website that generates thumbnails of websites

Discussion in 'Reviews' started by liquidboy, Jul 19, 2006.

  1. #1
    Hey,

    Im playing around with an idea for a new website..

    Its a website where people enter there favourite websites and thumbnails of the website get generated.

    Im thinking of extending it to let people rank and comment on these websites etc etc..

    What do people think of the idea?

    ps. heres the proof of concept website...

    Rip my page bitch!
     
    liquidboy, Jul 19, 2006 IP
  2. ThomasB

    ThomasB Peon

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    #2
    takes a while to load, ah, cool simple idea, dont like the black, get some more typography goin in there.
     
    ThomasB, Jul 19, 2006 IP
  3. nevetS

    nevetS Evolving Dragon

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    #3
    You will get a ton of usage by people building thumbnails for directories if the site gets to be well known. It may not be worth it because of the cpu usage + the bandwidth allocation - especially if it's just one person or a bot hitting you with thousands of requests.

    I've thought about doing the same kind of thing and at least with my ideas for implementation I just couldn't justify the potential problems with administration against the time to develop and the server utilization. Of course if you have a group of machines and you could queue up the webshots, that would help, but you still have the problem with people sending your browser to not-so-friendly sites and having to re-deploy netscape or firefox regularly. All problems you can get around given time and a little bit of money, but still a hard project to justify. Cool idea though - I think the design is pretty cool. I agree with Thomas - some different fonts for the logo will probably do you some good. Is it functional? I'm not getting any thumbs. And I never even thought about implementing it on a windows box. I would think that could get very resource intensive.
     
    nevetS, Jul 19, 2006 IP
  4. liquidboy

    liquidboy Peon

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    #4
    thanks guys ... great comments... its just a little project that im working out what to do with..

    Im gonna change the font of the logo and get rid of the black (maybe change all blacks to rich orange), ill see how it looks after the changes


    It should work, it just takes a little while for the thumbs to generate (about 30 seconds if the queue isnt large)


    The actual Process is :

    4 seconds - request comes in from the web and gets written into an access
    database

    1 second - image is taken from the que of links

    10 seconds - page is loaded into image capture software and picture is taken

    5 seconds - high res image is converted into 10 other formats (including a thumbnail)

    5 seconds - image is ftped to the web server and the access database is updated with completed work
     
    liquidboy, Jul 19, 2006 IP
  5. nevetS

    nevetS Evolving Dragon

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    #5
    You should check for an existing image before trying to re-create one. You'll probably get a ton of requests for google and yahoo when people want to see how it works. I've tried waiting for yahoo, but it never comes back.
     
    nevetS, Jul 19, 2006 IP
  6. liquidboy

    liquidboy Peon

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    #6
    OOOOPS soorry it wasnt working for firefox (had a style in that was stuffing up in firefox, im an ie person by trade).. Fixed now

    BETA ... gotta luv that word!

    Ill let people put the links in regardless of if it exists or not, ill work out later the business rules around duplicate sites.. Im have no idea what to do with this site, probably bench it !
     
    liquidboy, Jul 19, 2006 IP
  7. liquidboy

    liquidboy Peon

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    #7
    Hi people...

    made some changes... is there too much red??(click on an image to see what i mean)


    Web Bitch

    thanks
     
    liquidboy, Jul 20, 2006 IP
  8. Sheetal Dadhwal

    Sheetal Dadhwal Peon

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    #8
    i liked your baisc idea and NO i did not think that there was too much red used
     
    Sheetal Dadhwal, Jul 21, 2006 IP
  9. liquidboy

    liquidboy Peon

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    #9
    Hey guys what do you think of the 2 new features ive added..

    1) a yahoo yui slider that lets the user minimise the size of thumbs
    2) a digg scrapper that will scrape all the latest technology articles and present them as thumbs to the user (still work under progress but the idea is there)...

    Rip that page Bitch
     
    liquidboy, Jul 21, 2006 IP
  10. websitesbuilt

    websitesbuilt Peon

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    #10
    I love the idea, I mean I really like it. A directory based off that or a service for screen captures could do very well. The way its used now I don't have a use for it, but something like I mentioned above I think might do very well.

    If I could have a site make screen captures for me, and use it a directory, I would make countless submissions....
     
    websitesbuilt, Jul 22, 2006 IP
  11. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #11
    I feel so old - I have real problems visiting a page with Bitch all over it. I guess if youngies are your target market then you can afford to lose people like me.

    should read
    I'm looking for a service that will let me take shots of internal pages. I want to make the call for the pages once a month and cache them locally - giving a link back to you on every page where the image is used. If that sounds feasible to you please let me know.
     
    sarahk, Jul 22, 2006 IP
  12. liquidboy

    liquidboy Peon

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    #12
    yeah im looking at making a couple of sites based on "auto website image capturing". This is just one of them..

    Im currently creating another one which won't have bitch in the name :) . Its going to be a free "private galleries" setup where you can generate all your own personal webpages as much as you want. Its going to be exposed as a soap webservice and you have the option of downloading the pics as a zipped up file.

    SarahK thats probably the service you can use! And again its totally free.

    That will be up in a couple of days, pm me your name and ill update people when its available!
     
    liquidboy, Jul 22, 2006 IP
  13. Rod

    Rod Well-Known Member

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    #13
    Good work liquidboy. I'll be interested in the non-bitch site. Slap the bitch is a metaphor with nasty connotations.
     
    Rod, Jul 22, 2006 IP
  14. liquidboy

    liquidboy Peon

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    #14
    Sorry guys for the delay, its takena while to add the private galleries section..

    It will be up tomorrow and to those that pm'ed me ill begin setting your accounts tomorrow.

    Anyone else just pm me and ill message you too.

    Thanks again for your feedbacks
     
    liquidboy, Jul 25, 2006 IP
  15. Daniel Malone

    Daniel Malone Peon

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    #15
    Most people these days use Alexa for directory website thumbnails.
     
    Daniel Malone, Jul 25, 2006 IP
  16. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #16
    Alexa doesn't do internal pages and you can't request a refresh whenever you want.

    There's room for a competitor to step in here.
     
    sarahk, Jul 25, 2006 IP
  17. BFTUK

    BFTUK Banned

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    #17
    Nice idea, although it does'nt appear to work for me!
     
    BFTUK, Jul 25, 2006 IP
  18. liquidboy

    liquidboy Peon

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    #18
    unfortunately bftuk it takes around 10-30 seconds to generate and transfer the thumb...

    It does work but as mentioned above the image takes time to render then the page needs to reload (every minute) to show the new thumb..

    If you leave the screen on then eventually the page renders with the new thumbs

    A private gallery (free for DP users) will allow you to insert multiple urls at once and it will render over time all the urls.. The gallery also has zipp tools to allow you to download the thumbs (thanks sarahk for the great idea)
     
    liquidboy, Jul 25, 2006 IP
  19. JosefV

    JosefV Peon

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    #19
    I was looking for that service before, great idea.
     
    JosefV, Jul 26, 2006 IP
  20. InfoBlueBook

    InfoBlueBook Guest

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    #20
    Very nice job! Can you link the images to open in a new window?
     
    InfoBlueBook, Jul 26, 2006 IP