Monthly Archives: October 2008

Shutterfly lost me with their site “upgrade”

Posted on October 22, 2008 | Leave a comment

I’m fond of Shutterfly because it’s Mac-friendly and usually easy to use and I don’t usually run into bugs on it.  I primarily use it to print photos and to make photobooks and cards.

Today Shutterfly completed frustrated and annoyed me – they removed Search! I don’t know when they removed it – I just know it was there the last time I looked for it.

Recently I uploaded 600+ photos to my Shutterfly account with the plan to print all of them, index them in an album by filename and then be able to easily (I thought) go back to Shutterfly, search for a photo by filename, and print muliple copies of specific photos.  I think it’s easier to browse through and compare 600+ photos when they’re printed in an album.  It’s more difficult, I think, to browse and compare that many photos in a web browser.

After I uploaded the photos I couldn’t find the search/find to search my photos as I had done in the past.

Shutterfly’s help section indicates that they have a “Find” feature to search the photos in your account by date, by filename, and so on.  Their help FAQ has a question “How can I find specific pictures?” and answers the question with this:

I searched the site for help for how to find my photos by filename and finally sent a request to their customer service.  I wrote:

I’d like to search the photos in my account by filename, and, for example, find the photo with filename IMG_2868.jpg

When looking at “My Pictures” the only search option is to search the web site. The help section suggests that there is a Find feature at the top of the page but I don’t see it. I took a screenshot of what’s at the top of the page when I’m viewing my albums and pictures — and I’ve attached it to this question

Could you please tell me where, in this screenshot, is the Find icon referenced below?

Their customer service replied really quickly (within 7 hours) with this:

The find feature you mention is not one that we currently have available. We may offer it in the future, but have no immediate plans of doing so. We have removed this feature from our website during our recent upgrade and this feature is no longer available. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Please let us know if we can offer any additional assistance.

At the top of Shutterfly’s customer service email there’s a link to respond:

I clicked on the link and got this page:

I entered my email address and name and got this (argh!)

Now I’m going to do the tedious task of putting all of those 600+ photos on a different photo web site where I can manage and search them and print multiple copies as needed.  Snapfish doesn’t have this functionality, but Kodak Gallery does.

Here’s Kodak Gallery’s option to search your albums for specific photos:

Kodak Gallery also has an iPhoto plugin so that meets my Mac-friendly needs.  I tested Kodak Gallery’s “search album” functionality and it worked just the way I needed it to – it found the photo by filename and then I could easily order prints and then search for another photo and order prints.

Then I discovered dotphoto which does what I need:

  1. Multiple upload options that work for Mac
  2. Search feature that can search filenames, titles, etc for photos in my albums
  3. 3×5 photo printing

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Posted in usability

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pursuit of happiness

Posted on October 17, 2008 | Leave a comment

Last night I remembered a house in Seattle’s university district where I lived for a couple years of college. I shared the house with James and Andy and Tom – all in school of some sort. James had accrued a pile of parking tickets from parking near a building where he made art. He went to court and protested the tickets because, he said, the fine/tickets were interfering with his constitutional right to pursue happiness through making art.

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Posted in art, happiness, parking tickets

The paper towels inside your body

Posted on October 14, 2008 | 2 Comments

Lucy (4yrs old) is having an ongoing, weeks-long (so far) discussion about what her body is made of. She starts with ticking things off on her fingers, “water, blood, bones, muscle, and” (she tilts her head for emphasis) “what else?” I mentioned organs and blood vessels and arteries and tissue, but, I said, “not the same tissue you use to wipe your nose.” She replied, “so where are the paper towels inside our bodies?” as she showed me a book full of diagrams of muscle and nervous and other systems.

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Posted in preschoolers

Fine Dining

Posted on October 13, 2008 | 2 Comments

A few years ago, my friend Marc Wernick and I went to the Fifth Floor restaurant (in San Francisco) for a middle-of-the-week delicious dinner and conversation. We had the chef’s tasting menu, I had the wine pairing, it was a long luxurious and yummy dinner. About halfway through dinner I noticed that almost all of the other tables in the restaurants were obviously business dinners – tables with lots of people in suits. Marc & I told jokes, we caught up, we ate a lot, I drank a lot, and then dessert arrived with “Happy Anniversary” written on the plates and a knowing congratulatory smile from the server.

We laughed giddy and uncontrollably. The waiter came over and we mentioned there must’ve been a mistake. The waiter said we looked so happy together and we were having such a good time that everyone agreed we must be celebrating an anniversary. Ha! Marc’s a gay man, I’m a lesbian, we’re good friends, and it’s good to know we can both still “pass” if needed! They must’ve picked up on something between us that they couldn’t define in any way besides “wedding anniversary.”

It reminds me of the times that Moya and I have been asked if we’re sisters presumably because someone senses that we’re close and can’t fathom that we might be close because we’re married to each other (we don’t look alike – okay, well, we both have curly brown hair).

Tonight I remembered and chuckled about the mistake made at the Fifth Floor, but there’s another side to that assumption – the side that makes the Yes-on-Prop-8 people afraid of and blind to the variety of relationships and afraid to acknowledge and respect the many different ways people love and dine – because they see and believe in only marriage for straight people.

In 2000, on election night when Prop 22 passed in California, Moya and I were just about to leave a hotel with our friends Robert and Dave to go have dinner at the French Laundry. The TV news announcer, before the polls even closed, announced that Prop 22 had passed by a wide margin. Moya threw pillows at the TV and we drove off to a dinner full of champagne and burgundy and a lot of food and flatware and forgetting momentarily, about Prop 22. (Sigh. Robert died before it was legal for him and Dave to marry in California.) That night, at the French Laundry, the wait staff initially thought we were two straight couples out for dinner. Ha! Such flaming queers – how could they miss it?!

It’s not like it happens all that often – usually, particularly here in San Francisco, people know and understand that Moya and I are together, not just together. Though individual incidents stick out — years ago up in Tahoe on valentine’s day in a restaurant full of straight couples out on a date, I was glad when the staff understood that we were on a date too. My friend Ali and I were kicked out of a bar once in St Helena, just north of San Francisco, because (the bartender said) “[they] don’t want your kind here.” Incidentally, we were on our way to more fine dining on that evening too – at Terra.

That’s the “gay lifestyle” – dining with the good company of friends (and lovers).

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Posted in marriage

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