Woophy latest news, updates and announcements en-us Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0100 http://woophy.com/blogs/newsletter/ http://woophy.com/blogs/newsletter/ Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0200 joris http://woophy.com/blogs/newsletter/

Dear [name],

After more than half a year of hard labor we finally launched Woophy 3.0 and we really hope you like it. Some of you might think it took very long and others might have experienced some bugs and downtime during the transition but all was done for a greater cause, to give you a better Woophy.

Among the many things we improved are the bigger photos, the new I-pad compatible map and much more possibilities to share your photos with your friends via the usual social media.
Of course we are very curious what you think so don’t hesitate to email us or post your opinion on one of the forums.

Thank you all for your support during the years and enjoy the site

Joris]]> http://woophy.com/blogs/newsletter/ Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0200 joris http://woophy.com/blogs/newsletter/

This version of Woophy is not an update but a whole new site. Because we were forced to switch map technology from Flash to Google maps we had to rebuild almost 90% of the website. And for something that started small but grew out to become a gargantuan monster that is not easy. So some of the things we changed

• Bigger photos, all images and thumbnails on Woophy are resized for better viewing. Imagine that it cost about 3 second to resize a photo and that we have 1,000,000 photos the whole resizing process alone took about 3,000,000 seconds of computer calculations (833 hours or 35 days)
• Direct access to all last uploads, all recent images are put directly on the homepage so it is easy to scroll through the last 90 or so uploads.
• New Google map, thanks to the tablets we had to choose a new map technology and we are very proud that we managed to keep almost all the features of our old custom Flash map in the new generic Google map. For the future the Google maps offers much more possibilities like the more precise positioning of photos and exchange geo location with other applications.

• New share buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr, from now on it is possible to share everything on Woophy via your Facebook and Twitter account. So instead of posting just to Woophy you can share your photos with all your connections.
• SEO, this sounds boring but it is not. SEO means search engine optimization and it means that we put a lot of effort in making your pictures findable on the internet. From now on all new photos on Woophy (and gradually also all old pictures) have the location and the keywords in the name of the photo and in the web address were the photo is found. So when you type ‘landmarks buildings roros norway ros’ in Google images you will find Marek km2bp’s photo he posted two days ago in the first place at the search results.
• Webservers on 4 continents, giving more speed to South America, North American and Asia
• Personal information feed, a few panels with information on reactions on your photos and activity by your favorite members.

In the coming newsletters I will try to give you some tips and tricks for the new features.


Be #1 in Google ]]> http://woophy.com/blogs/newsletter/ Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0200 joris http://woophy.com/blogs/newsletter/

Hi Everyone,

WoophySF here. With all the other exciting things happening with Woophy you would be forgiven if you thought maybe we had forgotten about July’s Science contest. Nope. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact July’s contest was one of the hardest I’ve had to judge so far.

Now Joris told me this month’s newsletter was going to be jam-packed with other Woophy related news so it would be OK if I kept my explanations for how I chose the winner relatively short…and I’ll try my best.

BUT choosing winners this time around was hard!! So hard in fact that I felt I had to break things up into sub-categories and pick some winners specifically for those sub-categories.
There is still only one overall prizewinner, but instead of honorable mentions this time, I chose some winners for some sub-categories I created.

So anyway, who was the overall winner??

Well that would be Zerega’s radar station (I think that’s what it is) from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Man, I really loved this image as soon as I saw it. I think maybe the reason I loved it so much was because I always feel there is a struggle between mankind dabbling in it’s fun little science projects and nature always being at the ready to knock us down a notch and reclaim the resources we use to make our technology. And man does this photo speak to that!
Basically this is science where science really isn’t supposed to be. This image brings to mind all sorts of potential stories such as workers fighting against nature to try to build this, test it, maintain it, and then one day it becomes completely obsolete. Then nature goes to work to reclaim it.

To me this was a very powerful image and congratulations to Zerega for the composition and the shot. Very nicely done!!

Now a few others that also should be considered winners were the following:

Old Science: Skotty’s photo of the oldest distillery in Gascony



Clinical Science: Jan’s photo of his darkroom in the 70’s



Science of the vast: Just an amazingly epic photo by Zoidberg. It looks to me like a rocket blasting off into space and the technology that allows that amazing feat to be possible. Great epic shot!



And last but not least, the Science of fun: Lotralin’s image that hopefully reminds us that we should never be all work and no play. Is that a guy on stilts with a flamethower?!?!



So that’s it!! Thanks again to everyone who submitted and San Francisco will be back to judge photos of Leisure in October.

That should be a fun one!! Thanks!!]]>