Back to WWM Input, WWF Input 2,  Wet Web Fotos Input fennerrobert(at)hotmail.com

Photoshop Practice I've been practicing every day with Photoshop and trying out some new Plug-ins. <Perhaps you can have your better efforts printed, bound, sell to... folks who enjoy nature, diving, pet-fishing? Bob Fenner> Mike

RE: Angelfish (pix) Hey there, Bob! <Howdy> How are you doing? You'll find it funny to note that Ryan Petersen, who you referred to us from your site, started work here at Fritz just last week. He's a terrific guy- thank you again for your help! <You're welcome, a pleasure> We are doing some new product design and we wondering if we could use a few of your pictures that you send? Are they your photos? Let me know! Aubrey <All that I post are... Do you folks have specific needs, ideas in mind, a budget for same? Bob Fenner>

RE: Angelfish (pix) We have lots of small label accounts that we do business with but also need pictures for ads and Fritz branded labels. We are working on building a better website this year that we will need good pictures for. <Yay!> Some of the fish guys have given us pictures (Pablo gave us the digitals of his books, for example) <Wow! Very nice images> , and so, while I have designed probably 200 pieces of artwork with new fish, I have never purchased any myself. I do not know what going rate is. We need pictures of colorful fish with some dimension to them. Preferably, hobby species. 300 to 600 dpi (rather small images). <Inexpensive... enough... especially in large lots. Let's chat over your prospective needs/desires when you have time/interest. Bob Fenner>

That will make a sharp calendar I like that last pic, should make a nice calendar for next month---> <Beauty... Hey! How'd you download this file from work? During a coffee break? Much more coming. Bob F>

killer angel picture! Bob, Today's e-mail picture of that Genicanthus angel is seriously magnificent! It almost made me want to trade a few corals for some fins <smile>. <Or... knowing your keen interest in the living (and commercial)world, to develop a system for their production, sale and distribution!> So is your life really so charmed with an endless stream of beautiful memories or does it just seem so? <It is so my friend> Hehe... anyway. Cool pic. Thanks dude, Anthony <Be chatting, browsing. Bob Fenner>

RE: Daily Email image from WWM Hi Bob, It's great to be receiving your pics again. These last couple have been unbelievably beautiful! Thanks again for sharing them. <A pleasure my friend. Am looking forward to being able to share MANY more more easily... and soon... yes... video. Bob Fenner> Khoi

RE: Daily Email image from WWM You didn't happen to break me off some frags of that one while you were there? <Oops... and they fell into ziplock baggies enroute! An accident! Bob F> Todd

RE: User name/password Heya ol' pal... <Wondered where you'd been... totin' that load for the software toad> Got the FW Drive yesterday and started offloading all the good goods... thought I'd let you know. <Mmm> The semester ends with a math final tomorrow night, and I'm finishing up the horrific work project this very evening - work will recommence heartily on WWFotos and the new server this weekend! <Rest my friend...> Wotta relief - I sure need to have a little fun! <I'll bet! Looking fwd to it. Bob F> -Zo

Re: Daily Email image from WWM Hey Bob, Love the pictures keep'em coming. I actually pass them on to my family's emails so they can have some cool stuff to look at other than the spamming they get by email. <Ah, great> Love the article in FAMA magazine on lighting for planted tank.  <Geez, as usual, haven't seen it yet> Your approach to the advance with tech talk words came across well as well as keeping it simplified for the beginner. <That's probably the old (let's make that middle-aged) H.S. science teacher coming out in me> See you January here in COLD Ohio :-) Happy holidays David Adkins <I'm even wearing socks (in San Diego)! Bob Fenner>

RE: Daily Email image from WWM Bob, I think that is a function of your Hotmail account. I took a look and you can create a group of people, the daily mail out list, and then all you have to do is select that one group name and it will mail it to everyone in there. I don't know if that helps or not. <Thanks for this... do have two "pet fish" group email addresses... a royal pain to add/delete from (requests quite often)... would really like the WWF with label, maybe water-e mark... und spiel to be the tool/feature to do this... with folks just signing on/off on their own... ala web-shots here in town (excite's gone, but they got da cash). Be chatting, contemplating, cogitating furiously. Bob F> Mike

Re: Daily Email image from WWM Sometimes size does matter and the telephoto is too close for its own good - <Hey, no tele nada... Akin to motorbikes that are "dual purpose"... off and on road... they're neither (i.e. telephoto lenses)... What would Dewey say? "An education for everyone is an education for no one". You may quote him. Bob/Dog F> TL&C, t

RE: Daily Email image from WWM Bob, I have not been receiving the daily image. <What? That ding dang Billy.G! Gots to have Zo, Jas, a three year old from Phoenix at the beach in pigtails and no top... show me how to rig the "send to the planet if so desired" algorithm (which I got none of) series of finite steps to include any/all... How 'bout it big boyz?> Please put me back on the list. I need some new images for future calendars and Wetwebnews. <Will do so. Be sending. Bob F> Mike

RE: Daily Email image from WWM Robert, Are any of these photographers interested in making prints of their incredible photos? These photos would make beautiful art work for display in our homes...? Jill Acland <Thank you for your kind, encouraging words... Don't have such plans, ambitions as of now... but other friends (Jason.C, Lorenzo.G... soon Mike.K no doubt!) are working on an "image site" (WetWebFotos)... that will allow larger downloads for print and display purposes... Be chatting. Bob Fenner> [email protected]

RE: Daily Email image from WWM Bob, We can look into posters made from "your favorite fish foto" on a special order request, with 4 wk lead time for shipping. We can look at the cost from Costco on enlargements. Diana <Maybe a job for Pete, Mike? Bob F>

howdy Bob Long time no hear from you???? all them beautifull PIXS stopped comming?? <On holiday the last few weeks...> What a shitty way to go (Peter Blake)<><> It just seems to fit in a normally abnormal world. http://www.blakexpeditions.com/flash.htm <Yes... saw this news even in Fiji... a shame> The "vessel" was boarded at night by thiefs it seems that "Sir Peter Blake " offerred resistances and was killed by the perpetrators<><><> <... "things" are not worth dying, even risking health for. Bob F>

Denny, hello? > Denster, what's going on with you and your email? Did you receive the images > sent? Bob Fenner Bob - sorry I did not get back with you - I have recieved the faxes. I have only had a short amount of time to look at the pictures and have not been able to make a decision. I am going to Alaska on monday and probably won't be able to look at anything untill I get back in mid december. I think I will be able to use some of the catfish and placo's. Thanks - Denny <Ah, okay. No worries. Just like to track, make sure folks have received what I think I've sent. Be chatting, seeing you. Bob F> RE: Images for sale, WWF overall If you would like to sell them through Di'a Aquatics, I would be happy to list it on the web site. I should have credit card capabilities shortly. Diana <Sounds great... don't know how to rig software Zo, will we soon/ever have the "pay as you go" download capability with WWF? Bob F> >Yes, >We could sell a screen-saver of Bob's photos... definitely. >-Zo ><Would really like to do this... maybe a daily, weekly update... like the folks used to do at WebShots here in town (don't know if excite@home is still in biz, still running the co....) Maybe as part of WWF? Maybe Mike could spiff up, do some scanning of photos... Bob F>

request of using pictures Dear Dr Fenner, In recent years the Central Institute for Applied Marine Research (ICRAM, Italy) has been investigating the phenomenon of alien fish immigration in the Mediterranean from the Red Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, also in relation with climatic changes recently recorded by many researchers. Because of the difficulty of collecting material of study and in order to temp fishermen to conserve and deliver alien fish to our institute for study purposes, ICRAM would like to divulge to all national fisheries a handbook containing illustrations and/or photos of all the immigrant fish species till now recorded in the Mediterranean. For this purpose, we would like to use some pictures of Indo-Pacific fish used by ICLARM in www.fishbase.org for our handbook. Therefore we ask You the permit to use these pictures specifying proper citation in the handbook. Waiting for Your answer Sincerely yours Head of Research Dr. Franco Andaloro and co-operatore dr. Luca Castriota <You are granted such permission. If there is other assistance I may render, please do contact me. Bob Fenner>

RE: WWF income? Yes, We could sell a screen-saver of Bob's photos... definitely. -Zo <Would really like to do this... maybe a daily, weekly update... like the folks used to do at WebShots here in town (don't know if excite@home is still in biz, still running the co....) Maybe as part of WWF? Maybe Mike could spiff up, do some scanning of photos... Bob F>

RE: Homepage-sitemap Hardware for the new server started arriving yesterday, (got the RAM) and the rest should arrive today... could be a loooooong night for me... ;-) <Take your time... in action, watch the timing> Got Apache (webserver), PHP (web scripting language) and MySQL (database) all installed on the system disk already. Still need to get Java (proggin' language) and Resin (application server) setup, and Mailman (mailing list) up and running. Then, get the new hardware going, run some security audits, and we'll be just about ready to roll out to Massachoosex or Connect-a-cut, or wherever that Jason guy is these days... !! <Much to do. There is time. Bob> -Zo

RE: New Wetwebnews Cool, Mike. Can't wait to get that new server up. Actually, I can't wait to have this damned project (at work) out of my hair and into HISTORY. I want a damned 9-5 job dammit. Dammitall. I'm going HOME dammit, and SLEEP (dammit). -Zo <Don't kill yourself... at least not yet. Are you and Christine, and Jason.C coming out to Interzoo? And diving ahead/after? Bob F>

WWMedia v2.03 TurboPlus MkV Hardware for the new WWMedia/Fotos/Video server was ordered yesterday, and is enroute. The OS is already installed and ready on another disk, so system build can start next week.  By Tuesday I'll either have completed the module at work that has been killing me - or I'll have no job. Either way, I should have time to do this thing! Woohoo! -Zo <Yeeikes, you go badboy! Want to send the 40 gig Maxtor ext HD back for a fill up? Bob F>

New Wetwebnews Get your new edition of the WWN here> http://www.wetwebmedia.com/wwnews.htm <Hmm, Pete was mentioning we should add more to WWN... like to chat this up... and I would like Zo to give me the big lesson (in writing, baby steps puhleeze) on how to mass send daily/weekly pix with our name/watermark... as I'd like to start doing this asap. Bob>

Re: Daily Fish Email out WWM Bob: I am finding that e-mail is consuming about half my day on the average. So I have started asking friends to cut back on nonessential things like jokes. Your photos are great and I enjoy looking at them, but downloading takes time, and if I comment that takes still more. I am only half way through writing the text for my big volume on South Pacific fishes for which there is a deadline next March when I am supposed to start on the big Hawaiian book. So I would appreciate holding back on photos unless you have specific and urgent inquiry about specific ones. <Ah! Am looking forward more to seeing the above tomes than taking up your time my friend. I will suspend sending same till which time you ask for their resumption. Bob Fenner> Aloha, Jack

Re: Daily Fish Email out WWM Bob: Thanks for your understanding. When I finish these two big books, I will get back to normal operation. <Real good, looking forward to them. Mahalo. Bob F.> Aloha, Jack

WetWebFotos Hi guys, As you all may know, WetWebFotos development was almost completely derailed when my DSL connection went belly-up several weeks ago. <Yikes... thought it was the new job!> Even before then, Jason was hinting that he'd soon be managing a brand new data center, and could potentially provide us rackspace/bandwidth/electricity, at no cost, when the center was complete. Apparently, that time has come, and Jason has graciously reminded me of that offer. <Oooh!> So I've started work on a rack-mount computer to host all our wildest web-ambitions. I ordered the case last night ($100 w/shipping) because it was on eBay, at about a 60% discount. My intention is to build and configure (over the next few weeks) a webserver that will satisfy our needs for at least a couple years. Given my current hardware plans, a 'couple years' is really a pessimistic estimate - 3+ years is more likely before we could -possibly- outgrow the machine. <Make it known what the costs are... as long as we can fund same through WWM I say we do so> Because there is MUCH to do, in order to prep a new box from scratch, I can start out small and build up somewhat gradually, using the parts I already have as stand-ins for the new stuff. Immediate need is really just a new, large hard drive. So my initial outlay is only a few hundred dollars, partly because I wanted to grab the deal on that rackmount case right away. Luckily, 80GB drives can be had for around $215 with shipping. <Cha-heep!> Over the next few weeks, however, I expect to put a total of about $1300 into the machine, before sending it off to Jason for deployment. <Yikes, where do I send the check?> I'm hoping that, along the way, I'll be able to develop and show enough of WWF to prove it's value, and show that the whole project is in fact worthy of (some/partial) funding from the WWM coffers, just to help with the hardware expenses. <Yes> And that's the news. So, a few answers to potential questions: Q. "Could we store all of Bob's new scans on it?" A. Yes, easily. 240GB is my current planned storage. 280GB is also a possibility. Q. "Could it host other websites for other projects, or other people entirely?" A. Yes, easily. Q. "What about video?" A. Sure. mpeg (mpeg2-4, divX, MSvideo) or Quicktime, but not RealVideo. Q. "Could it be made compatible with FrontPage (server extensions)?" A. Yes, if necessary. Q. "Could we host every single website that is related in any way to the aquatic hobbies?" A. Very likely. Q. "Could we move WWM to it, and drop datapipe." A. Absolutely. Q. "Will you really do everything you promise, with WWF, et al?" A. Geez, I hope so! (note: Jason's even interested in doing some development, and Mike REALLY needs to learn this stuff!) <Yeah! As long as I don't have to... he said scampering under the keyboard> Any others questions? Sound interesting? Exciting? (I'm so excited I can hardly think of anything else...) <Mmm, shall I purchase another external HD (like the 40Gig Maxtor?) to send more/scans along? Do we have any notion of when we might be able to "fire up" a drudge ridden (scan, burn, ship...) "pix for sale" part of this gambit... and the "Zo the Billy Gates Contendah" automated version. Beta.1? Bob F... EXCITING!>. Yours, Zo

FW: WetWebFotos Lorenzo, This is great news!! Let me know what I can do to help out. Mike <Yay! Bob F>

Hello (image use request, morays) Hello, i have a question, pertaining to your morays section. My I use your pictures for my website? i have no other photos of eels, and yours are the best. Thanks. <Is it a non-commercial site (that is, not one made for profit)? If so, you are welcome to use our content. Will be adding to, spiffing up the Morays area soon... as it is very incomplete presently and have much more image work to add. Thank you for asking. Bob Fenner>

Off the e-mail for a bit Dear Bob, Please do me a favor and take Clayton off of your e-mail list for a couple of weeks. He really enjoys the pictures of corals and fish you forward but, I'm having trouble downloading your .pdf files and need to do some research with changing web hosts. <Done my friend> I will contact you (or hopefully, I'll have his e-mail up and roaring and he'll e-mail you...) when I get this all sorted out. Thank you so much, Janeen Romie Coral Gardens <Real good. Hope to see you both soon. Bob Fenner>

Need a pics fix Nice seeing ya at MACNA. <Ah, yes. Hectic, but definitely fun times> Let me know what is a good time for hanging out in SD sometime. <Most anytime we're in town... just call, send email... we can always have a dinner party, with Jason.K and other local fish types...> Please take a look at: http://www.marinedepotlive.com/fish.html and http://www.marinedepotlive.com/corals.html <Very nice. Hope the livestock part of your business takes off this season> If you know anybody that might have cartoonish pics for Cardinals, Damsels, Goatfish, Hogs, Jacks, Lions, Parrots, Pipefish, Rabbitfish, Scorpionfish, Gorgonians, Hard Corals, Soft Corals, Polyps, please let me know. <Hmm, will post this message with your email address in hopes that an artist type will come forward to assist you.> Below is a list of fishes and corals for which we have no pics. If you can dig around and see if you have these, that would be cool. For the coral pics, I would prefer corals that don't look "too good" where the customers will say we didn't send them what they saw on the website. Try to pick ones that most accurately represent what is available in the aquarium trade. <Ah, I understand> Red Scooter Blenny - Synchiropus stellatus Also known as: Starry Dragonet, Stellate Dragonet Smith's Fang Blenny - Meiacanthus smithii Also known as: Smith's, Disco Blenny, White's Blenny Spotted Cardinal - Sphaeramia nematoptera Also known as: Pyjama (Orbic), Pajama Cardinal and Polka dot Cardinal Clown Goby, Assorted - Gobiodon species Also known as: Clown, Black Watchman Bluspotted Goby - Cryptocentrus pavononoides Watchman Tiger Goby - Amblyeleotris species Antennata Lion - Pterois antennata Also known as: Ragged-finned Firefish, Spotfin Lionfish Volitan Common Lion - Pterois lunulata Also known as: Luna Lion, Common Lionfish, Turkeyfish, Butterfly Cod, Devilfish, Black Volitan Lion Sailfin / Rogue Scorpion - Amblyapistus taenionotus Naso Male Tang Naso lituratus <Hmm, a bunch of these are on the WWM site if you'd like to lift them from there... do have others that are likely not scanned, placed... Will add this job to my task list> Green Lace Gorgonia - Gorgonia species Also known as: Gorgonia, Sea Rod, Sea Whip, Sea Blade Purple Brush Gorgonia - Gorgonia species Also known as: Gorgonia, Sea Rod, Sea Whip, Sea Blade Purple Ribbon Gorgonia - Gorgonia species Also known as: Gorgonia, Sea Rod, Sea Whip, Sea Blade Brain, Pineapple / Favites - Favites species Also known as: Pineapple, Moon, Closed Brain, or Honeycomb Coral Cactus Coral - Pavona cactus Also known as: Cat's Paw Coral, Daisy Coral, Frilly Cactus Coral, Lettuce Coral, Lettuce Clump Coral Pipe Organ, Green - Tubipora musica Also known as: Pipe Organ or Organ Pipe Coral Pearl Coral, Green - Physogyra species Also known as: Pearl Grape Coral, Pearl Octobubble Coral Sun Coral, Black - Tubastraea micrantha Also known as: Branched Black Sun Coral, Branched Black Tube Coral Tongue Coral - Polyphillia species Also known as: Slipper Coral, Hairy Slipper Coral, Tongue Coral Bullseye Mushroom - Discosoma species Also known as: Disc Anemones, Flower Corals, Mushroom Anemones Clove Polyp - Clavularia species Also known as: Green Glove Polyps, Eight Tentacle Polyps, Encrusting Polyps Elegant Moon Polyp - Zoanthus species Also known as: Sea Mats, Moon Polyps, Encrusting Anemones Flower/Ricordia Mushroom - Discosoma species Also known as: Disc Anemones, Flower Corals, Mushroom Anemones Giant Cup Mushroom - Rhodactis species Also known as: Giant Coral Anemone, Giant Disc Anemone, Giant Mushroom Anemone, Giant Flower Coral. Green Flourescent Mushroom - Actinodiscus species Also known as: Disc Anemones, Flower Corals, Mushroom Anemones Pumping Xenia Cultured - Xenia species Also known as: Feather Corals, Pulsing Corals, Waving Hand Corals Red Mushroom - Actinodiscus species Also known as: Disc Anemones, Flower Corals, Mushroom Anemones Sea Pen, Assorted - Cavarnularis obesa Striped Mushroom, Colored - Actinodiscus species Also known as: Disc Anemones, Flower Corals, Mushroom Anemones Tree/Stick Polyps - Acrozoanthus species Also known as: Encrusting Stick Anemones, Stick Polyps Cabbage Leather, Flower Leather - Sinularia dura Also known as: Cabbage Leather Coral, Carpet Coral, Flat Leather Coral, Flower Leather Coral Hairy Leather - Paralemnalia species Also known as: Finger Leather Coral, Hairy Finger Leather Coral Medusa Soft Coral - Sphaerella species Also known as: Medusa Tree Coral, Potato Coral Soft Coral Combo Rock - Scleractinia pcs. Also known as: Finger Leather, Leather Mushroom, Yellow Leather, Green Leather, Speckled Leather Toadstool, Green Leather Coral' - Sarcophyton species Also known as: Elegant Leather Coral, Green Crown Leather, Mushroom Coral, Mushroom Leather Coral, Toadstool Leather Coral <Again, many of these invertebrates have image work on the site... Please take a look at your leisure. Will check what's placed with what is in my files, and add more, send them along as can make time... hopefully soon (have been moving, arghhh. Bob Fenner> Yours, Ken

RE: Working at/for Fritz Good morning, my friend. Thank you for the email. We have indeed been speaking with JD. He's a fun guy, isn't he?  <Yes... a bit intense at times.> I really appreciate this inside scoop. You make me feel like I am part of a secret society that's "in the know"! Ha ha <You are my friend> I love all these images. I am a real ceph fanatic. Have any good cuttlefish pics? <Oh yes... Will send one today!> Tchau! Aubrey <Sorry to have missed you at MACNA... Bob Fenner>

E-mail pics Bob Dawling--- I love your gorgeous pictures, but please take me off your mailing list for them------- They do bog down my helplessly ancient computer. Thanks, Suze <Hotay... but will miss sending them to you. Bob F>

Photos... Hi Mr. Fenner, I live in Turkey and want to prepare a web-site about saltwater fish and invertebrates in Turkish. May I use some of your photos in my site? <If it's non-commercial (that is, not oriented to make money), yes. Otherwise... this is actually how we make money ourselves (in part). Bob Fenner> Regards, Yildirim Okte

RE: Photos... It is non-commercial... Yildirim <Ah, then you're welcome to use what we have... If you don't find something, do send your requests along... we have many, MANY images that need scanning, placing... just do a few a day... Bob Fenner>

the image mailer... Okay, It's at http://www.wetwebfotos.com/Fishmail you will need the username "Fishmail" (no quotes) and the password would (as usual) be "XXXXX" (no quotes) - note that if you mess that up, you'll have to close your browser, at least in IE (all browser windows) and start over... little bug I gotta fix. <Zo, whatcha going on about here?> anyway. I also just fixed it so that it sends the attachment such that hotmail etc will just display the image right in the message, unlike the first one I sent out, where you had to click the attachment to view or download it... much better now. <Ah, pix> The other thing to finish up is the actual "mailing list" itself... the part where people subscribe/unsubscribe ala WWNews is not setup. But the mailer thing at the above address will let you send to any addresses you want, so test it out! I'll do the list setup tomorrow after I finish packing for the trip! <What? We can/could send images... to who? How? Sorry to be so daft (as usual)... hopeful you can straighten me out in propria persona in a couple of days... Bob Fenner> Woohoo! -Zo

Re: Woohoo! Online image mailer! Hey guys! I sent this message via the soooper-dooper online image mailer I just finished! I guess it has a couple of minor bugs and quirks left, but then again, don't we all!? Scope out the attachent! Uploaded right at the website, and annotated as well... neato - technology stolen straight from WetWebFotos.com! hehe. I'll include more information in separate message... <Zo, you've gots to show me/us how to do this when you're here... and help us formulate a plan for this technologies use. Bob F> Zo

Re: Lastly (for the day, I swear), a dwarf South American Cichlid (Daily images email out response) Dear Bob, the Apistogramma is without any doubt Apistogramma steindachneri from Suriname. Take care Werner <Ah, will do so my friend. See you at Interzoo in May! Bob Fenner>

Re: Lastly (for the day, I swear), a dwarf South American Cichlid Bob, One-A-Day is enough, I think. Why the overdosing? (You're like a guy with a new squirt bottle of Reef Vital.....) <Gimme my Vitalis and let me slick my hair back like Ronnie Ray Gun! Sorry re the overload... had a request for cichlid pix (for Denny Crews' new Omega Sea pelleted foods and let my resistance slip. Bob the InBox filler, not to be confused with Vlad the Impaler (old technology)> James

Subject: Photos Hey there, Been outta town or something? WWFotos is coming along, maturing a little bit here and there. I think I got some volunteers from the chat site... almost ready to put them to work. getting ahead money-wise on our efforts... do want to use the funds to buy property in WWM's name (yes) and fund the many (make that MANY) hours of work that is coming to do all the scanning, photoshop work to make even just the present thousands of images available...> But my real question is: When am I going to get more CD's/photos to upload? a time... maybe at the Menkar property... finding time/money to do this work... Zo, Mike thinks/feels the present HP scans are junk... they are definitely much improved by running them through the Nikon/Adobe re-do processes.... Will gladly send you any, all work, but don't want to see non-optimized use of our efforts.> -Lorenzo ps. attached is a medium-res 'preview' from the site - shot at Tropicorium this weekend. See: http://www.wetwebfotos.com/Home?actionRequest=mediaSearchByKeywords&perPage=30&ID=tropicorium Weds. Great work on the Chatforum. Thank you. Bob F> For the rest of them.

Re: Photos This all sounds great, a place in Hawaii, whooo hooo! I've been sending out ad /sponsor e-mails trying to sell off some more of the ad space and I have had a few responses but no sale yet. <Great! I got no responses (!) from my e-mail efforts... we need to keep pursuing folks till the "tide changes" in recognition (general) of the value of our exposure...> Before undertaking the task of rescanning images we need to figure out a few issues. Number 1 is some of the recently scanned images look too dark. I can't tell if it's the monitor Bob is using for the scanning or my monitors. I'm leery about undertaking the task of rescanning images if they won't be acceptable. Anyone have any ideas on what we can do to set all our monitors to some type of standard, maybe a profile of some type that we can all load onto our computers. I look forward to discussing this issue more. Mike

Re: Photos Great idea, it may be the crappy monitor I'm using here at work. Let's wait for Bob's return from Hawaii to run the test. Mike <I'mm almost afraid to speculate... but a/the problem with brightness may be due to my vision... Bob who is back> Lorenzo Gonzalez <[email protected]> wrote: Mike pointed out: >Number 1 is some of the recently scanned images look too dark. I can't tell >if it's the monitor Bob is using for the scanning or my monitors. I'm leery >about undertaking the task of rescanning images if they won't be >acceptable. That -is- bad. Are these the same images that Bob had been emailing out to folks recently? Because every one of those is gorgeous on the different displays I've seen them on. Mike, is there a particular one (or few) image that we could just sort of summarily check, by emailing about and all of us viewing at our respective workstations? I have a Mac (or two), to test with as well. Setting the various monitors to a true standard will require a spectrophotometer and software to actually do it right. But a general survey and consensus would probably be sufficient... -Lorenzo

looking for photo Dear sir, We are looking for a close up shot (photo) of a pair of maroon clownfish (spine cheek anemonefish) in their host bubble tip anemone. (perferable white color anemone) to design our product label. We wonder to you have such photo? <Only single individuals of this species with its host that I think would be suitable for a product label (too little definition otherwise) Or is there any other clownfish photo that you will suggest? <Likely either the Percula, Ocellaris, or Tomato (Amphiprion frenatus). These are much more common/identifiable to the consuming public. Some pix of these: http://wetwebmedia.com/clownfis.htm Let me know... are you looking for a vertical/landscaped format? About what resolution? Output size? Tiff? Will send/post scans for your perusal. Bob Fenner> Thank you, Sarayut Klang.

Re: WWF/WWM2 costs ><Zo, a note re costs. Though it is a long-term dream to actually pay > us for our time, I want to offer what funds that do come WWM's way to pay our > hard costs. Nothing hard yet! :) The DSL line that runs the WWNews, talk.wetwebfotos, and www.wetwebfotos is only $50/month, and I also run my personal website, and Christine's website from there, so I'm more than happy to share. Until talk.WWF and WWF/WWM2 really take off, this cheap, flexible bandwidth is serving our needs just fine! > Towards this ends, please send along a note/bill for registration, > server time, gear, what have you. Well, I forwarded you the invoice for the WWM registration, but the 'server time' is really just that DSL line, and the hardware is pretty much all scavenged from discarded remnants generated from upgrading other machines. Eventually (one day soon?) when we begin work on WWF/2 in earnest - then we'll need some new hardware to store all those images. (I foggily recall many, many long discussions regarding this) <<Do keep me/us appraised of this potentially and actually... we're saving up for now... our "costs" have been minimal... our income/WWX not much either... but, the future!>> >Otherwise, do look to the dates upcoming >for the Interzoo at least (next May) and come out to the trade with >us if you have interest (then diving in the Red Sea after). Bob F> Now that, I'm interested in. We'll see. In a way, Hawaii is my first choice of destination, due to mild homesickness: but I've never been to the Middle East - Christine would just die to visit Egypt, etc. <<We do go to HI a few times a year... so a co-trip is definitely in our futures... and do keep planning for this May. Bob F> -Lorenzo

scanning, wetwebfotos Gentlemen, <"You talking to me?" Doing his best Taxi Driver impersonation.) How goes the scanning?  <Everyday more and more...> I'm anxious to reinvigorate development/interest in WetWebFotos.  <Me too> Overtime at work has suddenly been cut to 50 hours/week maximum, so I find myself with time to work on the stuff I actually care about - a nice change, even if the money will suck. <There is more to life... don't try explaining this to others that are driven by material wealth, or hunger, desire for utilities...> Last night, for the first time in several weeks, I actually did some coding on WWFotos - it was pretty fun, though I didn't implement any new features. I did make several performance enhancements, and migrated the whole package over to my Linux server - a little painful, since it was running on Win2k before and I ran into some unexpected incompatibilities with the database. <Hmm> My next focus with WWM is to integrate with the chat forums, so users don't have to log-in twice. That will definitely appeal to our current forum users, and I think the forum software is REALLY rather nice, I'd hate to write all that functionality from scratch! <Don't even get me started... can barely turn the gear on> Then I want to build a thumbnail/image mirror system, so our thumbnail and medium-res images can reside on multiple, dispersed servers. This will allow us to use cheap (or even free, -JasonC) ISPs to handle our heaviest traffic, the image browsing. Then we can keep the actual server on the DSL line, where we have the ability to cheaply build huge amounts of storage for the full-resolution scans. The WWFotos software is basically ready to handle this - I just need to contrive a way of automatically distributing the photos to the other servers. <Okay> We will still realistically, need some HTML-savvy volunteers to move/copy content from WWM to WWFotos - I hope to drum up some folks from the forums. <And I'll post this here and there to see if some such savvy recruits are forthcomingable> Regarding a trip to SD to hang out, do some tech'ing, and discuss the future of the WetWeb enterprise, I'm definitely keen on such! But ticket prices for a three day weekend (Thur night - Sun night) are in the high four hundred $ range, which I think is a little unreasonable for a 3 day jaunt. And unfortunately 3 days is about all I can muster right now. <No worries. I'll gladly spend the money> All right - back to the grind! I want to leave work a little early today to work on the computer I'm building for my dad! -Lorenzo <Be seeing you, Bob F>

tee-totalling ><No worries Zo... can get you one of Di's Boca Burgers, a Seven up and a plane tkt> Hey, if you're buying the plane ticket, I'm THERE. Seriously though, I should consider coming down for an extended weekend or something. I could use a good, short, semi-working vacation, after that grueling two weeks in Utah! <Consider it/the tkt done... we/I have just been accumulating the big moolah from WWM (well the first paycheck... some forty dollars, we drank at Callahans... but that was before we met you!. Anyhow, no real work, please, but do come around and we'll pal about for a day or two. Bob F> -Lorenzo

use of pics Bob, Hi, it's Randy at Marine Center-- one of your (larger size ad) advertisers. I recently came across a commercial site that was using your pics (the ones we've been receiving recently) and it has me wondering if you're allowing this sort of use or not? <Hmm, thanks for this Rand. The answer is no... not for commercial purposes. Who is this outfit?> I assume your pics are not intended for commercial use? If you're cool with that, I should be using them myself. I am very much opposed to using images without permission and didn't know your policy there. Thank you, Randy Walker The Marine Center <Appreciate your input, and candor... will notify whoever this is... if you folks would like to use a few images please do so, giving credit to WWM... and if you have a like/need for something in particular, please send them along. If you wanted a whole bunch (dozens, hundreds, thousands) of images we can talk. Bob Fenner>

RE: WWM issues input/help Hi Bob, Well, now that you've asked for suggestions - please take or toss my suggestions as you please. Strongly suggest the following addition to your daily emails: copyright notificiation: This should be embedded in the photo if possible, definitely added as the final text of your email too. <Hmm> blind cc to everyone on your email list; sometimes people are picky about having their eddresses listed for the public <Usually do so if I think it may offend...> A signature byline that minimally contains a link to your website. Until now I'm not sure that I had the URL. For example, Bob Fenner the coolest and most intelligent fish guy in the world (I'm sure that Diana will be able to help you define an appropriate tag line) www.wetwebmedia.com copyright 2001, All Rights Reserved BTW: Please Keep those pics coming. For me it's a daily motivation. <Why is it that such good ideas seem so simple and straightforward once you realize them. Thank You Mel, Bob F> TTFN, Melissa Ford

Images, writing, books I would like to purchase some photos for our website and for full color mouse pads we are going to be giving away as promotions. How much? <Ah! A sale! Hmm... depends on application, number of images, number of imprints. On the low end, for hundreds of images, ten dollars a pop... for spiffier uses (like print ads)upwards of two hundred dollars each. Let's chat this over at your leisure, but quick (bunches going on, but can stand the work), and I'll get these to you ASAP> Also, how much would a monthly news letter be for our website? <How long a piece? With graphics? Two hunded dollars about...> I will be ordering some books this week. Where do they ship from? <Will send this msg. along to Diana for her input... could be from SD (as in FOB Mira Mesa), or NJ... Thanks for the interest. Bob Fenner> Thanks, Todd

RE: Scanned Images sent to you, request to add URL to Links. Dear Mr Fenner, At last I have started work on your picture files. I am very sorry it took me this long to get back to it. <No worries, believe me. I have a keen appreciation for how much work all this entails... have a thousand or so images on my light tables from the last few weeks diving in Redang, Malaysia and Gili Air, Lombok, Indonesia... lots to do> I am happy to see we can use a lot of them in FishBase because for some we only have b/w or dead specimen as photo in the database at the moment.  <And, please don't be annoyed, I have many, many more to send you... as time permits and I have opportunity to look over what fishbase.org has posted, what I can offer you> I have an excel file here of the first 40 files I have entered in FishBase. You may want to provide the localities and dates for your underwater shots to complete the record, if these information are available.  <Yes, that will be fine. Much of this is recorded on the slide mount, as well as size, sex if known...> I can guess the country for most of your suffixes but it is safer to just let you provide me with the meaning. I hope I guess right that the files with 'aq' as suffix mean this is an aquarium shot (for some it is obviously an aquarium shot but in others, they look much like an underwater photo). <Yes, you are correct on both accounts> I will continue work on your photos in the following days and will be sending you more excel files later. <Sounds great, fun> Thank you very much for all your contribution. Best regards, Aque <Mabute, my friend. Thank you and your fine organization for the tremendous help you grant me, others, and the good work you do helping inform others as to ultimate size, foods/feeding, habitat, reproductive behavior, distribution, for many species the physical/chemical water quality of their native waters... of fishes. Bob Fenner>

On Bob Fenner Lorenzo says: <He'll be very glad to hear it. He's a pretty awesome guy. EXTREMELY friendly, amenable, even if his email replies seem 'short' ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ sometimes, it's because he gets around 30-40 questions a day...> ~~~~~~~~~~ His responses seem short?? Never!! (Short implies to me abrupt or even rude) Occasionally, to me, a bit cryptic. <Perhaps intentional/ly? Nah! Bob Fenner> --Jane J a faithful reader and conscientious wannabe :-) occasionally confused <A good state of being>

WWM2 issues <Okay... have looked this tool/universe over and it is fab! Now, where do we go from here Lor? Hire Christine, others to upload all we got? Gimme a sign o' lord of code! Bob F.> Upload all we got? Hmm. If you say so. ? In one way, and we'll discuss that now, we're not ready to start putting zillions of photos into the system - it doesn't yet handle the 'full-resolution' version. Obviously, if we go ahead with the current thumbnail/medium-res setup, and in the future we wish to allow/sell downloads of full-res TIFFs, those images would have to be 'back-populated' to any low-res images already catalogued. Or we can finish the hi-res support first (even if we don't necessarily make the images available - merchant/credit card support is a whole 'nuther issue) - but then when we do finish a pay-to-play system for the hi-res stuff, the images are already in the system. (It'll be nice to have a merchant setup for books and stuff too, though) <Enzo, you're frightening me... am starting to understand what you're stating....> For now though, it's your call, actually. The utility of merely cataloguing the images for easy searching and reference can only be judged by you - the owner of the vast majority of the images we'll be hosting. If somebody finds an image they wish to purchase/license on the site, they can refer to it by 'ID' - and you can look it up on the site as well, and pull the actual scan or transparency, and do the deal manually. <Do understand this... a/the consideration foremost in my mind is making some of this "pay" as in monetary terms to hire a competent person to do the input/cataloging... Christine is my/our top candidate at this point... as you, Mike, I are "all full up" schedule/time wize.> It's also possible to do a mix of both worlds - email: "We recieved your payment (or you have an actual account) Thank You! Here is the encoded URL to download (as many times as necessary) the full-res image from the site" <This is best... Like Corbis and other e-tailing svc.s in the photo-bank biz> Many internet-distributed commercial software packages are done this way. <Ah, yes> Still, I suspect that many 'real' publications will want to do their own scan, or will want a high-res CMYK/SWOP TIFF. Maybe they're accepting RGB scans with an ICC profile these days I don't know... it's been awhile since I was involved. <The real big (and small) outfits do commonly want the originals... or a labs good drum scans... at about 82 megs per two by... a workable system can be devised for trafficing this work...> In other news - I'm having a DSL line installed in addition to my cable modem. The DSL people advertise that users are free to run services from the dedicated IP address provided. We'll be able to use that connection to provide/test the site to a much, much larger audience... Also - I can instruct the site to encode the 'static' image addresses to another server completely. Thus all the 'pretty pictures' used for decoration etc, (not part of the the database) can be pulled from the WetWebMedia.com server - saving mucho bandwidth on my own pipeline, to allow for more user traffic yet. In fact - we may be able to get away with this for quite awhile, depending on the traffic we're expecting. <Uh, okay, lost again... basically... this means we can test run WWM2 from your site/residence?> Any thoughts from the gang? -Lorenzo <Just the usual basics... what to do on non-Lor's end now? Who's going to do it? How are we going to make this activity pay? Bob Fenner, who needs to get into some warm, clear water quick!>

WWM2 update. Woah. The Taxonomy Browser is done. It is SO COOL. If you're logged in as Admin, you can use it to add/edit/delete nodes throughout the tree. If you're just a 'user' you can use the tree to drill down from Kingdom to Species, with everything in between, with short descriptions of each node. http://wwm.lorenzo.dnsalias.net/servlets/WWMHomeServlet <Yeeikes, nice> Select 'Taxonomy Browser' from the left navbar. If you have an admin login/password, try that out too. Obviously the tree is not populated below Phyla... I have neither the knowledge (or the time to attain it) to do too much with this feature myself. (Of course, if I get a copy of the Fishwatcher's Guide, I could put it to good use here...uh, actually, all programmers HATE data entry.) <What's your address Lor? Have all the copies here in the living room... > Anyway, this is a REALLY cool feature - I'm excited. There are still a couple of useful things on the Admin side of it I could do, and other than drilling all the way to Species, it doesn't link to anything else within the site. (Once you're down to Species, you can jump to the full species description, which would also include any photos linked to that species) I'd like to be able to link articles/FAQs (which I haven't even touched yet) and even photographs, to any node within the tree, and have a dynamically generated list of such appear at the bottom of the tree, as you walk through the nodes. <Yes, of course> Because this is such a GREAT way of enforcing data integrity/taxonomic fidelity, the tree is now the only way to add/edit the Taxonomy of the site (other than jumping to 'edit' directly from a Species page.) <Yes again... this is how all my analog files, computer/database, Frontpage navigation view data are arranged... re-inforcing? You bet.> Now, my thoughts on some other topics: Photos: - Why all the same size(kb)? Are they all uncompressed TIFF?  <yes> You should start using LZW compression. The algorithm is totally loss-less, near universally supported, and will save considerable disk space. <Uh, never heard of such... and not a "designator" on my cheapy earliest model of HP Photosmart scanner... While we're here, what sort of slide scanner do you, your fellow gurus suggest... Am past ready to upgrade> - If you don't want to do the full-res TIFF directly off the website, we won't need anywhere near the 10+ gigs you mentioned. Downsampled JPEGs (to say, 300x200 or so) will look very, VERY nice, and I can setup Photoshop or similar to batch process these... obviously, having the full TIFF available via credit card... that would be ideal. <Ah, good, but this is still a couple of orders of magnitude more than we currently have (rent a hundred megs a month)... where are we storing this?> Logistics: - You mentioned that we should already be 'looking for a home' for the site? What exactly do you mean? Do you have ideas already? Other than the RAQs at DataPipe, I haven't seen much too worthwhile. The nice thing about the RAQs is we can start with a smaller one, and add additional, larger ones, if necessary (if lucky!). The difficult thing is, I really need a full Linux or other Unix server, so the cheap-o Windows hosts won't do. :-( <Agreed> - Do we have hope of real commercial sponsorship for WWM? (Aside from photo sales revenue?) I'd sure like the hosting costs to be covered, at least. (Though I'll contribute to hosting fees myself, if necessary) <Yes, real hope... the industry is not "new" or "push-sensitive/labile"... as your fields of expertise... Trust me, I do know what I'm talking about here... will take some time (months) to massage FFE, manufacturers, others into more or less full revenue from this aspect... but will come> - FishBase has some pretty decent academic/government support, don't they? Or do we wanna 'keep this in the family' - private/commercial? <Yes, ICLARM is great... and am a collaborator... You will see my images, links back to WWM there soon> Sleep: - I gotta go get some. Peace, -Z- <See you soon my friend. Bob Fenner>

WWM daily broadcast Bob, I just got back from Yuma, to much of a good time. I need to go back to work so I can recover. I think it is a good idea to set up some type of service on the WWM which will e-mail people to let them know of updates or new calendars. I will look at FP2K as I think it has that feature in it somewhere. See you at the run tomorrow. Mike <With Zo's help (still out there with "Mini" Perl?), want to develop "the five top FAQs of day, pic and Sponsor" to e-broadcast to folks who have given us the go ahead daily... and calendars monthly... or at least at sample and link of/to same. Bob Fenner>

WWM Photos & Webpage Bob gesagt: <Guess we should have some sort of indelible encryption... folks in the supposed know say so...> Hmmm. yessss. The infamous, visually undetecable, multi-generation indelible, digital watermark... (lifts one eyebrow, scrunches nose and scratches chin) there are a couple of ways to accomplish this. I'll look into it for best-practices/automation. <<And I'll go with what you proscribe...>> <Man, let's go diving and celebrate... I am ready, make that way past due... Will be sending you some CDs of images tomorrow...> Ahhh. heh. I'll celebrate when the site is publicly unveiled. Besides, ya don't have to have a special occasion to go dive!? (Maybe I'd better start certification classes, there's a school right around the corner) <<What? Okay on the middle and get going on the last>> Can't wait to get those CDs. Perhaps by next week we'll suddenly have a start on those 'zillions' of photos we keep talking about... I gotta take a digital camera down to Tropicorium next weekend. -Lorenzo <<Say hello to Dick Perrin for me. Discs today. Bob F>>

WWMedia database Bob, Do you anticipate having a handful of potential usage/licensing agreements for photographs/media purchased online? Or would you rather just a searchable database for now, with contact information...? <The latter for sure> Work is progressing smoothly. I'll be sending you guys a URL for perusing/testing by the end of the weekend... <Looking forward to seeing, trying it... and hopefully understanding more of what the potential, actuality is here> How come I haven't heard from Mike but once, briefly? Power outages got you guys diverting power from PCs to airstones? <Hah! Don't know... he lives here in town (San Diego). Will send this along, encourage his communication... He and I are off to Fry's today (more computer shopping!), so will mention> Thanks, Lorenzo, in freezing Michigan, far, far away from the warm homeland... (Hawaii) <Ah, whereabouts in HI? Go there a few times a year m'self... The weather was so bunk here last night, I had the dogs in... had to put a tee shirt on this AM! Be chatting, Bob F>

WetWebMedia, the stock photo database. Dear Dr. Fenner, <just call me bob> - hehe - knew you were gonna say that... <It is, after all, my name> First, thanks for everything you do. You've greatly helped myself, my wife, even my five-year-old son, and obviously many, many others - with your excellent advice, and Mother Theresa/Ghandi-esque attitude toward the dissemination of trustworthy information into the hobby we know and love. In my opinion, your attitude toward the hobbyist and your care for the environment we admire/study/pilfer, is actually more inspiring than your depth of aquatic husbandry knowledge! In our household, we refer to 'The CMA' and 'Fenner's Web site' in our daily conversations. (I wrote that popular review of CMA on Amazon.com some time ago). <Ah, twicely honoured> I spent $30 on your book. The further information I've gleaned from WetWebMedia.com is easily worth another $30. Where do I send my check? <Consider yourself billed> I mean that. <I as well> Now, enough stroking... (you deserve it, all... but just how much can one man take, right?) :-) <Indeed> On with the actual purpose of my email. In your daily posts, you recently mentioned your desire to build/operate or otherwise benefit from an online catalog/commerce site of your photography. <Yes, a need to sponsor the building and maintaining of the site...> I'm also a photographer (amateur, really), and my wife is an avid student of photography at the local community college. (Beside her University undergrad work in Anthropology, but I digress) <Finally! Help from folks in the know!> When I'm not dreaming of raising massive Tridacnas and selling them on eBay, I am actually, by profession, a software developer. A web/database/ecommerce programmer, to be precise - and currently consulting to the largest B2B exchange ever seen on the face of this planet (in the last two years that such B2B things have actually existed.) Think "Big 3 Automotive Suppy Chain". <I'm with you so far...> Anyway. What about that online database of Fenner Fotos? (FennersFotos.com?) Searchable by description, keyword, category [fish/inverts/beaches/volcanos/native-girls-in-grass-skirts], color content, species, genera, family, order, whatever-bob-ate-for-lunch, and easily browsable by thumbnail - online - in realtime? Of course, with shared image resources linked to the aquarist FAQ's/articles, creating a fishbase style resource... oooh. The possibilities... <Yes! And now, don't tease me... lead me to believe I can "Gore"/will this technology into being... are you and Billy G./Corbis in cahoots or...?> Would you offer medium-res, watermarked, 'FPO' images instantly downloadable? <Hope my keyboard's waterproof as I'm drooling onto it...> Immediate, online delivery of high-res scans? Transparencies (or copy-slides) available by special arrangement? One shot - punch in a credit card/choose a shipper/pay tax in California? Or a more exclusive, arranged memberships/account basis? <First born or will you take my dogs?> That's a lot of work. And a lot of upkeep. And an unusually large webhosting arrangement. (well, for a petfish operation) But exactly HOW MUCH work (startup), depends on the state of your data. And exactly what you want to accomplish/offer. Or how many 'phases' of features and content you're willing to evolve through. And how much bandwidth/storage you can afford. (upkeep) <Have a good friend who helps me with the appearance and functionality of the WWM site, have tens of thousands of transparencies (and hundreds of hours of u/w video, but now we're getting ahead of ourselves, some organization, scans of two by twos... need to organize same to send off to fishbase as a collaborator... And can "buy" back friend/Mike's time (ah, another Catch-22) with income from image sales... to speed up same> But the biggest question definitely regards the current state of your data. If it's 500 pounds of 35mm transparencies in various dusty cardboard boxes with vague, magic-marker-scribble labels... that's one thing. (doubtful - you're a professional, and a scientist, right?) <Through some wrangling of definitions, yes> If it's tagged, catalogued, sorted, described... or, best of all, already in an electronic 'album' or media portfolio management database, with scans, and an 'export data...' feature - that's something else entirely. You'd be well on your way to web-enabling your portfolio and your stock photography business. <Yes, a few thousands of scans done... and many, many more to be, placed on WWM...> And I'd love to help. If nothing else, I can teach/inform you of the scope/nature/requirements/facilities of the undertaking. But I could also program the whole thing, from scratch, in my free time. <Yikes, are you sure? Quite a commitment... and a dream> The only economic gain I'd be seeking would be tangential. You see, programmers (good ones, anyway) look for this kind of project all the time - it means a lot on the psyche/soul/ego... resume, whatever. :-) <I understand> And maybe when we're done, you'd send me a spare baby Tridacna Squamosa to test out my DIY calcium reactor... <Done> So? Sincerely, Lorenzo Gonzalez <How do we proceed? Bob Fenner>

Re: WetWebMedia, the stock photo database. Herr Fenner gefragt: <Where do we go from here...> You start thinking about the database fields you'd like to see indexing each photograph/media object. You might browse some of the online photo commercial databases to get some ideas. Think about how people would search/browse the photos... <Have been doing this "just browsing" and dreaming about how WWM might be able to offer similar services for years.> Just for example: General Content/Type[fish/invert/beach scene/aquarium/person/aerial/etc] Species (each photo could include multiple organisms, or none) Media Type [35mm/4x5 trans/digital/Hi8/16mm/etc.] Location [Maldives/Gulf of M./Hawaii/Red Sea...] Description ["Underwater sunrise on the Great Barrier"] Photographer ["You never know... you could become a specialty agency"] Price? <Inexpenisive!> Availability/Usage/Contract types? <The whole mix of markets... end user up to whole pages of ads!!!> Those are just to get your wheels turning (which they probably always are, but you get my drift) For the enumerated types, also dream up the possible items - the list is never final, but it helps me get an idea for the data requirements. Some of these fields would only be used to 'narrow' a result set, others would be queried when the user types a keyword into a 'quicksearch' box... <I think I understand> Then, I'll want to know more about your current collection. I could just setup a facility for you to add photos and punch in data one at a time. But if you already have data in a computer format, that is somehow referenced to the filenames of your scans, and we can access that data in a tabular format, we'll be way ahead of the game. And what about watermarking? It's your decision, a light-contrasting 'FPO' diagonally across the center of the image? Or a discreet, contrasting, 'Copyright 1998 Robert Fenner' in the bottom corner? An indelible/invisible 'digital signature' in each image file? <Have heard of such... and given to consider that such "marking" is easily defeated... But will take your lead here. Do have tiff scans at 2.3megs each for the most part... and able (groan) to re-scan... with logical systematic organization by family etc... and scientific names... and suffixes for location/source... and sometimes pertinent info. like sex, size, vertical (as in orientation)...> Also start thinking in more detail (brainstorm/fantasy-type stuff) of what you'd REALLY like to offer, in the way of web-based services and integration with WWM. Will you want an independent URL for the photolib? <Umm, don't know enough to have an opinion here... Want to introduce you to Mike Kaechele, friend who helps part time with the looks, functionality of the site... will cc' him here and ask that he respond to you/us> How about an 'Aquarium Log' for individual hobbyists test results/notes, etc? They could compare them to current/ongoing averages for similar tank types, graph their test results over time... build a small 'homepage' with a lo-res photo and short system description, like the 'About Me' on eBay and Amazon... dang - it could be like 'distributed research' with the aggregate hobbyist data! (wooh!) Finally, we'd know the true cause of Marine Ich! <Yikes... see above, sounds great> For my part, I'll be researching the hosting situation (Do you have a decent relationship with you current service? If they're good, within budget, and offer the extended facilities we'll need, we could just stay there.) <Seem like nice people. Were with an outfit here in San Diego for a couple of years, but not very customer service oriented (and I don't know much...), so found the NJ folks... reasonable, competent, their servers are up most of the time...> Hosting for this endeavor (if I'm going to be designing/coding it) will require Java Servlets and JSP, and database connectivity (MySQL/PostGres would be fine) and enough disk space to handle the jillions of thumbnails/FPO's/video clips you'll want to put up there. You could hold off on the direct hi-res downloads, for economical reasons, until you determine you have the demand/income to pay for the bandwidth/storage space this functionality will consume. <Hmm, take a look at "their" site: datapipe.com... lots of acronyms, arcane terminology there for sure.> I'm sure you're wondering how much it will cost. For my part - nothing - I'll gain plenty, like I said, from the non-monetary residuals. But the hosting will not be free. (I noticed your 'more bandwidth than we can usually afford' comment) We will almost certainly need to host the site on an 'unlimited throughput' service. They're not GROSSLY expensive, but I haven't priced one recently... maybe talk to your HTML friend (Mike? we could certainly utilize his help) and your ISP. See what they have to say about all this. <And have fun to boot I'll wager... Mike?> We need: 100+ Megs storage (upgradeable along the way? Think Gigs, for hi-res...) -Unlimited- monthly bandwidth Java Servlets and/or JSPs SQL Database (MySQL/PostGres/Oracle/Sybase/whatever) <Again, Mike and datapipe...> I'm confident these facilities can be had for well under $200 per month. Or less for less. Like we might be able to get away with 50MB-storage and 1GB throughput for the first couple of months. And we can certainly prototype/host on my personal system on my cable modem at home, until we're ready to 'Go Live' ! Oh yeah, we could also setup the email/FAQ subscription list that another reader mentioned... :-) Best Regards, Lorenzo Gonzalez Covisint Construct Team Great Lakes Technologies Group <Many, may possibilities. A dream unfolds. Bob Fenner>

Re: WetWebMedia, the stock photo database. Hi everyone. Regarding the TIFFs, no need to rescan, nor to rename - but there will certainly be a LOT of data entry, from the sounds of it... 2.3MB images, even if it's compressed TIFF, is not high enough for a glossy mag cover. I'm sure you could recruit many friends/volunteers to help with data entry, especially if the file names are already a good start. <Agreed... am looking at hiring a friend to clean, scan (with a newer than my HP PhotoSmart... suggestions here... Nikon upgrade was what I've been looking into... re-do of all (yeeikes for sure)... and...> Also, I can certainly run them all through a convert/resize utility to prepare everything for the web, generating JPG thumbnails and medium-res images. If your scans are all this small, you won't really be able to sell 8x10 print-ready straight off the web site, at least not initially. The 2.3MB scans are probably big enough for half-page, though, and you could certainly price them with that in mind. (I won't really get into pricing with you, it's your artistic/intellectual property here) <Thank goodness to the automation possibilities you mention... what output size, resolution do you think is best? TIFFs are my fave for print work... and are the highest/best starting format to change to... as far as I know. The pricing? Maybe mimic Corbis, others?> Regarding hosting, looks like datapipe and hispeedhosting are the same company, or one is a reseller. Their websites are weird clones... that happens a lot these days. <Yes> They have that dedicated RAQ machine I mentioned previously, and it's expensive, so we'll have to think about that. In the meantime, there are certainly other options - I have a friend hosting his site with a less expensive company that offers all we need, but transferring companies is NEVER fun. Best to find what we really want in the first place, or stick with what we know (datapipe). The basics on these other guys are 200MB disk space, 10GB/month bandwidth, for only $35 a month, including the Java and database software we'd need. Not as flexible, nor as roomy as a 'dedicated server' but much, MUCH cheaper... the technical folks that might be on the CC here might check it out: internetplanners.com - not as slick as datapipe, more bargain-basement looking (and pricing) <Okay, will ask> I look forward to hearing Mike's (and everyone else on the CC list!) thoughts on all this! <Me too, hello out there!> Time for me to start prototyping... Yours in pet fish, (even digital ones) -Lorenzo <Much to digest,(urp), Bob>

more on web ventures... Bob, Your current ISP (hispeedhosting of New Jersey) offers the Cobalt Raq, a slimline, individually 'owned' webserver hardware. It's $199 a month for 80GB transfer, 10GB disk space, and very high speed, dedicated connection and CPU time. That's enough server to actually 'resell' web access (I'd even buy a share, say $50/month, for Christine's personal websites), and I think we could possibly put together enough of a 'WOW!' website that you could easily sell ad space to the industry. In fact, I could see you needing to upgrade to a bigger Raq system in the future. <How's that song go, "I'm over my head,(refrain), But it sure feels good"?> FennerFotos.com - (or whatever) Indexed/Searchable/Purchasable stock photography and video. <Ye...sss> WetWebMedia.com - Aquatic Hobby Industry News and Business information The 'Bob Fenner Article Archive and FAQs' The 'Ask Bob' mailing list Hobbyist 'homepages' Online Aquarium Log with analysis and raw data export Public discussion board DIY Library with links and user contributed plans And, the obligatory links to other resources <Parts of this already doing... and disc. bd... bits are easy to pre-done I hope/trust> Okay. I'm going to think about the details/architecture for a while... Yours, -Lorenzo <Though I had the big dreams, man oh man. Bob Fenner>

Re: WetWebMedia, the stock photo database. Mike schreibt: >... don't have much experience with database configuration or >programming so I can't give an educated opinion on any of the ideas  >put forth. Mike, Sure you can! Don't worry too much about the low-level details re: the programming and database design - you can contribute MUCH along the lines of usability, layout and screen design, important pieces of data that should be saved with each entry, etc. >I am willing and eager to learn though, and I look forward to being >of any assistance in the evolution of the Wetwebmedia website... In my professional opinion, you've been doing an -awesome- job with the current generation of WetWebMedia, and will have a LOT to contribute to any designs, now and forever. Surely there are little things you 'wished' you could do - "oh, if only we could work it this way" - "it'd be so nice to be able to offer X service"... "I wish it looked like this, but I can't get it to do that". Those are the things we need, and whomever has been maintaining and growing the site all this time, is best positioned to contribute all that stuff! Not to mention inputting and cataloging all the content generated by Bob and any other 'collaborators/contributors'. I don't know what you do for a living, but believe me, web design and programming is a very, Very, VERY lucrative business! You'll learn a LOT by contributing to the evolution of WetWebMedia... Because there is a considerable amount of work to do on the 'back-end', I'll be leaning on you to do the 'public side' - the UI. (User interface). I'll put forth working - but ugly - data interface screens, and you'll be able to take them from there to integrate them with the rest of the site! That's just one example of how the team/collaboration can work. As you get more experienced with whatever technology we end up using, you'll be able to start implementing more and more of the 'back-end'- the stuff that talks to the database. I'm still hoping we can find an ISP that provides JSP (Java Server Pages), as well as servlets. You'll find JSPs are, in their simplest uses, very, very easy to understand, if you've been editing HTML (by hand) for a little while. If we can't get a decent JSP provider, we'll have to go with WebMacro, which is wonderful, and similarly easy to work with, but not nearly as widely used/accepted - I try to avoid such 'non-standard' programming practices wherever possible. It keeps the future a little more 'open'. I'll be putting up a very, very basic, 'skeletal' version of some of this stuff within a few days. When It's available, I'll let everyone know how to get to it. Let's keep the dialog going... -Lorenzo <You're pumping us up my friend. Bob Fenner, still adding files, links, new material... the next several years.>

digital watermarking Pathetic. Digital watermarks are -pathetic-. I'm really rather disappointed. The DigiMarc plugin in Photoshop didn't survive a simple scaling and JPEG compression operation, despite their claims it could scale up and down, and compress, and survive. Kinda Lame. Kinda snake oil. <Like Weiss products?> Photoshop puts a (c) copyright symbol on the title bar of a 'marked' image. Actually - it works pretty well at very high resolutions. With 5 megabyte files, you can do all kinds of stuff, rotate, scale (a bit), some minor filtration (ie dust & scratches) and such, and the watermark remains. As soon as you scale down to web-resolution, and save as JPEG, the watermark vanishes. I don't know. I guess you can decide if you want to watermark the images. The DigiMarc plugin (free 'test' version in Photoshop) is the only one I tested. The other watermark technologies on the market are geared more toward Paramount, Sony, Atlantic, etc. ($$$) <<Overall my opinion had been pretty laissez faire on the watermark issue... can be, or all would eventually likely be defeatable... the added size, loss of feature flexibility, costs... >> http://www.digimarc.com/mcregistration/pricing.asp?pc=IB&action=I DigiMarc registration is $2,500 per year, for 25k-50k images. There's a whole pricing matrix at the above URL. What a racket. <<Agreed>> These people have discovered similar ease of 'erasing' a digital watermark: http://wdvl.com/Authoring/Graphics/Theft/unprotect.html http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/fapp2/steganography/image_watermarking/stirmark/ http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/fapp2/steganography/image_watermarking/unzign/ I say, just deface the file a little bit, and keep the public accessable files fairly low-res. Big deal. Maybe I should write an open-source (free speech) watermarking algorithm in my spare time... what spare time? -Lorenzo <<Agreed, and agreed. Bob>

Re: WWM Photos & Webpage Folks, A surprise update on WWM2 ?! (wwm.dnsalias.net) <Yay!> Image upload has been streamlined in a BIG way. Populating the mega-zillions of FennerFotos (and others!) into the system just got much, much easier. Publishers/Admins may now upload TIFF, JPEG, BMP or PNG images in a 'single' step - which is to say: The system can directly read the above formats, and will now automatically generate the medium-resolution 'preview' image, and the accompanying thumbnail. <Amazing...> You can specify how large/fine you want the public preview image to be. You can input a copyright message and select font size/text location - the system will place this message on the generated medium-res JPEG file. (The thumbnails are so small that any message is illegible) The full-resolution file is saved as-is, and is not currently publicly inaccessable. I guess it doesn't sound like much, but the fact that you don't have to annotate and scale two additional files after scan/prep - is a HUGE timesaver. <Ah, yes... perhaps a life saver... mine!> Any further ideas along these lines? (I was thinking maybe an optional 'FPO' faded-watermark across the middle of the preview image? Not too easy, but certainly possible) <Guess we should have some sort of indelible encryption... folks in the supposed know say so...> Next on the horizon, a password/secret URL system that lets image owners specify a password to allow customers/others to download a given full-resolution image. (This is a stop-gap between full payment/contract ecommerce automation) <Yikes, think I'm starting to actually understand you!> -Lorenzo ps. Bob, across my 100baseT home network, the upload/scaling/annotation process takes about 18 seconds for an 8MB TIFF to arrive fully available on the website! <Wowzah, that's quick...> ps. Mike - the new look/feel on WetWebMedia.com is an AWESOME improvement. And the Google search is SUPER cool! <Man, let's go diving and celebrate... I am ready, make that way past due... Will be sending you some CDs of images tomorrow and a go at describing how their "tax-ed" out on my filing systems. Bob F.>

WWM(2) Photo Pages >What we really want to do is have a "Corbis.com" "other" or  >"sub-web" >Lorenzo Gonzales, where are you!?), got a program for sale for same? Hi guys. Sorry about my recent silence. I haven't been able to work on WWM2 for a couple of weeks now, and believe me, it's killing me! (Not just the 14 hour days, but the fact that they keep me from my HOBBIES) Believe me, doing water changes for a mere 200 gallons of home mini-reef is really, REALLY tedious at the end of a 12 hour programming day! <Thank someone you're still out there! Lor, tried to show the WWM2 site to a few folks... and it wouldn't come up... sure you've got much more going on, and on your home machines than this project...> BUT! An end to all this madness is in sight. I'll be contributing to WWM2 again this weekend! And... Bob, maybe send me a CD of scans? <Yes! Please send me an address to mail to... do you want a particular group... All marines?....> We've discussed this briefly in the past - how to deal with your massive library... can you burn a CD that is representative of one or two directory 'trees'? (Family? Genera? I don't know what the load is, where the 650MB of a CD breaks down, -without- totally hacking up the natural directory structure of your photos - that would mess me up.) <Sort of understand the above... and would really like to ask a mundane, but question that has been driving me batty for ages... How to print the "directory" like what you see on Windows in "Explorer"... the flowery vers. that MS gives really looks odd in print and the good ole "Alt Prt Scr" doesn't go at all.... Could send you my tax. outline (it is logical... a reflection of current references...)> The point is, I'd like to see if I can finagle a workable 'bulk-upload' procedure that would allow us to move many, many pictures in FAST, with only basic cataloguing (via your file/directory structure), then further catalog/describe them as we have time... <No worries here Enzo... much to all's dismay and joy, all existing scans really should be redone... On the new Nikon (out 3/15, beware the Ides of March...) Slide Scanner product... at whatever specified size, format, dpi we settle on... be thinking about this puhleeze!> In any case, I'm getting the idea I should move the 'photo-library' features toward the front of the priority list.. eh? WWM1 is working quite nicely for articles/FAQs... for now. ;) <YES! Or please, please tell Bob where he can buy a complete "fool's edition" (something as simple, limited as FP...) of "How to be in the automated image selling biz on the net w/o any computer skills whatsoever"...> Yours in petfish (And webdesign), - Lorenzo Felipe PeBenito Gonzalez (please, call me 'Zo') :-) <Hotay Zo. Bo(b)zo Fenner>

WWM Photo Page What is the WetWebMedia Photo page about? Is this a place for magazines, etc. to view your photos before they buy them? It seems like a pretty nice site, but I do not understand its purpose separate from the main page. Thank You, Steven Pro <Thanks for this Steve... Believe this is an artifact of some previously not-so-well thought out idea of what we might do to showcase our image catalog... for wowing/zowing folks as well as generating photograph work/sales... What we really want to do is have a "Corbis.com" "other" or "sub-web" with about 25k images on it so interested folks can peruse all at their leisure and auto-download, pay with credit cards, pre-arranged terms... and go on continuous photo and adventure dive trips... a few more years of aquarium installs and maintenance and you'll certainly understand. Be seeing you my friend, and again, thanks for the prompting... Miguel (my comrade in disarms here at WWM who does the looks, functionality worries), what say you? Shall we axe this part of the site? Or any of you ex Billy.G types out there (like Lorenzo Gonzales, where are you!?), got a program for sale for same? Bob Fenner>

gramma faq Hi Bob, Thanks for all of your help so far. I have an idea for you: I would be interested in subscribing to an "answers-only" list that you might cc: with answers to your faqs. Let me know if that sounds good to you, if so, I would be only so happy to help you set it up. <Hmm, well, don't mind admitting my usual ignorance! What does this actually entail?> I have the first entry for your gramma faq page: I read from your helpful gramma write-up that they are territorial animals, and need to be kept one to a tank. What isn't clear to me is whether you mean one per species to a tank or one per family to a tank: can I have a royal gramma and a blackcap basslet join my cherub angel in my 30G tank? That would be all the fish in the tank. Thanks, Paul <Better one per family in such a small volume. As you know/will know these animals display "ecoclinal variation" in their species distribution with Gramma loreto at the surface, further depths for melacara than lincki... They don't normally "socialize" spatio-temporally... and can be tremendously territorial (not always, as I'm sure some browsers will remonstrate me)... Be chatting, Bob Fenner>

Re: gramma faq Hi Robert, Sure: www.ixora.com.au is the site of the software's author. He is an oracle-ologist as opposed to an ichtyologist, but the concept is only superficially different. He is a recognized expert in his field, he answers other enthusiast's questions out of the goodness of his heart, he sorts his answers into separate subject areas, creates a web page with recent questions, and has a mailing list of subscribers to whom the answers also go. He has a page describing the concept here: http://www.ixora.com.au/q+a/index.html and in more detail here: http://www.ixora.com.au/q+a/0009/15121914.htm In any event, I'm done selling this concept! :-) Let me know if you want it done, it would take me about a week (part-time of course!) to set it up. Cheers, Paul <Yikes, will have to take a look at all this later this week... am very backed up... Do appreciate your input... Is it your impression that the site, WWM might be sustainable as a subscription based product? Am endeavoring to "sell sponsorships" as of this week (URL: www.wetwebmedia.com/sponsors.htm), and would really like the software/capabilities to offer images for sale ala Corbis... ah, dreams are made of these. Bob Fenner>

Re: gramma faq (a fate of pet fish types...) Hi Robert, I think you have a very valuable product. However, unfortunately, I think that the subscription-based model on the web has been proven to be faulty. If the New York Times can't make it work, I would be curious as to how you might.  <I concur. Did not seriously consider this as a means of making the site pay... Did so with the prospect of e-tailing (nah, too much time, work... much better things in the way, like travel...> The Wall Street Journal is still trying, but consistently losing on the online side. Sponsorship and advertising will provide revenue, but probably not enough to justify full-time involvement. I think I do know of a way to do this that would, however... and it's the model I know best. The consulting model. Hear me out: Most people who have marine tanks also have a significant budget. Many marine tanks are actually in executive offices or lobbies, etc and have a budget associated to them. If you use your site to establish and embellish your (deserved) reputation as an expert in the field, you may be able to also provide consulting services. Typical hourly rates for short-term work, such as designing a system from scratch, might range from 100-200/hr. For example, within a year I will want to design a 200G+ system for my (yet to be bought) house. I want it to be a walk-in-closet like system, and I don't want to worry about which components to buy and certainly don't want to buy the wrong ones. (My current tank is my "training" tank leading up to that one). You could sell consulting services designing the tank and selecting the devices that go along with it, based on your experience. Strange things happen when you're a selection consultant, companies suddenly start sending you free stuff for you to evaluate and consider recommending. That's just a perk, but it is fun. <Do agree with your approach, and this being a viable possibility... Did help run a corporation for nineteen years that "did" fabrication, installation of aquatic systems... and sold what was left of it more than ten years back... but, as the saying goes, "that was then..."> Moreover, the q&a business of course can provide the fodder for lots and lots of material for a new book - there is no "dummies" for marine tanks right now, for example; <There actually is... and it's not bad... The publishing angle is a great idea... wish there were more market for printed, CD, whatever media (hence our web name) in this world... a very tough part of the pet trade I assure you> I don't know if your contract precludes you from approaching another publisher. <No, and do self-publish... but there really are very few players in the real fish book publishing industry (editing, printing, binding, sales, distribution is done almost exclusively by four companies in the English language...> Regardless, I work with an author (and my partner Nicole is an editor) and I understand the difficulties in writing a book: it's not the knowledge, it's the material! Your site provides a lot of it, and it can all be repurposed. All of it will provide you with exposure for your consulting practice and royalty model. As you get busier, you can simply crank up the rate or hire staff, as appropriate for you. Hope this helps, and isn't too disappointing, Paul <To the contrary Paul, you've pumped me up appreciably and been a real friend in assessing my/the situation and granting me the tremendous benefit of your thoughts on the matter... Thank you for your consideration, and input. Will be cogitating feverishly on the same for some time to come... perhaps till I strike that deal with a "Nicole" of my future, or the new Microcosm/TFH merger starts some of my postponed titles rumbling off the presses. Thanks again. Bob Fenner>