How to Store Images? And reference them

[shybyte]

I'm currently working on a remote storage app and hope you can help me with 2 questions, which I could not figure out by myself:

Is it possible to store images (efficiently) by using remote storage?

Is it possible to get URLs to this (public) images and use them just the normal way <img src="url"> ?

And if yes: How?

Cheers, Marco

[Michiel de Jong]

Great! Looking forward to it, what will your app do?

I'm working with Jaisen from OpenPhoto to create a good way to get
your own photos onto remoteStorage. But you could also store them from
your app.

I guess we should start to allow using photos in an <img> tag
directly, although currently we're not doing that yet. What's
necessary for that is a MIME type on the HTTP resource, and we're
currently setting all MIME types to application/octet-stream (or
probably not even setting them at all).

I'll email you directly about setting up a test account for you on the
OpenPhoto server and the remoteStorage server that I'm using to
develop both features. Then you can be the first person to start using
it!

Cheers,
Michiel

[shybyte]

With my app (called "Shared Stuff") you can edit a list of (real world) stuff that you own and share it with your friends. You can search and browse an aggregated view of all the stuff that your friends have.

Imagine you need an electric drill but don't want to buy one for the 2 holes you drill in one year. With my app you can easily see who of your friends you can ask.
You could also find inspirations for good books in your friend's list or discover an old unused sega game console for a fun retro gaming party ...

My basic vision is to reduce our ecological footprint, save money and deepen friendship. This is not a completely new idea. But existing web apps save the stuff lists on central servers, which is problematic as the stuff You own is a valuable personal profile, that should not be in the hands of companies you can't control.

I hope in a more technical sense the app will be an interesting experiment if remoteStorage is ready for the real world needs of social apps.

I plan to bring a first version online in the middle of May.

Thank you for your support with the images! Its not absolutely crucial for my app but would make it more interesting for visually oriented people.

Cheers, Marco

[Thad Guidry]

Marco,

Another thing you could do in your App is utilize Freebase Suggest to help your users to disambiguate exactly the STUFF they have (storing the mid values themselves somehow) : http://wiki.freebase.com/wiki/Freebase_Suggest 

Demo of it here (type in Sega Dreamcast or Sleeping Bag or whatever) :  http://suggest-examples.freebaseapps.com/example2 

--
-Thad
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/thad_guidry

[Jan-Christoph Borchardt]

Yeah! This is so neat!

Funny you mention the electric drill. My buddies from the German
kokonsum.org movement always bring up the anecdote that the average
use time of a drill is 11 minutes. Total, in the whole lifetime of the
product.

I would love to use that app for sharing with others. At the moment I
have some things listed at http://jancborchardt.net/stuff – let me
know if you need anything. ;)

[Jan-Christoph Borchardt]

Hey shybyte, is there any update with your Shared Stuff app? Any demo
or source code – I would love to help out with it.

Feel free to join us in the IRC channel, #unhosted on freenode (or the
webchat: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=unhosted ). I’m
jancborchardt in there.

[shybyte]

Hey Jan,

The great berlin weather is decreasing my programming motivation a
bit, but I set my self a deadline for posting a link here for monday 28.5.

Thanks for your interest!

Cheers, Marco