New Photo Uploader

Is there something I really dislike it is drag-n-drop and bulk-load solutions where you accidentally might upload things you don't want to upload...

Remember the user who managed to upload an album including nude photos of his wife using the "advanced" uploader?

How did I miss that one? You don't have to drag and drop, however -- if you prefer, desktop users can click in the upload box to select individual files, much like the previous Simple Uploader.

The new uploader, - is it using Java?

No. That was partly the motivation: http://blog.chromium.org/2014/11/the-final-countdown-for-npapi.html

Thanks, - Java is the main reason why I never used the "advanced" uploader.

This means that the very last spot of the use of Java is gone on Geni.

Hope Flash is the next, but not if it so slow and ugly as what we have seen so far.

The new uploader seem to be OK, but you should add an extra button for uploading files without having to use drag and drop - yes, clicking the drop-field gives you that, but it is not logical and even an experienced user like me did not discover that at once. I was going to post: What a h..

i don't like drag and drop either sounds too much like a term from a hit man's hand book and too easy to drag and drop the wrong file

No Java? Wonderful. Mike, you're the best. Right on!

Is this (and folks using it!) what by any chance has overloaded Geni - Trying to get from one page to next page of Public Discussions, also trying to get from a Profile to my Home Page, and etc. - ran into "I'm Giving it all she's got Captain", with the screen showing the message

"Geni's servers are overloaded.

Trees are heavy. Sometimes our servers can't lift them all.
We apologize for the inconvenience -- our arboreal engineers are working to fix the problem."

Um.. Private User I just got that too.. don't know if it's java related or just too many users at one time..

I wonder, Lois and Michael, are you suggesting bugger overload or denial of services?

If so, I would believe (and hope) that the Geni team has already got some professional penetration testing done, which would account for those vulnerabilities and vectors of attack.

(If not, Mike, we need to talk.)

Mario - have no idea what you are asking. I gave you the words they showed me, have no more information to give you. Had not seen message like that before. Got repeatedly, but fortunately, seems okay now.

I had asked in this Discussion, thinking perhaps scads of folks off using this new feature - combined with its not being as speedy as expected/hoped for - might have caused the problem.

I'll try not to upload any inappropriate photos ;)

Seriously, this is great. Congratulations Geni!

The slowness was unrelated to the new photo uploader. I'll see if we can alter the styling to make the clicking more obvious.

morel denial of services? No I don't think so.. it's working fine now I don't know what the cause was..

So funny !!! You've got to love "autocorrect", "auto spell checkers" and the like... look at my earlier post at 17:49, I say, "....bugger overload...". Absolutely hilarious.

What I was typing, before a machine intervened, is "buffer overload".

"Bugger overload" in place of "Buffer overload"... you know what, I think that's cool. Whoever is attempting a buffer overload is a bugger. That fits.

All that being says....

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The experiences that Michael and you were describing suggest (among other things) two things.

Your posts might describe a phenomenon that would be described by InfoSec folks as "denial of services" or DoS. In the hackers works, DoS is a way to bring websites down, and thus, causing harm to the owners and their customers.

Your posts may also suggest that, because of the error messages you received, you may have also been subject to a buffer overload attack. Basically, this is about a hacker attempting to force error messages to gain privileged knowledge of the internals of an application.

Why I was more sensitive to these is because we are here in a thread about a new Geni feature, I assumed that you were talking about your experience with the new photo uploader feature. If I am correct, then I can say that any new features is a bit more susceptible to attack by hackers (exactly because it is new). If you have used the new uploader feature and been denied services or been subject to more error messages, then perhaps this was a clue to a hacker attack.

But maybe it's nothing. Mike would know.

Hatte Anne Blejer inappropriate photos? I thought you'd be the last person to do that.. LOL

morel I have not tried the new feature yet.. in fact until mike s posted i didn't know about it. Maybe it was too many people trying the new feature out?

P.S.: Before the hackers among you attack me mercilessly about "buffer overload", yes, buffer overload can be exploited for a lot more than just harvesting error messages. But please, this post is not about hacking. It is about understanding Geni's new photo uploader feature. Let's focus about it and try to give constructive input here about this feature.

lol. Yeah I will try this out and give some feedback.

Mike - need a "submit" or "upload" button for iPad. Works fine on iPhone.

Erica, we tested this on iPad (both 1st generation running iOS 6, and 2nd generation running iOS 8.1) and both submitted the photo as soon as it was selected from the gallery. It sounds like you were able to select a photo but it didn't automatically start uploading, is that correct? Do you know what version of iOS you're running?

I am running iOS so old it doesnt even list it. 4.3.3. Correct, on the opera mini browser I can select the correct image (by clicking within) from the camera roll & the album, there is a cancel link, no submit button & no feedback.

Erica Howton thanks for the observation.. I have not tried it from ipad yet so i wasn't aware of it

Erica Howton, iOS versions less than 6 do not allow file uploads from the gallery. If you're using Safari or Chrome we detect this and give you a message that photo uploads are not supported in your version of iOS, however the Opera Mini browser is not passing the iOS version in the user agent string, so we cannot give you the error message. Would you mind loading the following page with both / all of your browsers on your iPad, and let me know what platform and OS version it reports in the pop-up message? http://sandbox.geni.com/photo/upload

4.3.3

I do get the message this iOS is not supported (in Chrome & Safari on iPad). Probably some sort of workaround on the mini opera browser. :)

It's not important, I can work around using iPhone.