Fotki - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Fotki is a digital photo sharing

Photo sharing

Photo sharing is the publishing or transfer of a user's digital photos online, thus enabling the user to share them with others . This function is provided through both websites and applications that facilitate the upload and display of images...

, video sharing and media social network

Social network

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...

website

Website

A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

and web service

Web service

A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...

suite; it is one of the world's largest social networking sites. In many ways, the site appears to be similar to the majority of other popular photo sites which support a number of so-called Web 2.0

Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...

features, such as use of Ajax

Ajax (programming)

Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...

, tagging

Tag (metadata)

In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...

, RSS

RSS (file format)

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...

feeds, social bookmarking

Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them....

, GPS location information and Exif info display.

The service offers unlimited storage space for digital images to Premium (i.e., paid) account holders and also to free account holders from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia. It also offers blogging (similar to LiveJournal

LiveJournal

LiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....

or Blogger

Blogger (service)

Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. Up until May 1, 2010 Blogger allowed users to publish...

), online printing and selling of prints at custom prices, as well as email

Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

and co-branding

Co-branding

Co-branding refers to several different marketing arrangements:Co-branding, also called brand partnership, is when two companies form an alliance to work together, creating marketing synergy...

.

Fotki community

Community

The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...

tools allow tagging photos and videos, detailed profiling

Profiling

Profiling, the extrapolation of information about something, based on known qualities, may refer specifically to:* Profiling practices * Forensic profiling, used in several types of forensic sciences* Offender profiling...

, saving and organizing links (similar to del.icio.us

Del.icio.us

Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, and by the end of 2008, the service claimed more than 5.3 million users and 180 million unique bookmarked URLs...

), as well as photo and member search using folksonomic

Folksonomy

A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content; this practice is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging...

tools.

Fotki is licensing photo-sharing software for many global companies, such as Telecom Italia, Alice.it, Sears, Mark Travel, Vegas.com, Funjet.com etc.

As of January 2011, Fotki claims to have over 1 million 600 thousand registered members from 241 countries and hosts over a billion digital images. It ranks in the 1400s in popularity by Alexa

Alexa Internet

Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...

History

Fotki was founded in 1998 by Dmitri Don (current President) and Katrin Lilleoks (his wife) to store and share digital photos and to communicate with friends and relatives around the world. In 2001, the commercial version was launched. Since 2003, Fotki is a registered trade mark in the USA.

In June, 2007, Fotki.com was recognized by CNET as one of the best Web 2.0 applications.

Etymology

In Slavic languages

Slavic languages

The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...

, like Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

or Polish

Polish language

Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, "fotki" is short for "fotografii" or "fotografie" (fɔtɔˈɡrafɪɛ) ("photos") .

Sharing

The primary purpose of the site is to allow and facilitate the process of sharing digital photos online which includes 4 phases:

Upload - transferring an image file from a local device, such as computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

, camera phone
Camera phone
A camera phone is a mobile phone which is able to capture still photographs . Since early in the 21st century the majority of mobile phones in use are camera phones....

, pocket PC
Pocket PC
A Pocket PC is also known by Microsoft as a 'Windows Mobile Classic device'. It is a hardware specification for a handheld-sized computer, personal digital assistant , that runs the Microsoft 'Windows Mobile Classic' operating system...

etc to Fotki's server. Fotki provides several tools and applications to simplify the process and to accommodate users of multiple platforms. Some upload applications support the transfer of multiple files at a time.

Storage - storing uploaded files on Fotki's servers.

Organization and presentation - ability to organize uploaded files into a structure based on the user's tastes and preferences and present them to viewers. Users have access to various management and customization tools.

Access - making the digital media available online for viewing and download. The company provides a user interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...

for viewing and navigation, search tools and different security options to restrict access to the content if necessary.

Upload Tools

As of January 2011, the following upload tools are available on Fotki:

One at a time: allows uploading one photo at a time through the browser.

Java uploader: opens an embedded Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

application which allows the user to navigate the local folders, select photos and add them to the upload list. Allows uploading multiple files at a time. Supports image preview for some formats. Requires Java installed on the user's computer.

Fotki Easy uploader: supports drag and drop uploading. Requires Java installed on the user's computer.

ActiveX
ActiveX
ActiveX is a framework for defining reusable software components in a programming language-independent way. Software applications can then be composed from one or more of these components in order to provide their functionality....

: similar to Java, recommended for Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...

users.

Fotki Desktop Beta: allows selecting multiple files from local folders and sending them to Fotki using the right-click menu. Requires installation of a plug-in (provided).

Web Publishing Wizard: allows uploading multiple files from a local folder using the Windows "Publish to the Web" function. Requires installation of a plug-in (provided).

Fotki Upload Bookmarklet: creates a bookmark for a JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

function which can be run while viewing any web page. All images contained on that page will be extracted and made ready for upload. Internet Explorer is not supported.

Fetch from the Internet: a browser-based function that allows the user to copy an image from any web page to Fotki by specifying the image's URL
Uniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....

. Supports one image at a time.

FTP: allows using a standalone FTP program for image upload. Available to Premium, Trial and Free Unlimited members only.

E-mail/mobile phone upload: allows upload via e-mail or from a mobile phone. A unique user-specified e-mail address is assigned to the album. Image files can be e-mailed to that address as attachments
E-mail attachment
An email attachment is a computer file sent along with an email message. One or more files can be attached to any email message, and be sent along with it to the recipient. This is typically used as a simple method to share documents and images...

.

Using image management software: supports PicaJet, PictureSync, CompuPic, Pictavision and Spb Imageer for pocket PC.

Storage

Owners of Premium, Trial and Free Unlimited accounts get unlimited storage space. Free accounts have a space limit of 3000 MB plus the option to get an additional 200 MB every month.

Organization

Fotki users can organize their photos and videos into a structure by grouping albums into folders, creating sub-folders, moving albums between folders, moving sub-folders between folders, moving and copying photos/videos between albums. Photos, albums and folders can be rearranged.

Users are also encouraged to add tags (a form of metadata

Metadata

The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

) to their photos so they can be found in search.

Management Tools

When logged in, Fotki users have access to management tools which allow editing, moving or deleting their content, changing properties of the content, changing account settings and restricting access to the content if needed.

Access

By default, all content created in the "Public Home" is available to all viewers. No registration is required to access the public content.

Security options

To restrict access to their content, Fotki users can use several security options, such as passwords for albums and folders, hidden albums, private section, shared folders, protection from right-click copying, restriction to view originals and to order prints.

RSS
RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...

Fotki features XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

-based RSS and Atom feeds

Atom (standard)

The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a...

External linking

External linking (a.k.a Hotlinking

Inline linking

Inline linking is the use of a linked object, often an image, from one site by a web page belonging to a second site...

) allows Fotki users to post photos from their Fotki albums on other websites. This feature is helpful for people who write and post pictures on forums, blog

Blog

A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

s and auctions.

Invitations

Members can invite other people to view an album through a special invitation form.

Customization Options

Layout

Users can customize the look of their Fotki site by using different pre-designed skins or manually selecting colors for each element on their page. The selected skin will automatically apply to all pages in the user's account. Members can choose to hide the folder tree or not to display albums in it, and also to display or hide various information pertaining to their content. A number of pre-designed photo frames (27 as of January, 2011) is available to adorn the photos. Those familiar with HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

can design a completely new look for their photo site using the Co-Branding feature. Premium members have access to more customization options than Free members.

User profile

Members can create their own profile pages which may contain as much information about them as the user cares to provide. Filling out the profile is optional.

Co-Branding and Name Forwarding

This feature (available to Premium members only) allows the user to completely customize their Fotki site, to use a short name (e.g. username.fotki.com) as URL of their site and to even use their own domain name

Domain name

A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....

to access their Fotki site while having their photos stored on Fotki's servers. To achieve a high degree of customization, the knowledge of HTML/CSS

Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...

is very helpful.

EXIF
Exchangeable image file format
Exchangeable image file format is a standard that specifies the formats for images, sound, and ancillary tags used by digital cameras , scanners and other systems handling image and sound files recorded by digital cameras...

info display

If the image has any embedded info in it, it will be extracted and displayed. Public display of EXIF info can be disabled by the account owner.

Geotagging
GeoTagging
Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as a geotagged photograph or video, websites, SMS messages, QR Codes or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata...

Fotki supports Google Maps

Google Maps

Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...

integration for photos with GPS

Global Positioning System

The Global Positioning System is a space-based global navigation satellite system that provides location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites...

Community Features

The site offers both member search and photo search. Members can be searched by name, profile type, location, gender, age, interest, marital status and more. IPTC

IPTC Information Interchange Model

The Information Interchange Model is a file structure and set of metadata attributes that can be applied to text, images and other media types...

keyword searching is supported.

Each Fotki member gets an e-mail account. Fotki e-mail system features a spam

E-mail spam

Email spam, also known as junk email or unsolicited bulk email , is a subset of spam that involves nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by email. Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk. One subset of UBE is UCE...

filter

E-mail filtering

Email filtering is the processing of email to organize it according to specified criteria. Most often this refers to the automatic processing of incoming messages, but the term also applies to the intervention of human intelligence in addition to anti-spam techniques, and to outgoing emails as well...

with 20 levels of sensitivity, address book and the ability to create custom folders to organize messages. Each member has a Guestbook

Guestbook

A guestbook is a paper or electronic means for a visitor to acknowledge their visitation to a site, physical or web-based, and leave their name, postal or electronic address , and a comment or note, if desired...

which can be enabled or disabled. Guestbook messages can be public or private. Each individual photo can be commented. Members can create any number of personal blogs and forums.

Fotki runs photo contests on a regular basis. Participation is open to all registered members. Usually, first 3 winners receive a one-year Premium membership, but sometimes there may be other prizes involved if the contest is sponsored by a third party. Effective May 11, 2007, Fotki runs a weekly "My Photo Of The Week" contest.

Printing

Fotki.com offers printing services which include (as of April, 2010) digital photo prints, postcards, photo mugs, t-shirts, magnets, mouse-pads and photo frames at competitive prices.

Professional Services

Professional photographers can sell their photos at their own price, higher than the printing cost imposed by Fotki. The difference in price minus 15% commission fee goes to the photographer. Earned money is remitted by PayPal

PayPal

PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....

, check or bank transfer. Photographers who offer their photos for sale can upload small size, low-res or watermarked images to avoid theft. When such photo is requested, the photographer has the option to securely upload the full size image for printing.

Video sharing

Fotki offers a unique video hosting service, which allows uploading and storing videos and photos together in one album.
They're charging per GB of storage and per GB of traffic. To activate this service, members must deposit to their balance. Video streaming is ads free for everybody.

Fotki members can also store links to videos hosted by other websites. Video collections are displayed as a list of embedded previews which will enlarge when clicked on. To be accepted, the video has to be stored on Google Video

Google Video

Google Videos is a video search engine, and formerly a free video sharing website, from Google Inc. Before removing user-uploaded content, the service allowed selected videos to be remotely embedded on other websites and provided the necessary HTML code alongside the media, similar to YouTube...

, YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

, Metacafe

Metacafe

Metacafe is a web site that specializes in short-form video entertainment in the categories of movies, video games, sports, music and TV.The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, London and Tel Aviv...

, Vsocial, MySpace

MySpace

Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

, Vimeo

Vimeo

Vimeo is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. It was founded by Zach Klein and Jake Lodwick in November 2004...

, or Dailymotion

Dailymotion

Dailymotion is a video sharing service website, headquartered in the 18th arrondissement, Paris, France. According to Comscore, Dailymotion is the second largest video site in the world after YouTube....

Privacy And Security

Each account has a private and public area. Private areas are visible only to the account owner. Users can set viewing options to allow certain categories of people to view their albums (everybody, Fotki members only, Fotki friends only, or just the owner). Albums can be hidden or password protected or both.

Adult content can be marked with a "viewers discretion advised" flag. Such content requires age confirmation to be viewed. The site's Terms Of Service policy prohibits public display of adult content. Users can report photos in question using a complaint form. Copyright

Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

infringement

Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...

is also prohibited.

Users can view IPs

IP address

An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...

of people who write comments and guestbook messages on their site. Login names of visitors to a member's personal site are logged and stored in the member's "Guests" section. These options can be turned off.

All sensitive, personal and financial information is transmitted using SSL

Transport Layer Security

Transport Layer Security and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer , are cryptographic protocols that provide communication security over the Internet...

encryption (https). Personal information including email is not available to the public.

Customer Support

The Fotki Customer Service can be contacted through an online form or by email.

Free account

Has advertising, 3000 MB storage space limit and 50 MB e-mail space limit. Free account members can also request additional 200Mb of storage each 30 days.

Premium account

No ads are displayed when browsing other Fotki sites, no ads are displayed when other people browse a Premium account.
Unlimited photo storage space.
Co-branding.
Ability to sell photos at custom prices.
FTP upload.
Affiliate Program.
Watermarking.

Trial account

Trial Premium Account. New Fotki members automatically get a 30-days free Trial Premium membership. There is no space limit during the Trial period. A Trial account is automatically downgraded to Free after 4 weeks unless the user upgrades to Premium by making a payment. Users who choose to let the account revert to Free are allowed to keep all the photos uploaded during the Trial period even if the limit has been exceeded.

Fotki also offers unlimited storage space to free account holders from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia.

Developers API

Fotki offers a Flickr compatible API, allowing developers to easily and seamlessly integrate Fotki to existing Flickr applications.

Localization

As of January 2011, the site is partially translated to Russian, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese Simplified, Japanese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, Brazilian Portuguese, Estonian, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Ukrainian and Hebrew. With the help from volunteers, Fotki continues to translate its pages and improve the existing translation. Volunteers are rewarded with Premium memberships for contributing to the project.

Criticism

Fotki has been mostly criticized for not providing enough storage space to its Free members, problems with hotlinking, no month-to-month membership, and traffic limit.
In addition, Fotki show ads on albums of paid Premium members.

Censorship and Artistic Nudity

In May 2006, a photo of a nearly-nude female was removed from a Fotki contest by the moderators. This initiated a prolonged discussion on "artistic nudity". The author of the disqualified entry criticized Fotki for censorship and questioned its policy on nudity. After exchanging arguments, the Fotki side agreed to review the site's policy in favor of artistic photography while the decision to prohibit adult content in public sections of the site was upheld. As a result, the Fotki administration decided to run a separate, non-public photo contest once a month in which nudity is allowed.

Contest Rules

In October 2006, several Fotki members posted messages in the Fotki blog protesting against the then-current contest rules which apparently allowed the earlier entrants to receive more exposure and thus get more votes. Other major issues brought up by the users included maintaining anonymity of entries while voting is in progress, allowing non-paying members to participate, working out a better formula for calculating the scores, allowing image editing and enhancement. A heated discussion that involved many Fotki members quickly gave rise to a vigorous campaign to make the administration change the contest rules. As a result, a new contest system was introduced and new rules developed.

Recognition

On Internet review sites, Fotki is consistently named the best photo site:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13546_109-9729705-29.html

http://www.starreviews.com/fotki.aspx

http://www.starreviews.com/photo-sharing-reviews.aspx

And one of the best among photo sites (and the best among independent sites)

http://photo-sharing-services-review.toptenreviews.com/fotki-review.html

http://photo-sharing-services-review.toptenreviews.com/

http://www.pcmag.com/compare_products/0,1812,,00.asp?sid=26681&a=233788,240714,240639,239853,234378,229326,229250

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.