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Photography Hosting in Geminispace With Open/Accessible Internet and Software Freedom

Video download link | md5sum 4cc45bc52a6c2ed2466e2fa69750885f Gemini Photo Albums Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: Gemini is better in a lot of ways than HTTP/S and HTML/HTML5, especially for people with simple needs and not much technical background/knowledge (sometimes less is more); we expect that more professional (or even hobbyist) photographers will be charmed by gemini:// and even fully embrace it

GEMINI is not only for geeks, it is also for artists who may find HTML too complex and cumbersome. Some might even wish to self-host their work, not allowing for-profit companies such as Yahoo! or Gulag (Google) to dim down the lights on hard work with sentimental value. The World Wide Web (or just "Web" for short) is part of the problem; it has made it harder for people to set up and manage their stock of photographs, partly owing to bloat and partly owing to growing complexity, which includes outsourcing "trust" to some CAs, having to renew "trust" every 3 or 6 months. We wrote about this 2 days ago.



Gemini has 2033 capsulesGemini is growing, not just because it's new but because it's a lot simpler. As shown on the right, Gemini has exploded in popularity lately. As shown on the left (bottom), the linear expansion carries on unabated.

Back in 2004 or 2005 I created my first self-hosted Gallery-based online photo album (migrations or upgrade paths were never a picnic, so there was a maintenance overhead and risk of older PHP versions not being compatible with newer; there's no backward compatibility) and then again in 2012 after my wedding. I've long been an ardent advocate of self-hosting for photographs, seeing that companies don't care about other people's lives, memories etc. Google+ is one notable example of this, albeit there are many more...

Gemini growthIn this video I show (using Kristall and Lagrange) these three different photography-centric capsules. There are of course many more, but not all are widely known. Self-hosting such capsules (e.g. from one's own home) depends mostly on upstream/upload speeds, but should be doable for sure. I demonstrate the simplicity from the code/coding side, knowing that many photographers aren't geeks and don't cope too well with the bloated Web.

If every person self-hosted his or her images using Gemini, the Internet would be a vastly better place. As Cheapskate's Guide put it some days ago, "The Old Internet Shows Signs of Quietly Coming Back" and "[a]n increasing number of Internet users are revolted by the current corporate-and-government-controlled Internet, and those who create old-Internet websites are doing something about it."

"Geminispace isn't some tiny niche; there are many people in it."As I show in the video, "Billsmugs Photography" boasts almost 50,000 requests (last updated hours ago), so people are clearly finding the capsule and taking advantage of it. Geminispace isn't some tiny niche; there are many people in it.

Join Gemini and let's get rid, over time (this will never be complete, but every little helps), of proprietary elements of what became of the Web.

"Gates may be gone, but the walls and bars of proprietary software he helped create remain, for now. Dismantling them is up to us."

--Richard Stallman

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