Show HN: Profile Collage for Facebook

http://www.profilecollage.com/

by nmb • 16 years ago

77 42 16 years ago

nmb13• 16 years ago

A few friends and I made this web app yesterday (our first!) instead of studying for finals. You provide a reasonably high-quality photo, and it helps you make a Facebook profile like the ones shown on the landing page. It's definitely not everything we wish it were (due to limitations in GAE and the python Facebook API library), but we're proud of it for the amount of time it took us to make it and definitely plan to iterate on it. Let us know if you have feedback, or find this useful at all.

Thanks, Nish

mitjak2• 16 years ago

Why is that I also have the biggest urge to code something fun when the time is best used to get good grades?

ztan• 16 years ago

>Why is that I also have the biggest urge to code something fun when the time is best used to get good grades?

According to PG, "There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. ... The most dangerous form of procrastination is unacknowledged type-B procrastination, because it doesn't feel like procrastination. You're "getting things done." Just the wrong things."

I would guess coding something fun instead of doing school work falls into (b) for most people who do it. Reasons: 1) Being fun makes it easier to do. 2) If it has sufficient complexity over the school work one can rationalize to themselves that working on it is more important (for learning) than getting good grades.

full link: http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

nailer2• 16 years ago

This looked really exciting before I used it, but has taken me one hour so far, and been fairly frustrating.

First getting my eyes inside the area took a bucketload of image cropping and editing. You don't even have guidelines to help me so it was trial and error.

Then, tagging from 5 to 1 still isn't reproducing the images in order. I've tried multiple times.

BluePoints• 16 years ago

If this were automated it would be better... I agree. 2 hard to complete.

epiphany472• 16 years ago

Try the demo ui at: http://fromjeffrey.com/pc/ and see if it works better for you - supports live preview, move, rotate, and scale.

Originally we were planning Facebook integration so that we'd have one click image uploads and tagging to Facebook, but the FB API has been in flux lately so it's taken longer than expected. We're pretty happy with what we have over two nights of hacking. =]

Keep the comments coming!

nmb13• 16 years ago

Thanks for trying out our hack! I'm sorry you've experienced frustration, and as epiphany47 has posted, we are working on an interface that makes the process easier. I haven't heard of anyone else having the same tagging issue as you...in all cases that I've seen tagging from 5 to 1 works well. I'm afraid there's not much that can be done if the tagging process for your profile seems to be nondeterministic. =/

nopal• 16 years ago

If it doesn't upload the images, why does it need to connect to Facebook?

nmb13• 16 years ago

Our server load is already pretty high right now as it is, so we can't really afford to provide the service without this slight barrier.

geuis• 16 years ago

Couple of quick things.

1) You don't need permission to post to my wall or get all of my information to sample my images. I, and others, will explicitly not try this specifically for this reason. Only request the minimum of what you need.

2) Your FB Connect implementation appears to be broken. Clicking on the http://profilecollage.appspot.com/auth/login takes the user to a mostly empty page with a FB image that you have to click into again, which then takes you to the authentication page.

3) Clicking 'dont allow' on the permissions request button just keeps circling back to the request page. This should redirect somewhere else.

beaumartinez• 16 years ago

I wish I could say this to each and every Facebook app developer.

nmb13• 16 years ago

Thanks for your feedback! The elevated permissions were for features we planned but didn't implement. We have since reverted to more restricted permissions.

I and my friends are busy studying for finals, but once we have a free moment we will get to fixing the other issues too. =)

joe_the_user2• 16 years ago

I've only just begun to look at Facebook development but the Oauth part sounds like a cluster-f*ck in the making.

Even though I don't intend to be them, I sympathize with the developers who get it wrong because a hand-off from app-to-web-to-app-to-web on a poorly, inconsistent and changing platform looks hard.

bobf• 16 years ago

It would be great if you implemented a crop/preview feature, so the user could line things up properly instead of having to manually loop through editing/submiting until a decent result is achieved.

epiphany472• 16 years ago

This is Jeff from the Profile Collage dev team.

You asked for it HN, so we'll show you a preview of the upcoming UI: http://fromjeffrey.com/pc/

Features: - Live Preview - Translate (Move) - Rotate - Resize

This is 110% an alpha build and the UI def. has to be more intuitive (like rotate is based on mouse drag in X-axis, but how does the user know that??)

Uses processingjs to do the heavy lifting with PHP backend - still getting out of memory errors with large pictures, so try to start with something reasonable (IE: not 5 megapixels dimensions 2000px and smaller recommended)

Have fun and please leave comments! =D

nollidge• 16 years ago

Cool idea.

a) How robust is this to different screen resolutions? Is my grandma's 800x600 display going to be all wonky?

b) Will my avatar just be a sliver of cheek, then?

citricsquid• 16 years ago

Facebook use fixed width for profile pages.

nmb13• 16 years ago

Yep. There are actually a few cases in which our cropping algorithm will fail, but few people have complained about those cases so far. When we have more time we plan to make the algorithm more robust.

edanm• 16 years ago

Haven't tried it, planning to do so tomorrow.

One quick tip - this is an incredibly easy-to-explain and visual webapp. You have a lot of text on your home page, which can be pretty much replaced with 3 pictures. I don't know what your plan is for this, but if you want it to go viral and get lots of publicity, you'll definitely want to get rid of all the text and replace it with images.

nmb13• 16 years ago

I agree with you; my co-developers had different opinions. I think we will move to less text, more pictures, though. Thanks for your feedback!

huytoan• 16 years ago

Sorry but this app is lame compared to http://apps.facebook.com/beautyprofile/

topherjaynes• 16 years ago

Constructive comments include details, besides vague adjectives.

Your only two comments on HN are about beautyprofile. Are you involved with it? Not a good way to get PR then.

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=huytoan

anonymoushn• 16 years ago

I like how you renamed your app to http://apps.facebook.com/profilecollage/ and made your old app URL redirect there. It's very professional of you.

Timothee• 16 years ago

I really think the use of the pictures in the new profile is an interesting "hack", but I wish this was used for more than just spreading your face over them in the same way. It was a good idea to use these smaller pictures for something, now the something needs to be expanded a bit.

That being said, good job on getting something up and running that fast! It's indeed the right time to do it.

nmb13• 16 years ago

Oh yeah, I definitely agree with you. However, we only spent two days on it and didn't have time to come up with more creative uses.

Thanks for the kind words and the feedback!

PStamatiou• 16 years ago

Nice! Just did it on mine: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/186198/Screenshots/ekuo.png

using a cropped version of this photo (had to crop it a few times to get the eyes to align properly) http://dl.dropbox.com/u/186198/Screenshots/i_kx.png

nmb13• 16 years ago

Looks awesome! =) It's so fulfilling to see my procrastination going to good use!

dchen• 16 years ago

for the more subversive folks out there, check out an automated way to do this to your friends: http://apps.facebook.com/bannerbuzz

nmb13• 16 years ago

Hm, not sure that I would use this personally, but I can't deny that it is a creative use of the new layout. Thanks for the link, it's interesting to see what others are doing with this!

joe_the_user2• 16 years ago

I wish I could say that I've seen a profile like this that looked good...

But I haven't.

Your blood-shot eyes staring back at me just doesn't say "this is an awesome design". It mostly screams you were more excited by realizing you could do this ... than you ever thought about whether I'd want to see your eyes in particular.

-------------------

Personally, I do wish fb would allow enough customization so people could create good looking like this...

rebel• 16 years ago

ProfileGen.com is in my opinion a much easier version

nmb13• 16 years ago

Thanks for the info! There are many many usability things that we didn't get around to implementing due to restrictions in App Engine's and Facebook's python APIs, but we plan to make the flow more pleasant in future iterations.

Haunschild• 16 years ago

I build a little website which also lets you create thees kinds of porfile pictures. bonus: - it has a live preview - drag & drop - zoom

http://picscatter.com/

nmb13• 16 years ago

Sorry guys, we've exceeded our app engine quota. Check back in three hours!

ajhai• 16 years ago

I made a similar facebook app a couple of days back (http://apps.facebook.com/collage-frnds/). It creates a collage of your profile picture using your friends profile pictures. It failed to catch attention as the app itself is very slow since it is hosted on a shared server.

nrbafna• 16 years ago

On similar lines, I tried out an album hack.

http://goo.gl/OPNzq

alex_h• 16 years ago

It seems that, depending on the amount of profile info on your profile. (Lives in X, went to school at Y, etc.) The small photos may not be exactly aligned with the main pic. I'm not sure if there is any way to control for that.

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