Postcrossing Blog

That's great! Thank you so much!

Are you still pulling photos from flikr or is that complete? For the postcards that I had put on flickr I put the card ID# in the photo tag. They do not appear here on postcrossing so I am guessing that the images that were pulled had the ID# in the title.

I like the idea. It is cool to be able to see the postcards attached to the entry. However, I do have some comments that really make me think that while a good idea, it may need to be modified.

1) this features makes the "received" page load very slowly especially for people like me who have sent many postcards
2) the algorithm did not do a great job of loading postcards from the Flickr group
3) storing postcards locally on your servers does take up a lot of space and can make everything go slower; why not just link to flickr (for e.g., do nightly runs that create links in the same manner you uploaded the photos)?
4) While this feature is cool, I spent a lot of time tagging those postcards on Flickr for a reason .. so the world could see them. I also put in copyrights, etc. You did not load the description data, just the image.
5) So, based on number 4, now I am going to have to load to two places because I am not going to give up loading my postcards on Flickr. Flickr is an image site; this is not. It is much easier to manage my cards there.
6) I map all my cards to their location and can look at them in that manner on Flickr. I lose this ability on postcrossing unless you plan to add that feature later.

Like I said earlier, I think the feature is cool but I wonder if a better way is to link to Flickr as opposed to load postcards locally.

I think this is a very neat feature and I'm very excited about it - however - I also think the flickr group should remain open for uploads.

Flickr is a great community on its own and can add things that postcrossing may not be able to do on its own (exposure to the non-postcrossers, for example).

I don't understand the point of this. I have a Flickr account and I upload my postcards there but I don't have any interest to share them. If someone is interested in my cards, he/she can go to my Flickr and see the photos there.

Great idea. Now i have to scan all my postcards and put them on :)

I agree with some of the previous comments. And I also would like to see postcrossing as "cheap" as possible, I'm worried that someday these new features will cost too much or slow down the site too much.

One thing: on the blog you say "to upload your photo go to your sent cards and click on the image there" but the image is (naturally) on the Received cards -page.

Thanks, I think I will try this feature one day :)

I just have to say
"I love this new thing with the postcards shown here at the postcrossing site"!!

For me this works perfect, thanks!!

Oh my...
to have this option on postcrossing.com itself is really great. I once had started to scan my postcards (I probably have them still on my disk somewhere, about 70 cards), but somehow I stopped... an inbetween, well, this is gonna be a lot of work...

Storing images on Postcrossing is good, but many of us still want to share our photos on Flickr, and have paid money to do this. Now you're forcing us to duplicate our uploads.

I must say it was an unpleasant surprise to find out you'd stopped any further uploads to the Flickr group. Are there any more surprises on the way? E.g. are you going to eventually only allow postcard uploads to people who pay you money?

1. Please give us the option to enter an image URL instead of uploading an image, so that if we have the postcard on Flickr already (or indeed ANY web site), you can link to it. This will save you bandwidth and money.

2. Consider an add-in to Flickr (like there already is with Blogger and Picnic) to send an image on Flickr to postcrossing.

Waw its JUST SUPER!!!!! Thank you so so much!!

I don't think I like this new feature. Also, there are several postcards on my postcard wall that I did not send.

Thanks Paulo for all the hardwork. It is really cool to see you the cards I have sent out.

Neat feature, though those with slow Internet connections might find it quite frustrating. Perhaps an option to "turn off" images?

Also, I have one image that does not belong on my wall, and I don't see a way to delete it.

I can hardly express my enthusiasm for this incredible new upgrade to the website. It is such a pleasure to see smart, useful, simple innovation put into action. I feel that as people get used to the change, they will be thrilled to see a person's postcards just by visiting their profile - no new browser tabs needed. I can't wait to explore this feature and see it put into use! Postcrossing, Paulo, and everyone else who works so hard to bring us this great free service, thank you so much for doing what you do! I'm thrilled!

Great idea! I liked it a lot!
And I'll study the best way to help Postcrossing like a supporter ;)
Hugs, Karina

I like the ideal, but mine were not automatically transfered & just tried to upload 1 postcard & couldn't because the size was to big and I am not gonna sit here all day messing with it. I have a link to my received cards anyways & will stick with that for now.

I think it's great. I've being keeping a Excel chart of all sending and receiving including a hyperlink to somewhere in my disk of the pictures. Now PC is doing it for me.

It looks like a great idea, I can´t wait to try it.

QUOTE: "Also, I have one image that does not belong on my wall, and I don't see a way to delete it."

Go to the page of the postcard (the link on the PostcardID in your received postcards), and below the image you can see a "delete this postcard" link/button.

And this is a nice feature, but it may bring too much more costs to postcrossing that it can be too expensive to maintain. Lets hope not.

Good work LESIanos (and the other developers).

Like many of the comments above and on the Flickr Discussion board, I'm none too happy about this new development. I have the account on Flckr because of Postcrossing. I have several other postcard groups on the strength of this.

I can send a link to my Flickr albums to anyone I choose - with the Wall, I cannot do this; you have to be a Postcrossing member to see each other's postcards which is rather restrictive.

I agree with Neilius - it would be cheaper to inegrate with Flickr rather than set up in opposition. I'm not going to load my scans up twice.

By the way, did Postcrossing ask any of the Flickr account holder's for permission to "lift" their images to use on another website - as you certainly didn't ask for mine.

I like seeing the wall, but was then disappointed to discover that the flickr group for postcrossing would no longer be available for upload; I had photos that had the an ID number wrong and didn't make your upload; I do not keep these old cards on my computer, once I upload them on flickr; I agree that you should integrate and refresh with flickr; some people may not use flickr and this may help them upload, but for those of us who use flickr for our postcards (even joined flickr because of postcards, though now I don't use it just for that) it is a mess to go back and fix things like this; easier to upload once .Although I admit that a lot of the description I used included links to postcrossing and the sender, which your wall now makes happen ok without.

Still, there are people who are not now in postcrossing who may click on the postcrossing link for the cards I add to my flickr description and then get involved or learn about postcrossing.

I don't know all the tech involved,so there may be a reason to not link and refresh, but it seems to me that would be wise.

like I said, I love this feature, but I agree with whoever suggested that you allow us to link images... it's a great idea and, as mentioned before, saves your bandwidth, plus people can still have the photos on their other photo sites if they want.

still... I really love this feature. it looks so nice and works really well (at least with Firefox)! I hope people don't rebel too much because I want to see some of my sent cards up!

Woohooh, I just found out about this new feature and I LOVE IT!!!
Great job! Thank you so much.
I agree though that I also wish that the postcrossing group on Flickr should stay open for uploads. It was so nice to see all the new cards uploaded and now I can only see from user to user on the profiles. Please, please, open the flickr group for uploads again. +++
Also I noticed that the main side now is much more slow but I can live with that. ;-)

Two postcards I never sent are on my Postcards Sent Postcard Wall. For one postcard, the user has not been active for 5 months. How do I get these cards deleted?

A pity that the postcrossinggroup on flickr is closed now. I hope it will open up again for uploads. Also on flickr are more possibilities with your uploads. Nice to add the uploadfunction to postcrossing, but a lot of work to maintain both sites. we shall see in the future how this works out... Anyway, a nice idea and addition to this site, thanks Paulo!

Thanks Paulo I love the new feature! It's pretty cool to look back, especially at the cards I sent. Really, really love this new idea! Postcrossing just keeps getting better and better :):)

Thanks for the addition. I like the postcard wall on our profile, but am sad about the flickr postcrossing group being discontinued. We put a lot of work into putting things there, formatting the way the mods wanted them, and so on. I will continue to upload my postcards to my flickr, despite not having a group. One of the fun things was being able to see what everyone had uploaded into the group without viewing their individual pages. You got a chance to see so many cards that you couldn't with how postcard wall is set up now.

One thought, flickr has very easy-to-use software for uploading to their site. Will postcrossing have such software? Or will it be a cumbersome process? I think it would be very nice to have a "refresh" or "get from flickr" button in our accounts, so we could simply use this algorithm again to find any new cards we upload. Especially, since you all don't want to have to run the algorithm yourself for each person that requests it.

I think Neilius has some good ideas with the ability to link to flickr (or other photo sites) and an add-in here or there to let us connect our flickr pics to postcrossing. Great idea, honestly. But it could use some more features to make it very easy to use.

Postcrossing is worth a thousand words! :)
For me it's better to see the cards in the site and relate them to the sender/receiver than having them in a bunch in the flikr album - that I never have the time to see.
Continue the good work! :)

Wow, that's fantastic! I'm just arranging my own site with received cards, but I think to put EVERYTHING here, so I can use the link. Hope to see my hometown card somewhere here... Ciao!

I love the postcard wall. Thank you.

Well, I also just have one thing to say about this new feature: I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT !!!
Thank you Paulo and everyone who worked so hard for months to make this possible :)

As many before already mentioned: it is a neat idea, but...

- if it slows down the site it is bad as it might discourage people from "exotic low-bandwidth countries" to join
- if this development ends up in postcrossing not being for free anymore it is bad for the same reason
- some people (for whatever reason) might not like it to see a postcard they have sent connected to their profile
- it is (unlike Flickr) restricted to the postcrossing community
- you might as well have asked people before copying images from Flickr to the wall

Sorry for all those negatives. I really love postcrossing and I appreciate very much all the work that has been put into it. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered adding my comment now, would I?

+ A few comments proposed to have a link to the cards on Flickr (or any other webpage) instead of having the cards on postcrossing servers. In my opinion this is a good idea.
+ Consequently: please leave the Flickr group open for uploads - If you'd like to have it for other purposes you could always create a new group, couldn't you?
+ Consider the fact that this allows a direct connection between sender, recipient and card. I am not a neurotic (at least I hope I'm not) but I wouldn't like some kind of "who-sent-which-card-to-whom"-social control

Thank you.

... one thing that I forgot. I know this might sound a bit crazy to ask as we all prefer to do with our things what we think fit, but: Wouldn't it be a good idea to test new features by setting up a poll beforehand? I don't want to set up some kind of grassroot revolution here, but it is always interesting what others think, isn't it?...

Nice! It will be handy to glance through and see if a user has already got a certain card so I don't send the same one. Perhaps a second Flickr group could be created so we can upload new pictures and share them as before?

I just noticed that the sorting feature does not work with the images. I wanted to sort on my sent postcards .... basically to see all the ones that have images together at the top. It did not sort that way. Not sure how it is sorting.

There isn't a delete link. I am using both Firefox and Safari on a Mac with OS X.

i LOVE this new feature.

for all the people that are complaining about the loss of the flikr group, why dont you open a new group for cards received and invite other people??? put a link on your official profile or something.

Are you looking at the right page? You need to be on the link for the "exchange" which looks something like - http://www.postcrossing.com/postcards/US-261455 and you get to it by clicking on the US-261455 link as opposed to the picture.

Yes. I am on the correct page. There is no delete option.

Hey PostMuse, I do get the link but I am not on a Mac .. am using Firefox on a PC.

Hi Postmuse. For now, you can only delete the cards that you have received. For a card that you have sent (uploaded by another user) you should contact that user and ask him/her to remove it.

We're aware there is an issue there, and Paulo is trying to look at solutions for it.

I also agree that the Flickr group should remain open for accepting new postcards. However, this is an absolutely wonderful addition to Postcrossing

I like it!
Did I understand well that I can not upload any sent cards?

What I am missing is the opportunity to comment on an image. I have seen a couple of postcards on other people's walls that I would really like to comment!

Thank meiadeleite for the response. I will watch for updates.

Also... allowing "graffiti" on other members' walls would be fun :-) With the option for folk to delete, or even prohibit, such a feature, of course.

I absolutely LOVE this new feature for the positive reasons already mentioned. This is great for someone like me who does not use Flickr. But after reading all the comments of people who would like PC to remain "Flickr-friendly", I completely agree with them as well.

I think that PC should allow each member to choose which way they wish to show off their postcards.

I LOVE this new feature! It's perfect!
Thanks to all who worked on this!
YOU ARE THE BEST!

ok. so. after a day or so, I do find that I think I'm going to like the postcard wall. It might make more actual postcrossers post their photos to the site.

But the way I see it: there's no cost involved to postcrossing.com to keep the flickr group open for uploads - sure moderating cards that don't belong might take a bit of time (= money) - but I'm sure you could find volunteers to help (I'm sure some of us spend a lot of time on flickr... not that I'm one of them...nope...not me...) but I digress.

Postcard wall = cool.

Blocking new uploads on Flickr because of postcard wall = not so cool.

Thank you everyone for all the comments!

I am listening carefully to all of you and although it's impossible to reply to every single person, I am taking all the feedback and all the requests into account to make decisions for the project, including the future of the Flickr group. More on this subject and the planned features soon.

I'd like to see the images of the postcards displayed on the postcard map, so when you click on the flag, an image (if there is one) of the postcard appears.

Lake, while a good idea, that really is only useful if you have only a few sent and received. When it gets past a certain point, there is no way to individuate the lines.

Not the lines, I mean the flags, when you click on them. You can zoom into an area, and then click on the flags to see who you sent and received postcards from. There is the zoom in + and out - on My Map. After you click on the flag to see the persons username and sent/received and icon. But adding the image of the received or sent postcard to that info would be nice, so you can see the area of the country your postcard went to or came from.

I've got mixed feelings about the wall. It's good that it's likely to encourage more postcrossers to upload their pictures onto the site and it's nice, sometimes, to be able to look at the pictures an individual has sent/received.

Most of the time though, I'm much more interested in looking at the cards en masse, and I miss being able to browse through the new additions in the Flickr group and so would very much appreciate it being reopened. Flickr is, of course, purpose built for photo sharing and it would seem silly for postcrossing to try to replicate the Flickr functionality. Working with Flickr and supporting links to / imports from there (and, if possible, other sites) seems the better solution.

Some specific suggestions would be:

* Supporting proper descriptions for cards - the current solution only really allows for alternative titles. You can't add background information about the card.

* Supporting comments and favourites.

* Having a global view, where you could see all the cards logged in the past day/days.

* Making the cards visible to people who aren't signed in. I suspect quite a few people have discovered postcrossing because of the flickr group and it would be a shame if the pictures were only available to members now.

* Adding an extra column to the "Sent" page means that each row now takes up two lines, which looks a bit messy and means that there's only half the information on each page that there used to be. Since, on my screen at least, the page only uses around two thirds of the available space, would it be possible to widen the usable part of the page, so that all the information can be fitted on one line?

* It would be good if there were sort options on the walls, so that you could choose to view the cards sorted by country. This would allow you to check what cards someone had received from your country and reduce the chance that they will get duplicates.

* Supporting a choice of methods of making pictures available in Postcrossing. The ideal method, for me, would be a regular update from Flickr, with the next best being to provide a link to the card in Flickr. These would, ideally, be alternatives to loading the card directly into Postcrossing.

I think the Wall is pretty impressive. It's quite nice to be able to peek at cards others have received AND be able to associate those images with a profile--and maybe even avoid sending a duplicate. Congratulations to Paulo for continuing to improve one of the most amazing sites on the internet!

However, I think closing the flickr pool is short-sighted. There are many groups (other than the Postcrossing Pool) that Postcrossers also support. http://www.flickr.com/groups/postcrossing/discuss/72157604124432194/ is a pretty good indication of how involved the Postcrossing Pool is with the larger flickr community.
I suspect that these other communities will suffer if Postcrossers aren't adding postcards to flickr. It is a (free!) source of networking and publicity for Postcrossing, as well.

There are features flickr adds that Postcrossing can't (and shouldn't) try to match. The Wall now builds a stronger link between sender, recipient and postcard that flickr couldn't hope to approach....though I do wish there was a way to sort the images on the Walls by the postcard's country of origin.

Yes, I realize that there is no reason we can't continue to host our own images on flickr without the Postcrossing Pool, but wouldn't keeping the flickr pool open with regularly scheduled runs of Postcrossing's algorithm be a great compromise? Best of both worlds, really

I'm always surprised at the changes which come from Paulo's brain to further improve the postcrossingsite. A few days ago I was wondering about the lack of news and suddenly a big change like this occurs. I really like it although I can understand to those who already use a Flickr account and are suddenly cut off. I never scanned my cards before and now I do. I'm also looking at cards of other users which makes me more eager to be able to send even more cards.
Great work Paulo! I'm looking forward to the next change!

First of all, thank you :) It's a great idea and it's lovely to see pictures of the physical postcards linked to details of their journey.

I have to agree with some of the previous comments, though: it might be better to keep Flickr active and save the site some bandwidth. Flickr also gives the option to browse and search all the postcards randomly while on this site and the wall (if I'm right) you would have to view the photos via the user? It might be nice to have an option to view random images through a link from the main site (sorry if this already exists and I didn't notice!).

Thanks again for the application, it is really fab and it definitely encourages me to upload more than I had done previously with Flickr :)

I don't post on here very often so I'd just like to say that postcrossing is fab and it's great that so many people share a love for pretty pictures, snail mail and learning more about other countries!! :)

Wow! Awesome feature! Can't wait to continue my scanning :) I haven't uploaded anything on Flickr in ages as I prefer using Picasa. But I'll scan and upload here too, in time ;)

The new feature is really great! One remark: the description of the postcards in blue is a bit difficult to read. Wouldn't it be possible to make it black? Great job, anyway!

Just wanted to echo some sentiments of others, particularly misoklau--

1) I like sharing my postcards on flickr only and probably will never use the postcrossing wall because it's just another place to upload to.

2) I like being able to tag my cards and share then with flickr postcard groups (Postcards From ___, etc) and like yvi-1's idea of geotagging... all features which I don't think will be implemented in Postcrossing's wall features, and if they are, I still won't use the wall because again, just another place to upload, tag, geotag... that's too much work for me.

3) Costs. I want to donate but it's not in my budget now, and if Postcrossing has to one day go to a paid account system (or crashes altogether) because of rising costs... that's not cool. I like that Postcrossing is simple, free, and doesn't have all that fancipants junk (like a wall) that other websites have.

4) Slowing the site down. I think this is another great reason AGAINST the wall... I like Postcrossing because it's fast, has a clean interface, not a lot of junk to slow the site down... the wall kind of kills that appeal a little. (misoklau said, "if it slows down the site it is bad as it might discourage people from "exotic low-bandwidth countries" to join" and I think this is a really REALLY good point)

5) About 3 and 4, how about only making the wall available to people who pay even a certian amount? Then people who WANT the feature can help support its implementation... and those who don't want it don't get overburdened or taxed for it.

6) misoklau said, "some people (for whatever reason) might not like it to see a postcard they have sent connected to their profile" -- I have had senders tell me this in messages, not to mention their Postcrossing name when I post on flickr... this makes people upset. Some don't want their cards linked. I'm sure you'll get LOTS of feedback from them in the future...

7) The wall here will be restricted to people in Postcrossing only, and I like Flickr because it is NOT. Most of the people I want to share my cards with are NOT On postcrossing, and it's stupid to encourage them to get an account and not use Postcrossing if all they want to do is see my cards.

8) Agree with the sentiment about being able to LINK TO pictures on flickr rather than drive up Postcrossing costs for server space... Plus it would keep people from having to post images in 2 places if they want them on flickr.

Ok, that's about all for my comments right now... Good work Paulo... Hopefully with everyone's comments we can come up with something that makes people a little happier. :)

Happy Postcrossing! Christina // jitterbug

I love the new wall and it is GREAT. Thanks Paulo. It is easier for me to show my postcards then at Flickr. And at Flickr is the border of 200 photos or cards to have it for free. MANY THANKS again!

One reason why I'm especially fond of this new feature is that, as being from one of the most-sent-countries, I can see what others have received from here already. I'd hate to send a douplicate. Of course I wouldn't like it if Postcrossing started costing more or being slower, of course not as I'm used to this super way of things (fast & free) :D I don't have a problem with seeing my sent cards of the wall, I've chosen each one with love and care :)

By the way, I just learnt that PayPal allows now transfers from bank account to PayPal in Finland! I will donate after next payday ;)

I like it, thank you

It's great - but it's a pity that people who don't have an account can't view the pictures. Can you change that, please?

Brilliant idea! You guys are amazing! Thanks for making the postcrossing experience even more enjoyable!

Excellent :-) I can see what I sent and what I received. Brilliant. Thank you Paulo and all the team.

I love this new feature. I don't use Flickr and really don't like the way pics are displayed there... so I have to say, I couldn't get used to looking at the cards you uploaded there. Having everything here at Postcrossing is just perfect!! :)

I keep my cards online on Picasa web albums and I'll still do that. I don't think uploading cards here and there is such a big job.

Thank you for all the hard work.

hey i'm busy uploading my cards now.. happy sigh!
but some cards i received were panoramic (long) cards so the width is less than 300px which the upload doesnt accept.

hey i'm busy uploading my cards now.. happy sigh!
but some cards i received were panoramic (long) cards so the width is less than 300px which the upload doesnt accept.

Really enjoying this feature. I hope the ability to comment on other members' walls is a soon-to-be-added feature. I've seen so many postcards I'd love to say something about.

Hello everybody.

Just a quick note to let you know: The Flickr Postcrossing Group is open for uploading postcards again.
THANK YOU, PAULO!

And to all those who felt it too much of a burden to additionally send the card to 'the wall': If you have already uploaded your card on Flickr it is only a matter of a minute to have it on 'the wall' as well:
1. Choose 'ALL SIZES' at Flickr
2. copy shortcut of 'Download the Large size'
3. at Postcrossing's 'Received Postcards' list click the '+' symbol of the card you'd like to add
4. click the 'browse'-button
5. paste the shortcut in the 'file name' field
6. click on open and then OK and you're done...

this is great!! Thank you for doing this