I’m funding PressGram on Kickstarter and you should too.
I like Open Source. Surprise!
I don’t mind paying for products (as witnessed by the fact that I have paid for this theme, and even the old DevPress and ThemeHybrid ones I don’t use anymore. I have a slew of plugins I paid for, and all in all, I think every dime was money well spent. Paying for open source makes sense.
So there’s this guy I know from the Internet, John Saddington, who likes taking photos, and he likes social media, but he wonders, like I often do, what happens when those outlets go away? Where are all my photos if TwitPic or YFrog vanishes? Or if Facebook deletes my account?
They’re gone.
John loves WordPress. So do I. John loves photos. Well. I fiddle around with them, but the point is he wants to built something that is way more than ‘just’ a plugin. He wants to make a free iPhone app… look, this is what he wants:
The premise is simple: I wanted to post filtered photos from my iPhone 5 but without worrying about any privacy or licensing issues (and we’re not interested in asking you to upload photo IDs). In other words, I wanted complete and total creative control of my images and content (as well as the pageviews).
And this will post to WordPress, which is so simple, we have a one-click installer at DreamHost for you to use to make it. Imagine that. You could have a photoblog with a couple clicks.
When I read that John was making PressGram, I had to poke at it, even though it’s not Open Source. It’s an Apple iOS app. I’m not shocked that it’s not open source, and after consideration, I don’t mind. It doesn’t have to be. As long as the plugin is open source (and frankly, given WordPress’s API, I can easily envision how it would be without stepping on closed source apps), it’s good to go.
John knows his shit. He shares the same concerns and doubts about social media as I do, he rails on Facebook for the same things I do. He’s a guy whose ethics I can get behind. And he’s a guy whose code I can get behind. Remember I review plugins. I’ve seen his code. It’s good.
So yeah, I’m supporting him so you can have a free app. Go figure. And as with most of the things I kickstart, I get no swag back (I think I get a kudos and a link somewhere), because I like to give for the spirit of giving most of the time. I’ll be getting the Veronica Mars DVD, but I’d be buying that anyway.
Give in. You know you want this. Pay $5 instead of risking your content belonging to someone else.
Comments
3 responses to “Your Photos, Your Way”
I’ve been a little confused by the project. At first I thought I understood… but then when I looked at the break down and how the money was to be spent, I saw —
“2. $3,000 for the first full year of server and hosting requirements for the storage of data (looking at AWS for this but open to suggestions). This is a super-rough estimate and may be low or high depending on the # of users that we get in FY2013.”
Is it your understanding that there is still a central hub that the iOS app connects to and it doesn’t directly connect to your install of WordPress?
It comes with a social network aspect, a user base.
That’s what the webserver’s for.
Scott,
Mika’s right – the reason there are some server costs are:
1. The API. I have to create a service (using the yii framework) to create the calls to an API for login, emails, and other integrations.
2. A place to manage the social network element, which is going to be a large and growing database.
3. A consistent experience of pulling images from other users. Imagine the chaos it would be to be pulling data from 1,000,000 different servers and hosting solutions…! That’s why I’m using AWS to create that consistent world-wide experience.
Hope that helps! Great questions!