Updates to the Photo Quotes Database
Tonight while finishing up some work, I glanced over at my bookcase and saw my collection of LensWork magazines. I suddenly remembered seeing some interesting photography quotes in some of the older issues. So, I pulled out the stack and started flipping through them one by one (luckily my collection only goes back to issue 46!).
I was right, there were a number of great photography related quotes that I re-discovered (including an entire multi-page article of quotes in issue 55, thanks Brooks!). Next thing I know, a few hours have passed and the official FocalPower Photography Quotes Database has grown to over 150 photography specific quotes. And there is still a huge back log of quotes to enter.
I thought I would use this opportunity to share the history behind the Photography Quote Database and Random Quote Widget. A couple of years ago, I wanted something simple: a random photography related quote to be displayed on my website. Every time the page would be reloaded, a new quote would come up. Simple right? Should be, but it didn’t exist. At the time, I just started writing down quotes that I liked in a spreadsheet on my laptop and put the random quote idea in the back of my head.
Once we started FocalPower, I saw the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: to give some back to the photographic community immediately (it’s a Zen thing…) and finally get my random quote thingy (over the last two years, the internet community has also come up for a name to describe my thingy…a widget). So, one of the first things we did at FocalPower was to put together a simple database and a Random Quote Widget. (I should also mention that FocalPower is just two of us right now and we are both working on this in our spare time…at least for now. Also, we have been keeping our focus on building out the infrastructure and coding up the first service offering to the photographic community.)
As I started sharing the Random Quote widget with other photographers, the initial comments were all the same: wow, this is so cool!. Usually followed by a bunch of suggestions. Well, I have been listening to those suggestions (please keep them coming) as well as working on putting up a forum on the website to make it easier to submit suggestions and archive them all. (Remember, spare time…)
Based upon the suggestions that I have received, I wanted to share with you some of the current future plans around the Photography Quotes Database and widget:
- A web interface to allow the FocalPower community to help submit their favorite photography related quotes. There are a lot of them out there that people want to see and share. We’ll need your help to enter them all.
- A way to explore the photography quotes database. We get a lot of “I reloaded your page a dozen times…”
- Some way to filter the quotes chosen by the widget based on category. I have been working on categorizing all the quotes as they go into the system. Some people have wanted a way to display different categories of quotes on different parts of their website.
- Ideally, I would eventually like to see a way for you to setup an account and build a specific set of quotes for the quote widget to display for you. There is more to this than what meets the eye at first, so no promises on this one.
- More places to use the widget. We know that it won’t work on some sites today. We are working on expanding where it can be used.
I can’t commit to time frames for any of this, but I’ll share news as it comes available. And if you would like to help by donating some of your time to the project, drop me an email and lets talk! I can be reached at greg at focalpower dot com.
