March 1, 2002#141 You've got iPhoto...The P in PC stands for PlagueIf you read David Pogue's article "That P in PC Now Stands for Picture" in the February 28, 2002 New York Times, (which I highly recommend... links provided below) you probably got real fired up to get any one of the new digital photo programs for your computer -- or you're hankering to upgrade to the new Mac system ten. (OS/X) Please hold on for just a moment before clicking "Send." David's article is a wonderful essay on the 'new' photography and what you can do with it. However I don't think he stressed the down-side strongly enough when he said: "Going digital also means that you can send pictures by e-mail. Unfortunately, that's not always a simple prospect, thanks to an underpublicized quirk of digital photography: modern digital cameras generate huge photo files, suitable for high-quality printouts. But that's far too much information for displaying photos on a computer screen, which has a far lower resolution than printers do. As a result, emailing a photo file without first shrinking it to a screen-friendly size will tie up your modem, and your unsuspecting recipient's, until Thanksgiving. The best photo-management software can perform this photographic liposuction with a click of the mouse."
The problem is there are hundreds of thousands of computer users with huge vacant lots between their ears. They actually believe their email recipients just adore getting bloated, miss-coded html mail that looks bad and loads slow -- or huge images they just took on their digital camera. They'll never buy nor use the software to optimize those images. And most won't take the time to look and see if their email client is sending html coded email. People are so complacent they haven't a clue about the default settings of their operating systems, web browsers and email programs. Ask anyone if they turned off their html mail. They'll say "how do you do that?" And you can't rely on the computer to do it for you -- all the software programmer geeks are sitting on T1 lines and could care less about your bandwidth. Both Apple and Microsoft have brought another plague on the world's bandwidth: "You've got Pictures!" making it way too easy to click 'Send.' Since iPhoto began shipping, I must have gotten two dozen photos from people I bearly know, picturing things I haven't the slightest interest in. Like I'm interested in their kids in the bath tub? I didn't even know they had kids! Now that I think of it, I don't even know who they are. One recent monster photo was 600 pixels by 895 pixels, and over 200K. Now some folks with DSL or wide-bandwidth cable won't mind that. But out here in the back-woods of Virginia, we don't have that luxury yet. So at 56K those huge photos take quite a while to download. Then there are the spammers. They caught on to the photo attachments right away. Now, "You've got spam AND pictures!" My Attachments folder is bloated with pictures of vacation hotels, gambling casinos, electronics equipment, ink jet cartridges, and people in various positions that I thought were illegal -- nineteen megabytes in all, since mid January. Folks, if I want to see pictures of your kids, or your vacation or the two of you in compromising positions, I'll ask. But until I ask, please keep them to yourself, or at least ASK before you send them. It's the polite thing to do.
Please see: "How NOT to send photos in email" Note: the last time we attempted to return to the article, it gave a "ERROR: 404 Page Not Found" message, but we were able to pull just the text off the cache server. I assume they've already taken the article down. Here it is from the cache server. Fred Showker is a designer, consultant, writer and speaker. He has published 60-Second Window and DT&G Magazine online since 1990, and is director of The Graphic Design Network which includes The Design & Publishing Center at www.Graphic-Design.com. (1994) He was a co-founder of both The User Group Forum on America Online (1987), The User Group Network at www.User-Groups.net, (1994) and the Designers' Bookshelf (1996) He originally founded Showker Graphic Arts & Design in 1972, has been an avid computer activist and supporter since 1984.
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