Picplum launches Photo Printing API | Hacker News Reader

Picplum launches Photo Printing API

picplum.com

92 pointslyime25 comments

What do you think made Picplum go the route of the consumer needing an account?

As apposed to me just sending Picplum the customer's information, and having the hard work (printing, mailing, etc.) be handled for me.

Same thoughts. I feel my users would really be confused.

Definitely, white labeling this is the way to go. Plenty of apps could use a feature like this, but would be much more ideal if it appeared to be all a part of that app to the end user.

Billing. I can imagine if you incur costs for physical manufacture (printing photos), you would want to be very sure that you're going to get paid.

that risk can be mitigated by having the API customer (say, an iPhone app developer) buy API credits that are exchanged at the time of API call between the app and picplum. Then it's the app developer's job to collect payment from their app user and PicPlum won't get burned.

Or when a user signs up for our app we have them sign up for Picplum in the background, when they buy credits it goes through picplum in the background and the same for when they use the credits?

It'd be best to be transparent about that handoff rather than just silently doing it in the background, but yeah, that would also work.

You've upset my entire worldview by using the phrase "as apposed to". I started off planning to say that 'apposed' is not a word, and that you've made some sort of grievous error. I opened up multiple tabs, firing off google searches looking for a "common errors" page or at least a definition of "opposed" and the google page redirecting a search for "apposed" to it -- but then your counterstroke hit.

Google returned "apposed" just fine, and gave its definition as "Place (something) in proximity to or juxtaposition with something else."

Didn't faze me. "Google must just be reporting the error because it's crept into common usage", I told myself. I went deeper.

Brian's corner of common errors speaks to this briefly[1], but in the context of saying "I appose your decision", not in the context of the idiom. It also mentions "as a pose to" where "as opposed to" is intended, and assumes "opposed" instead of "apposed"[2].

I wandered into english-usage-debate forums and found that 'apposed' is disliked for being rare, but not disallowed[3], and an interesting bit of discussion came up about intentionally chosen differences[7] -- which do seem detectable in the modern definitions: "place beside", versus "place against". I also found discussion about british/american meanings for "as opposed to" [4].

The online etymology dictionary ([5] and [6]) says that since the 14th and 15th century, these have been marginally separately derived words of ... roughly identical meaning.

To sum up, through redundancy 'apposed' seems to have fallen out of favour in contemporary english and taken on a nuanced definition to some of those who still use it. If there were something for me to criticize about your usage it would be that you've chosen a sentence that leans more toward "place against" than "place beside", so the contemporary idiom to use "oppose" would likely apply. But I think you could justify it if you want to. :)

[1] http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/appose.html

[2] http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/more.html

[3] http://www.essayforum.com/grammar-usage-13/as-opposed-as-app...

[4] http://www.englishforums.com/English/AsOpposedTo/hkvbq/post....

[5] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=oppose

[6] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=appose

[7] http://www.englishforums.com/English/AsOpposedToOrAsApposedT...

edit: I messed up the references pretty badly on my initial take.

Thanks for clarifying that, I saw the original comment and wondered the same thing myself.

Thank you for both pointing that out and doing so in such an a well researched way.

For the record, I would tend to agree with 'opposed', this was me just writing with my ears. :)

Do people order prints anymore? Judging from various online services and service standsis at Costco, Walgteens, etc. they must be, but I don't see many recent phptos and photo albums is definitely a thing of the past. Maybe there's a small market fpr nicely produced photobooks. I haven't used my photo printer in ages.

Am I totally off?

My guess is older people who discovered that they have a camera on their smart phone and know how to use it or hipsters that want to be ironic and "print film" in their instagram filters.

I do think there's still a lot of demand. Very many people still prefer physical paper photos over just viewing them online. As you say, the pervasiveness of photo printing services should speak to this.

An article I just found [1] from 2008 said 18 billion photos were printed in 2007 from services, and grew to 19.7 billion by 2008. Even if it has decreased since then, even with these very limited two data points (19.7 billion, and existing pervasiveness of photo printing services), I would assume the market is very lucrative.

PicPlum is attempting to simplify the process significantly. If they can capture even a respectable part of the market, I think it's sounds like a very viable business.

[1]http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/content/InfoTrends-Online-P...

> Do people order prints anymore?

That's exactly what I'm wondering. I mean, if you'd told me about the basic concept behind Picplum, I would've rejected it in a split second as entirely absurd. But they've been live since August 2011 and still going. Makes me wonder how many other good ideas like that I've rejected off hand.

> Do people order prints anymore?

I haven’t in a decade or more, but I am personally stoked to do this when it’s absurdly easy — and share with people in my life, too.

Also consider that digital photos are probably lost a lot more often than physical photos.

For some reason looking at photos on a screen is just not the same as looking at a printed picture. There's something organic about looking at printed pictures that takes you away. I remember how much fun it was to look at photographs (printed ones..) when I was younger. I'm 25 now and rarely get to do that any more.

Maybe it has to do with how much time it takes to flip a page ? Meaning that we look at pictures in less detail now because we like hitting the "Next" button..

Or maybe it has to do with the fact that things that are digital don't feel that 'real' ?

Also, there is the case where you want to put up pictures of your loved ones around you. Those would need to be printed as well.

I know that this is probably the wrong forum to bring these feelings up in, but I'm 100% sure that my parents and older people definitely feel this way.

That's probably where the market lies.

I order photobooks as Christmas presents, as I get to travel a lot and other members of my family don't. It's quite a wonderful thing that takes very little time and is inexpensive.

If you have kids, they're fantastic (annual) gifts for mothers, grandmothers, aunts, etc.

Do people order prints anymore?

Ask a simple question, get a simple answer: YES. Walgreens and Wal-Mart don't have 40 square feet of prime retail space devoted to photo printing kiosks just so they don't have to sweep the marginal flooring.

Nice work, but I think that a white-label API like Pwinty.com would be more profitable.

So my users have to get a Picplum account before they can print?

Add an affiliate program, and then you have something.

It's coming.

Great!! I've been googling for a printing api a couple months back. We're going to play with it as well!

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