TinyPics Demise

[yogi]

Many of the images I've posted here over the years have been hosted by a website called TinyPic. TinyPic is operated by the well recognized Photo Bucket people, or it WAS. Apparently Photo Bucket isn't interested in hosting all those pictures for free anymore which is causing them to make the decision to kill off TinyPic. That means quite a few of the graphics I've posted will suddenly disappear, if they have not already. This would only be noticed if you go back in history and look at some of the older posts made in our forums. It's rare that we would do that, but it does happen. This post is just to make you aware of why you won't see some of those old images anymore.

[Kellemora]

I used an URL shortener when posting to Twitter. Don't remember who anymore, but they went belly up too and none of the old links worked anymore.
Was no biggie really, I just made new ones through another place.

I didn't know about any place except photo bucket and for some reason I had trouble using them.
So, almost every photo I ever put on-line was a link to a folder on my website while it was on Comcast.
I've not done the same on my new host due to one of the rules, which may or may not be enforced for some things.
The rule is, I have unlimited space, provided my pages can be accessed through the index.html page or sub-pages.
No free standing folders may be used for unlinked data storage.
I guess this is because they sell storage space, and they also have cloud storage. I guess it is not the same thing.

[yogi]

Way, Way back in the olden days, PhotoBucket was the site of choice to store images. Even back then they were very slow to upload, but it was doable. Over the years they decided to offer subscription services, at which time the free accounts were degraded even more. I'm sure they had a bank of dial-up modems for us free account users. I have plenty of time and was willing to wait, but then the galleries went to hell. The new features they offered worked well in the subscription accounts, but it was less than a 50/50 chance they would work on the free accounts. It took me nearly an entire day to delete all the photos I had up there and never went back. That's when I switched to TinyPics, which just happened to be owned by Photobucket. The difference is that TinyPics worked well and the ads were not all that obnoxious. Unfortunately, nobody was clicking through the ads and they started to lose revenue. And that's where we are today.

I have unlimited storage here; why they allow that is a mystery. I have free standing directories with photos and other documents in them. At one time they provided data to some other web sites. LOL Until I can find, or IF I could find, a replacement for TinyPics I'll be using our own server here to store any images I want to publish. I don't like to load up a server that way, but there doesn't seem to be any other choices.

[forumadmin]

I've updated our How-To Post Images guidelines viewtopic.php?f=9&t=520 to reflect the two sites I found which will host images free and allow hot linking. Each site provided the code you can use for the link to your image, but the site called Free Image Hosting gives it to you in HTML which is not allowed in these forums per se. Simply strip out the source address (src ="URL for the image") and use it with our img tag. If you need help doing this, let me know.

[Kellemora]

The instructions are great Yogi. And you give the dimension limits which is great also!

[yogi]

There was a time when we had a lot of activity and a wide variety of people with more or less experience. You and I would not have a problem with posting images sans instructions, but a lot of people were not so well versed. I recall trying like the dickens to explain to some what it means to "host" your image on an Internet accessible server. LOL Well, we don't have the same traffic now and it's all pretty much moot. But, the instructions are still there should they be needed.

[Kellemora]

I hear ya! I was surprised to find out how many people did not even have ISPs.
It baffled me for along time how they could have an e-mail address and not have an ISP.
And this was back when almost all ISPs gave you a little bit of web space to create a page or two.

It turned out, many were using webmail account not exactly e-mail accounts, like Hotmail or Yahoomail, gmail, ymail, etc.
They would do their stuff while at work, or at the library, anyplace they could get a free connection.
Then came WiFi and a whole new raft of people with no ISP, who bounce around from one free WiFi place to another.

I know a few folks who live in an apartment complex next to a restaurant with free WiFi.
Plus several of my frau's friends can only get on-line if they are at a WiFi hot spot.
Her niece is currently in that situation, since her DSL was turned off.

My son got by for years using a cell phone link somehow without getting caught using it for his laptop.
Now he has cable Internet at home.

[yogi]

Unless you happen to have an Internet backbone switch in your basement, there is no way to get on the public network without an ISP. As you point out, there are a lot of people who find ways to do it free, but they all must go through somebody that provides the access in order to get on the Internet. Also, you don't need an ISP or a domain to have an email account. Desktop clients for e-mail were popular back when desktops were all there was. Webmail, or access via a browser, is pretty much the only way to go these days. There are thousands of them out there and I have several accounts of my own for various purposes.

Outlook Express was the e-mail part of Office Outlook. It came with more bells and whistles than you would find in a three ring circus. One of the standard features in all the e-mail accounts I use is receipt requests. That's when the sender asks to be notified (by the mail server) that the recipient actually read the message. In some cases the recipient is asked if they are willing to send such a receipt, but in many cases it is automatic and transparent. I am totally not surprised that your son was experiencing problems with this feature of Outlook. After a few decades of practice, Microsoft finally got it right. They dropped the Outlook desktop client of old and simply renamed hotmail to Outlook. It's all webmail now.

[Kellemora]

I don't know if it still does or not, because I've not used it since before my last computer.
But Eudora (and Thunderbird) allowed for local e-mail over the LAN.
I don't remember what e-mail program Debi was using before she went totally webmail.
But with me up here in the office, and her down at the house, she could shoot me an e-mail and I could send one back to her. This worked OK, but then as I said she started using webmail from her browser, and getting a new computer she never loaded an e-mail program on it.
However, we did use this pop-up box, sorta like messenger in a way, so we could still send messages back and forth and not miss them since they popped up on our screen, hi hi.
After I switched to Linux, I still kept my old XP computer running on a separate monitor in front of me, and set it to wake up if it got a message. But now that she is not in front of her computer all the time, and has a Schmartz-Fone, she just calls me at the touch of a button. I don't do texting so she just calls.
Speaking of which, at one time I could type out a text message and send it to her cell phone, but not since she changed the service she uses, apparently they don't allow it. Either that or I don't know how to any more, hi hi.

[yogi]

There must be other desktop e-mail clients than Thunderbird. I've not looked for any lately but it could not have died totally even in the age of smartphones.

There are apps for the Android phone (and probably the others as well) which will allow text messaging via a desktop or laptop. I have something called Airdroid on mine and can send messages to myself from the computer all day long. LOL But, any computer with the compliment to the app installed should be able to do it. Don't know about you Linux people, but I know it can be done easily in Windows/Android.

I used to use Windows Messaging at Motorola. I'm not sure it's still offered but it would definitely be a network thing if it is. Since you and Deb are on the same network (LAN) I would be surprised if you could not set up some form of direct messaging. It's just a matter of finding the right software to do it. Then, too, there are the branded versions such as Skype from Microsoft and Hangouts from Google. I've used those two but there are others as well. You can even do video along with the texting if you cared to. Plus, both of those messaging systems have Linux equivalents.

[Kellemora]

I actually solved the problem in an entirely different way.
I went out and bought a pair of doorbells on different frequencies for 9 bucks each.
I have a doorbell button stuck to the inside of a desk cabinet door, and a ringer stuck up under the desktop in that same cabinet. Then down at the house, there is a doorbell button that rings my ringer under the frau's end table by her easy chair, and another under a shelf on her desk. The ringer down there is in the center room, on the mantle, so she can hear it both places.
We have a little code. Since I am in ill healthy, if she rings my ringer once, I just ring her back once so she knows I'm vertical, hi hi. Two rings to me from her is more like a look at the clock warning, I'm late for dinner, etc. If I send her two rings first, it means I'm running 5 to 15 minutes behind. Three rings means call on the phone, either way.
Actually it is quite handy, she can ring me once every so often and it is no problem for me to ring her right back. If I don't she will appear in person to see if I'm alive, hi hi.

[yogi]

There was an app on Facebook that was used for reaffirmation of one's existence. It was called Pokes. Pick a friend from your list and send them a poke. All they got was a note saying I poked them. Then, of course, they would poke back. It's one of those typically stupid games that no longer exists, but it had a purpose beyond what it was intended to do. I'd poke people I seldom chat with just to let them know I'm alive. If I didn't poke them for a while I'd get an e-mail asking if everything is ok. If I dared not answer the emails of that nature that would trigger a phone call. The gods forbid that you should ever talk to somebody live on a telephone.

I don't poke anybody anymore. All my communications, but for a rare phone call or two, are like this. Text. As you see nobody but you comes here for me to have a dialog with, so the clever phone I recently acquired and it's messaging system comes in handy for that.

[Kellemora]

I've had a few people Poke me, but I never responded to it.
I figured it was some gimmick they added to get more data about us.
And I really hate the Message Pop-Up system with no way to turn it off.
I can turn off notifications, even manually do so on something I posted, and I still get the pop-up.
Knowing you can't turn it off, many are starting to use it to send out advertisements for one thing or another.
Shame, because I remove them as a friend, and block them if necessary.
Lost several that play the same game I do because of that dang messenger pop-up.

[yogi]

You must know a lot more people on Facebook than I do. I rarely am bothered by those pop-up messages. I do get a notification for each one which requires me to click on the icon on the banner in order to read them. At one time they were e-mailing notifications but I turned all that off in the account settings. When somebody leaves a message I do hear a beep but do not get a pop-up. I actually have to look to see what it was that was beeping me. Often times it's just somebody such as yourself "liking" a post but no message. The bottom line is that I don't get a lot of interruptions because I turned most, if not all, of them off. Then again, I'm not there very often to be bothered. LOL

It is indeed sad that you have to block somebody in order to stop those annoying ads embedded in the messaging. However, I discovered that I can block the messages without blocking the person as a friend. I can still send messages, but won't get any unsolicited ones from people I blocked. Most of the ones I was getting were about Jesus.

You are correct about "pokes" on Facebook. They collect the same kind of data that gets collected each time you "like" something or somebody. It's an attempt to uncover who you are connected to so that you can get the same ads they get under the assumption that you and your friends buy the same things. Stupid. Maybe that's why they discontinued it.

[Kellemora]

Other than Family and Relatives, about the only people I have on Farcebook are those who play Farm Town.
I think I only have about 400 followers.

Now under my pen name, I have thousands of followers, but try to keep them cut as short as possible.
On Twitter for example, I remove around 30 to 50 per day to keep my follower count around 12k followers.
I only follow-back those who follow me first, and after I see if they are writers, editors, or book readers, I add them to another List, if they are anything else, they stay in the main feed until I delete them.

On Twitter, if you Block someone it removes them as a follower and prevents them from following again.
Or you can MUTE someone, this way they don't appear in the main news feed but remain as your follower.

On Farcebook I normally don't use the block feature, I just don't add them to a List I view is all.

[yogi]

Facebook is a necessary evil if I want to stay connected to certain relatives and friends. As I grow older the need to stay connected becomes less and less, which partially explains why I don't go there much these days. It will be interesting to see if Facebooks and it's social media kinfolk are still around in the same form in a few years. I think it all depends on who comes out ahead in the next presidential election. There is much talk about investigating the big companies, but it seems to be at least in part a revenge scheme. If the offended parties are no longer in office, I'm guessing the monopoly investigations will cease and business will return to usual for Facebook & Co..

A few hundred accounts are following me on Twitter and most of that is due to the fact that I followed them first. Most of what I publish these days is not original. It's all retweets. That tends to lower the engagement value of what I do there and brings my influence down to the noise floor. All that is fine with me because I'm only there to milk the timeline of anything interesting.

[Kellemora]

About the only thing I do on Farcebook is click LIKE on a few relatives posts.

On my business account, all I do is click like on books placed in groups my promoter has running.
This in turn makes members of the group click on mine.
One thing I do not normally do is click LIKE on groups or pages, even if asked to do so.

Now on Twitter, under my business account, I share five book ads the promoter places, but do not advertise my own books there. If someone else does post one I will share it though. My promoter places my main book about once every three weeks, and my short-stories in a grouping post about once a month.

Social Media just takes up way to much of our time if we let it!

[yogi]

Social media evolved into an entirely different creature than what was created. It all started out with places just like this one where people can keep in contact and share stories on the public network. We had our share of disruptive posts just as you might see on the more popular social networks today, but I had the ability to control all that. Maybe that's the reason people decided to leave. There is no control over at Facebook or Twitter in spite of their claims. Now it's all about promotion of something or another. That's not an entirely bad concept, but the good ol' days of chit chat don't exist anymore. Well, except for us rag chewers.

[Kellemora]

Not to be phunny about it, but I loved the way USENET worked.
If someone started a topic, all responses directly to that topic were under it, in order, and indented one space.
If someone commented to a comment, it too got indented yet another space, and was in order.

While on most other places, when someone makes a comment it is under the original post and the original post gets moved to the top of the heap. This is not bad, especially if someone posts to an old long forgotten article that was posted. Moving it to the top means you won't miss it.
Some places when people quote an article, it appears in a box, and if too many people quote the whole dang thing, each time the box becomes narrower and longer until there is only one letter in a row. That's crazy, hi hi.
There are some idiots who will Quote an entire article and all the threads under it, just to say HI Folks.
In my opinion, the only reason to use the Quote Feature is to add commentary within the quote and delete all parts of the quote not relevant to your comment.

Although it is no longer around anymore, one website I used to visit kept all of the articles by topics and in alphabetical order. It would have a light at the titles in the index if a new comment was made under a certain topic. Sorta like here.
The thing was, you could not create a new topic if a similar topic already existed, which was good. Even so, you could make sub-topics if you had a different title for a sub-topic.
They did have chat areas you were supposed to use, and only informational data went into the topical area.
This meant if you wanted to look up something, it worked like a dictionary of sorts.
I think Wikipedia was the cause of its demise, or they may have taken it over too.

[yogi]

I detest with a passion those threads with indented replies that drift off to the right. Some folks think it's more organized and visually appealing to do it that way. I think it's distracting and shows a lack of programming skills. The format here is great with the exception that the opening post drifts up off the page after a certain number of replies. That would be important if the topic discussed did not drift. In practice any given title here careens off in six different directions before it ends. That used to bother me when we were a discussion forum and I encouraged people to come here in search of answers to questions. Now that we are in a chat format it doesn't really matter what the topic is. We could actually just have one topic and continue it ad infinitum. LOL