An image is worth a thousand words.
So far, to see the final result of the postcards exchanges, you had to go to our Postcrossing Flickr group. Flickr is great, but wouldn't it be awesome to match the images with the postcards and their senders and receivers?
After several weeks of work, we are proud to announce Postcrossing postcard walls! Now everybody can upload their received postcards to their respective profile! All your postcards will be displayed in your profile as well as a gallery of images that we like to call postcard walls. And we have even added a slideshow to go with it!
How does it work?
Simple. Grab your scanner or camera, get an image of the front part of the postcards you received, go to your 'Received postcards' section and click the little icon on the right end of the row. Follow the upload instructions and voilá!
And there's more: we have managed to copy a good amount of the postcards directly from the Flickr group to their respective profile owners so that you don't have to do it again. Have a look at your profile - you might find out that someone has uploaded a postcard you've sent! If you find something that doesn't match what you received, then simply delete it.
We will keep the Flickr group as it is for the moment but with postcards uploads closed. In the future, we plan to use it to host photos of the Postcrossing meetups and other media related to the Postcrossing project.
We hope you all enjoy this new functionality as much as we do. Oh, and if you have comments or ideas of how to improve it, we would love to hear from you!
Last, but not least, we have a request too. This new feature will represent an increase in costs for Postcrossing (like storage and bandwidth) and is only possible to sustain if postcrossers continue to support the project by donating to it. If you enjoy this new feature, and would like to help keeping the project running, please consider visiting our support page - it's really simple and quick. Thank you in advance! ☺

89 comments so far
This new feature is fantastic! Great innovation! I've uploaded a new PC image, and it's not showing up on my Received Cards page. I guess there's a time lag?
But I also want to know about the pics I have at Flickr that somehow didn't transfer over (despite being labeled clearly). How can we get pics from Flickr over here? I spent a lot of time scanning and uploading the pics to Flickr. The idea of doing all that over is really not pleasant. :-(
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.
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).
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 love this new thing with the postcards shown here at the postcrossing site"!!
For me this works perfect, thanks!!
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...
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.
Also, I have one image that does not belong on my wall, and I don't see a way to delete it.
And I'll study the best way to help Postcrossing like a supporter ;)
Hugs, Karina
Same with me.
Although I like this new feature, :)
I would also love an option to switch it off.
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).
There are many of us that add descriptions for the cards as it is part of the fun to know the details of the places pictured on the cards etc.
I also pumped into the limit of flickr album laodings and have now opened a picasa album for my cards.
Picasa has higher limits for the card amounts (500 cards in one album and you can have as many albums as you wish). It's a slow job to transfer all the cards there as there are almost 200 cards already, but it's worth it as then I can make my own groups. A group like waterfalls, lighthouses, comics etc.
The best feature of flickr is favourites. How can we find new favourites if we cannot load new cards into flickr anymore?
I planned to upload all my cards into Picasa as it takes more card than Flickr for free. Then I would make a link in my PC profile to Flickr album to show my favourites from other users. Propably I will make the favourite uploads to Picasa if you do not allow the uploadings into flickr group anymore.
If this new feature makes the uploading of the pages slower it's not good.
It really would be good if it was optional to switch it off.
Anyway, I like it, but it cannot replace the flickr group in my opinion.
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.
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.
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!
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. ;-)
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.
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! :)
Thank you Paulo and everyone who worked so hard for months to make this possible :)
- 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.
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.
We're aware there is an issue there, and Paulo is trying to look at solutions for it.
Susannew
Did I understand well that I can not upload any sent cards?
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 think that PC should allow each member to choose which way they wish to show off their postcards.
The Flickr group was quite nice but like someone avove me said earlier, there were too many cards and there was some kind of mess. I prefer this new Wall than old flickr group.
But some part is missing.. Comments and fauvorites! When I see such a nice card here, on postcrossing I immidiately search for 'add to faves' bottom. Unfortunately, there isn't this button:( Think about it:) And about comments.
But of course this new Wall made PC even better project than it was before! t's much more interesting. Please stop complaining about this old group - create new one and everything will be just fine:D
Thanks for putting such a huge effort in doing this new feature.
Kisses!
Thanks to all who worked on this!
YOU ARE THE BEST!
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.
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.
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.
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've read the previous comments and see (as expected for such a large community) that there are always remarks and opinions which diverge from one to another.
I think that most of all the relation between postcrossers is very good and polite and this reflects on how the comments are carefully submitted.
People care about Paulo's work and try to give constructive feedback. I always get a good feeling when I visit the site.
Thanks Paulo! Thanks Postcrossers out there!
Be haapy,
=)
Great work Paulo! I'm looking forward to the next change!
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!! :)
And I am definitely againts the idea that the Postcrossing project would start using the meeting photographs! I like to go to the meetings but I don't want the pictures of me to be spread all over the internet!
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
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 love to see my sent cards again, they all have their little history for me and now for the receiver.
Some cards are somehow unique and now I can see that they are still "alive"!
Thanks for improving Postcrossing again and again!
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.
but some cards i received were panoramic (long) cards so the width is less than 300px which the upload doesnt accept.
but some cards i received were panoramic (long) cards so the width is less than 300px which the upload doesnt accept.
BUT...
when viewing someones cards: is it possible to keep the sent and recieved cards apart please !!!!!
best regards
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...