It is time to update the look of this blog a little bit and make it possible to use more of the new features in the latest version of WordPress. So please don’t get alarmed if you see a strange look on this page. I am just trying out some new things, and the best way to really get a feel for it is to test it on the real stuff.

-Svein

I am using Windows Live Writer to publish this article to my Word Press powered blog. But neither Windows Live Writer, neither Word Press has any mechanism to add a copyright (or Creative Commons), the name of the photographer and a caption (the description) to each picture.

I would like to see the possibility to add this for each picture I use in my article. For me, this is a no brainer. The photographer deserves credit just as much as the article writer. So why is it not there?

The group of websites that actually uses some form of this best are the online newspapers. I guess that stems from the photographers there knowing a lot more about their rights. But we really need this on even small blogs today.

A very good source for illustrations for a blog today are the photosharing sites like Flickr. On Flickr, you can do a search only among the Creative Commons pictures to find something that you can use. Bust most of the CC marked pictures require that you give the photographer due credit and maybe also link back to both her/him and to the correct CC webpage. Today, there is no way to do this easily and I am trying to get some attention to this.

One way that has been suggested is to use the watermark feature in some editors to add the text inside the picture itself. But this means altering the picture and a lot of photographers do not want you to do that. Also, take a look at my picture above and think about placing the caption over the picture. First of all, it would look extremely odd. Second, it would hardly be readable. Sure, I could set the text color to white. But next picture might be a high key picture that requires me to set it to black.. No, forget about putting anything inside the picture. And by the way – why use a workaround that is clearly not meant for this? What we need is a real solution.

The first way to handle it would be to ask the creators of different WYSIWYG editors and off-line editors to add this functionality. It should not be too difficult. The second step would be to get it into the core of the different CMS’es like WordPress and Joomla. That is where it really belongs.

I want to add one more thing to the list. Microsoft has made available a nice plugin or addition to Windows XP. It is called Photo Info and it allows you to add the required text to the IPTC fields of pictures. Most of the higher end photo editing programs can do the same, and as I do not like doing the same thing twice, I would love to see Windows Live Writer and WordPress being able to load the IPTC info into the correct fields for each picture when I publish them on my blog. I consider this to be the ultimate and most elegant solution, but for now I will settle for one that just let me enter and display the needed info in a nice manner.

There are several ways to display it, and here the template designers might come in with some styling. The name and copyright could be added under the picture as I have done. But I have also seen it displayed up along the right side of the picture. The caption could either be under or over. For my own blog, I would prefer something more or less the way I made the mockup in this article. I am not totally sure about the 5% grey behind the caption, but I need to make sure it is easy to separate it from the article itself.

How would you like to display photo credits and captions? Do you do it today? As far as I know, copyright laws in most countries requires us to put a credit for pictures we use. Why has this been omitted in most CMS systems?

UPDATE: I have now posted an idea on WordPress.org to try to gather support for this. Add your vote on the idea! I have also put the idea into a forum for Windows Live Writer and someone replied that he could probably make something like this. Sounds like Windows Live Writer might be the first one to get something usable. This will of course be good news for more than WordPress users. You can add your support for it here.

UPDATE2: I tried to make an example of what it could look like in Windows Live Writer. Take a look at it here.

-Svein

Some time ago, I tested Windows Live Writer and could not even get it to run properly. Yesterday, I upgraded my MSN Messenger and had the opportunity to install Live Writer at the same time. So I thought "Why not try it again"? Maybe this time it will work.

Well, the installation was easy enough and it started fine. After giving it the log-in to my first blog, Live Writer discovered that it was a WordPress blog and it was ready to go.

Writing feels like writing in a word processor. I like this feeling and I also like being able to save drafts on my laptop. Now I can work on posts even if I am on an airplane with no connection to the internet. Of course, I could do this before by just using any wordprocessor, but I like this feeling of having a dedicated tool for the job. I hope it is easy to switch between different blogs so I can manage all of them from the same interface.

I have installed WYSIWYG editors on all my blogs. I do not like using codes when I write. I feel it interrupts the natural flow of writing. If Live Writer works, I can keep the WYSIWYG plug-in out of WordPress. One less thing to think about to update and install. Now I just wish there was a way to use Live Writer as a Live Comment System…

Do you know of any system for managing comments where you do not have to log in on your website?

-Svein

I have not been paying too much attention to my logs lately, but reading an article online on web security made me take a look. And I discovered som incoming links that were very unfamiliar. So I decided to take a look and it turned out to be a hotlinked picture from an article about RSS Owl (a splashscreen that I had permission to use).

My first thought was to contact the author of the site. But this is an Arabic site and I do neither speak the language nor write it. Then I remembered an article I read at Eirikso.com about this and thought I would try something similar just to see if it was detected.

I used a picture of George W. Bush and added a text about supporting him and USA. Then replaced the image. If the picture is still up, you can view it here.

So I will try to make an effort checking logs a little more often. Not that stealing bandwith this way means a lot, but I have to admit that the kid inside me got a little kick out of placing something like this on an Arabic website…

Update: Found another one linking to another picture. This one had not even bothered to use the size tags on the picture, so I used the same picture as in the former one, totally breaking the layout of the site. You can view the result here if it is still up.

-Svein

To allow a wider audience to read this site, the main language here will be English. And I am hoping to be able to add some translation to the site eventually. 

For those that is interested in the technical aspects of this website:

I am using a blogsystem called WordPress with a few extra plug-ins. The theme is called Connections, but it has been changed quite a bit. As I get more familiar with the system, I will try to add things to make it work better. 

-Svein