Internet Pictures: SmugMug support

[sant0sk1]

SmugMug (http://www.smugmug.com/) is a photo site akin to Flickr. It is becoming very popular and better than Flickr in many ways. It would be great if Boxee supported SmugMug in the same manner that it does Flickr.

I realize there are a plethora of Internet photo sharing sites and supporting them all would be too much work, but I would add SmugMug to the short list of sites worth supporting. Their API's are very robust.

[avneron]

i know Smugmug. love what they are doing.

never looked into their API. we'd like to implement Smugmug, Facebook photos, and a bunch of others, but we'll need to some developers to step-in and help us. our in-house crew is not big enough to deal with all the Internet apps.

[sant0sk1]

haven't had a change to look at your source. What languages are you building in? I might lend a hand if possible. What's the easiest way to get started?

[tsella]

the tie ins for these services are written in python, where there are basically two options - as a python script, or as a python plugin. the first option basically allows you to do anything, having an api to access the ui (and more), the second one is generating lists of items in a way boxee/xbmc comprehends.

picasa and flickr are both python plugin examples, and you can look at the code under /Applications/Boxee.app/Contents/Resources/Boxee/plugins/pictures. a nice script example (currently broken, but does show how to implement own ui and play media) is muxtape under /Applications/Boxee.app/Contents/Resources/Boxee/scripts.

enjoy!

[sant0sk1]

Sounds good. I've been a Ruby guy thus far, but this sounds like a good excuse to check out Python.

Following the flickr plugin example should make it pretty trivial to implement a SmugMug one.

[tsella]

cool! let me know how goes. after testing it we might include it in future releases :)

[nateirwin]

sant0sk1, wondering if you've made any progress on this? I'd be willing to help too.

[agentlame]

i'm not a great python coder... at best i can hack stuff... now, c#, that's my game.... which sucks as *nix is my platform of choice. :(

all that said, smugmug is an amazing service! i'm an avid reader of don mcaskill's (smug)blog, and love what they are doing!

i don't use smugmug, as i don't have a camera of real quality... but i would agree if boxee were to add another photo service, smugmug should be number three, with a bullet!

[sant0sk1]

sant0sk1, wondering if you've made any progress on this? I'd be willing to help too.

Sorry guys no progress on a SmugMug plugin. Too busy with other stuff. Nateirwin: if you have time please give it a shot!

[RobertBasil]

I would love a SmugMug viewer as well. Here is my SmugMug gallery.

http://www.fallenheroescar.org

[NPerez]

looks like a pretty cool site.

i've looked around the api docs and it doesn't look like they have methods for searching, but that could be worked around with some simple regex.

if nobody else gets to it first, i could do this sometime in the near future

[EBeav]

I'd like to help on the smugmug plugin but have not gotten a boxee invite... mainly because I'm currently windows only :p. I could get a Linux box up and running too if need be. Eventually I'd love to try boxee on my Vista MCE. If nobody is working on smugmug support please let me know, I'd like to pitch in!

[jernomer]

I am just adding my name to the list of people looking for a SmugMug addition to the list. I would love to be able to log into and view my SmugMug pictures through Boxee.

[EBeav]

I don't have an invite yet so please excuse the ignorant question but is the xbmc flickr plugin the same as the boxee plugin? In other words should I focus on adding a smugmug plugin to xbmc (upstream) instead of in boxee?

[domr]

Silly question perhaps, but why doesn't Boxee support standard RSS photo feeds? Pretty much all the major photo sites and Apple's iPhoto produce RSS feeds that I *should* just be able to plug into the 'My RSS' box on the web site. Except there's no option for photo feeds.

I'm a developer of a relatively small photo sharing site and I'd like to get my friends RSS feed into Boxee:

http://www.fotonomy.com/dom/friends/feed/

[EBeav]

I have not tried it yet but you may be able to add a generic feed via the "My Feeds" page once you're logged in to the Boxee site (http://app.boxee.tv/home/rss).
I finally got my invitation and will be try that out soon. I'm also hoping to get started on a native smugmug plug-in.

[EBeav]

picasa and flickr are both python plugin examples, and you can look at the code under /Applications/Boxee.app/Contents/Resources/Boxee/plugins/pictures. a nice script example (currently broken, but does show how to implement own ui and play media) is muxtape under /Applications/Boxee.app/Contents/Resources/Boxee/scripts.

After downloading the boxee source I can't find where the existing picasa/flickr/muxtape plug-in sources are at as a starting point for my smugmug plug-in. :confused: Help please!!!

[agentlame]

After downloading the boxee source I can't find where the existing picasa/flickr/muxtape plug-in sources are at as a starting point for my smugmug plug-in. :confused: Help please!!!

if you are using boxee you can find the scripts in:
~/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/UserData/apps

but you should know that the new plugin system that boxee uses is not backwards compatible with xbmc.

[EBeav]

Thanks! So the scripts are in that *installed* directory but are they in the *source* anywhere? I'm confused as the the relationship between boxee installed versus the downloadable source at http://app.boxee.tv/download/source Should I just ignore the source?

[EBeav]

I didn't see a directory there, I'm using Ubuntu.

[agentlame]

on ubuntu it's in:
~/.boxee/UserData/apps

also, i was referring to boxee being 'installed'... the plugin sources are always available, as the are written in python/xml.

[EBeav]

Sorry for the continued questions but where are the plugin sources in the tarball? I searched for some of the xml files but could not find them. Thanks!

[agentlame]

here: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/169651/apps.tar.gz

this is just simpler.

[EBeav]

Thanks! I took the first stab at the smugmug app last night and it looks like it should be very similar to the picasaweb one. Once I get all the syntax correct and stuff I should be able to get the browsing of recent albums and pictures completed.

Some notes on my initial hacking on a "smugmug" copy of the picasaweb app code:
1. I'm assuming that if I add a "smugmug" directory structure in my ~/UserData/apps directory it will magically show up in boxee. If not I'll have to go digging (any help here would be great!)

2. I don't think I'll be able to do the user-name check because that seems to be some sort of dir.boxee.tv server side thing (I could be wrong here, any help is appreciated). For now I'll just hard code a single user name with some "TODO" comments.

3. I'm also not sure how to do searches on smugmug via rss (like the picasaweb app seems to do it) so I'm going to disable the Search button and add more TODO comments.

4. All this assumes that all the smugmug albums are public and utilizes their rss feeds (same as with the current/new picasaweb app).

[EBeav]

Well I've got something kind of working. Albums are getting listed correctly but without thumbnails. Just for context for the rest of this long-winded post I'm trying to use the same style of app development as is currently used for the picasaweb and other apps so my work can hopefully be utilized by the Boxee team.

That said, my main blocker at this point is my inability to modify the boxee server-side rss processing and other server-side "app lookup" code that is in the pipcasaweb app. It would be particularly useful to know how a "list" control populates a "ListItem" data structure from an RSS feed item. I have been making educated guesses but so far its been hit and miss. My current implementation is using Yahoo Pipes to modify the SmugMug RSS feeds to be roughly the same format as the Boxee PicasaWeb RSS feeds. The only thing that doesn't seem to work is that the Yahoo Pipes RSS feed does not support some of the non-RSS XML elements that are used in the Boxee feeds (e.g. item/boxee:image) which is probably why I'm not getting all the appropriate thumbnails.

If someone on the boxee side wants to take this over at some point let me know what the easiest "brain dump" method would be. The main changes to the Boxee app code was creating a SmugMug logo.png (and tweaking the picasaweb XML to allow for the now wider text) along with changing a URL in skin/Boxee Skin NG/720p/main.xml from "rss://dir.boxee.tv/apps/picasaweb/users/$INFO[app.implode(users)]" to "rss://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=38ef15c3f74b124f9a58fb73ebd90608&_ren der=rss&nickname=$INFO[app.implode(users)]". All my Yahoo Pipes have the smugmug2boxee translation info, you can see them at http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/person.info?eyuid=weg8I.c2l3cBghpN30aVWIpc .

Lastly, I don't think that I can "add" a new smugmug app without some help from the Boxee team since there are mutiple calls to the dir.boxee.tv server that I would need to make (even to get the app icon!). For now I've just hacked up my picasaweb app.

[EBeav]

Attached is the picasaweb code that I hacked up to use smugmug. The implementation is still rough around the edges (see the previous post).
TODOs:

album thumbnails
global smugmug search
username/contact scoped smugmug search
support more than one username/contact
implement username/contact validation
clean up album & picture descriptions

160

[trey_loco]

Hey Ebeav. I was wondering if you've made any updates to your Smugmug code? I love my smugmug and would love to see some of those todos within Boxee.

Thanks!

[trey_loco]

So I'm eager to see someone create the app/plug-in that integrates these two cool products. I spoke to the VP of Biz Dev over at Smugmug and this is what he had to say...

Hey Trey,

Thanks for the note, we love these things! We would love for someone to build this for us as we have an open API. http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/API (In fact, we would donate a free Pro account to whoever builds it :) )

Currently our developers are swamped on a few business critical projects to make your site scream!

Thanks,
Markham

[mikemar]

man I would LOVE this

I use smugmug for my photos and would be great to be able to view them on boxee :)

Going to try that picasa hack, but probably won't work since it's too old

[dubbeljoe]

@trey_loco

he Trey,

can you asked the VP again if his "...developers are still swamped on a few business critical projects to make your site scream" :-)

in other words, I am wandering waht is status is of this project.
If Smugmug is willing and Boxee also wants to integrate the app, then whats stoppin' them?

regards,
DubbelJoe

[scottwallacesh]

I've written a YouTube Boxee app before (just for my own use to display my playlists and favourites) and now that I've moved to SmugMug from Flickr I'm looking for a way to show my photos on the TV again.

I've also used the SmugMug API previously to integrate SmugMug category into my daughter's WordPress site... so I don't see this being too difficult.

I'll get something basic together first and then we can add some features as we go.

[pcm2a]

I have just submitted a SmugMug app to Boxee for addition into their repository. Hopefully it doesn't take them too many days to review it. Once accepted I will create a new thread about it for tracking and discussion.

This first version of the app only supports public albums (no username/password). Adding in username/password for private albums should be pretty simple as a next step.

Features:
- Public album viewing
- View images in an album along with captions
- Slideshow

[Entity]

I have just submitted a SmugMug app to Boxee for addition into their repository. Hopefully it doesn't take them too many days to review it. Once accepted I will create a new thread about it for tracking and discussion.

Not exactly sure how busy they are.. especially with the Boxee team preparing for CES.

Have you tried contacting Rob Spectre directly?

Email: rob [at] boxee [dot] tv
Twitter: dN0t

[dubbeljoe]

I'm very happy to hear that progress is made with the Smugmug app.
If you need somebody for testing, please let me know!

more than willing to help.

gr

DubbelJoe

[pcm2a]

Entity: I shot Rob an email a few days ago (Tuesday) but never got any response, bummer. I wish there was a more transparent system that would tell me if it had been tested and passed, deployment date, etc. Makes me worried about getting updates or bug fixes deployed in a timely manner.

DubbelJoe: It is still awaiting review by the Boxee team but I have set up my own custom repository if you want to connect to it and install it sooner.

Repo: http://boxee.ree-yees.com/repo

I have even made the custom repository icon and package name different, so users could install both the custom repo and the one from Boxee if they wanted. Obviously any updates would show up on the custom respository quicker.

Update: My jira ticket is now "In Progress" and assigned to someone! Hopefully that means something is about to happen.
Update 2: Ticket is now in QA. I now know why everyone uses 3rd party repos...
Update 3: Scheduled for deployment, yay!