A single image from a modern camera (5+ mega-pixels) has a file-size equivalent to 50-100 text pages. Not unsurprisingly, therefore, the use of large images can slow your web-pages down to a crawl. Thankfully you don’t need large images to decorate a web page, your photos will be so much larger even than the largest modern displays, that putting them up full-size will normally just be a waste of time…

Right: ShrinkPic automatically reduces image sizes – the default setting has reduced the 3.6MB original to 85kB, which is easily handled by WordPress, where I’ve processed to a 150px square thumbnail. Click image for 800×600 full uploaded file-size.

The problem is then, how do you get the file size down? For a long time we have recommended IrfanView as a free (PC based) image processor, for cropping and re-sizing images for use online. While pretty straightforward, this package does need a little practice to use it effectively, so is not ideal for many people managing CMS systems, for whom the occasional image can be a bit of a nightmare…

Shrink Pic is ideal for anyone who finds image management on the web a nightmare!

Over Christmas we became aware of Shrink Pic, a new system that shrinks photos automatically when you upload them (via LifeHacker). So, is this solution going to work for you?

• First up, the software only runs on PC’s. We are not aware at present of an equivalent program for Macs or Linux.
• The basic premise of the software is that it runs in the background, and automatically re-sizes and compresses any image you want to upload to a website (Flickr, your blog, CMS etc.) – or email – before it is sent.
• You can set your default image sizes or set the amount of compression to fit a file size range (as I did here).
• Your original image is not changed.

What the software does not do is edit your images. The most recent versions of WordPress will allow you to do a bit more fine tuning after the upload – cropping and creating thumbnails. If you need to process your pictures, then you should look at doing this BEFORE uploading, in which case you might as well resize ready for upload, so you may not need Shrink Pic.

If you are want large images on your website (larger than 1000px in any dimension), then you should look at more advanced processing packages to optimise them.

Conclusion: this software is really easy to use, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well it works with WordPress here!

Resource links:

OnTheGoSoft’s Shrink Pic

For free hands-on image processing:

IrfanView

Above a still from the movie depicting the directed diffusion of polymer molecules across a surface energy gradient

The movie was prepared by CookandKaye website design, working directly from preprints of the authors’ scientific manuscript. The movie was released to coincide with the paper’s publication and extensive publicity by the Unviersity of Sheffield (see for example Step Forward For Nanotechnology: Controlled Movement Of Molecules in Science Daily)

The interactive movie uses a stylised polymer chain to depict the actual movement inferred by the research workers from a wide range of nanoscale analytical techniques. Visitors to the site can click through the stages showing adsorption of hte polymer to a hydrophobic surface, followed by directed diffusion towards the hydrophilic surface, and finally desorption back into aqueous solution. At each stage the polymer experiences a different degree of constraint upon its movement, which was reflected in the motion of the stylised chain in the movie. To investigate the final movie, please visit the link below to Dr Mark Geoghegan’s website:

Directed diffusion across a surface energy gradient

Reference: P. Burgos, Z. Zhang, R. Golestanian, G. J. Leggett, and M. Geoghegan “Directed single molecule diffusion triggered by surface energy gradients” ACS Nano 3 3235-43 (2009).

The new Polymer Centre research map has been built on an existing staff CMS that stores keywords and a précis of information about staff research interests. To create the map the keywords were first grouped into superordinate terms – for example the keywords ‘Rheology’ and ‘Optical properties’ falls under the generic class of ‘Polymer Analysis’ (or just Analysis).

To make the system as flexible as possible, the link between keywords and superordinate terms is done through a ‘plug board’ programming interface. In this, each keyword is assigned to a number of generic categories through selecting check boxes – easy!

The results are stored in a MySQL database, and this is used to power the research map itself. On first sight the map provides a coarse list of the superordinate terms – polymer analysis, characterisation and so on. On selecting one of these terms the list expands to show the relevant keywords. The keywords can in turn be expanded to display the names of research staff engaged in the work of interest.

The system therefore offers a simple visitor interface that can be quickly and intuitively navigated to find the information of interest. It offers a great advantage over an empty search box on one vital respect – it always offers the visitor a positive result! Not all sites have Google-like resources, and using a controlled language of keywords in this way allows us to guide a visitor to what we have, rather than their getting lots of failed searches.

While the research map offers visitors a neat tool for finding the information they want, it is also an engine to help ensure that search engines can tie our keywords to content on the Polymer Centre website. To do this, the meta content on each of the staff pages contains the same keywords they are associated with in the database.

In addition, however, the meta content of the research map itself is served dynamically. The page title, description and keywords are updated to reflect the level of the map that is being examined. Thus if you have opened a keyword, that keyword and the associated staff appear in the appropriate meta content sections of the research map page. As these sections are important to search engines in ascertaining the important content of a page, this design helps to ensure that the information the Polymer Centre carries about polymer research and near market activity is readily available on the world wide web.

- If you are interested in Polymer Research, why not try it out!

The Polymer Centre Research Map

A couple of photos from last summer (which was as wet as this summer, from my recollection) taken on Crosby beach. The beach is a super stretch of sand adjacent to the Port of Liverpool, it is also the setting for Anthony Gormley’s Another Place, a series of iron castings standing on the beach and in the shallow waters.

Here I’ve captured the weathered visage of one of the statues, and the Port wind-farm. Roll your cursor over the image to switch focus between one and the other…