order to achieve the desired Web 2.0 effect with PhotoCrank, I had to integrate Flickr with Blogger. Ah, the joys of Web 2.0 :)
1 comment:
It's a small, small Web 2.0 world, isn't it? Glad that you figured it out - that's usually the most fun(and sometimes frustrating) part of figuring something new out. :)
Your blogs look great - keep up the Crank'n!
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