Idea - need your input

david.lpower

Ok,

So I came up with this idea this morning of posing a completely random question on a site of mine and seeing what sort of answers people come up with, these responses are sent to a database, viewers of the site can then view what others thought, this results in a echo'd list of the database.

The idea is the users of the site from all around the world will generate an answer to the question and give it meaning even though the question originally had no purpose / meaning.

What I want to do now is once I have this data I want to be able to take it and formulate an image, for example someone typed in "brass instrument" on the site today as a response to my question. I would like to be able to add an image of a brass instrument into a picture and do this for each users input, eventually a picture will be generated with elements from all the responses.

Does anyone have any ideas?

louie

Probably a set selection of answers will be better option, as you can have the images already set in advance.

e.g.
selection (select menu or radio buttons)
brass instrument (with value = brass_instrument) /* notice the space " " replaced with _ */
trumpet
etc.

so now you have the images in a folder

brass_instrument.jpg

etc...

david.lpower

louie wrote: »

Probably a set selection of answers will be better option, as you can have the images already set in advance.

e.g.
selection (select menu or radio buttons)
brass instrument (with value = brass_instrument) /* notice the space " " replaced with _ */
trumpet
etc.

so now you have the images in a folder

brass_instrument.jpg

etc...

Hey louie,

I actually did that for a website I made before. What I want is to keep the answers as "user generated" as possible, that way the contents of the picture is new every time,

suggested solution

Is it possible to do a goggle Image search in PHP, then take the first image and place an img href with the images source onto the page?

User answer = "a vortex is a type of concept car" this would then go out and google image "car" "vortex" and place this result into the canvas.

louie

Yes it's possible, but you might end up not being able to access Google if the queries are too often made.

david.lpower

louie wrote: »

Yes it's possible, but you might end up not being able to access Google if the queries are too often made.

OH you know it can be done? could you tell / link me so I can learn?

Do google not like that sort of activity?

louie

No they don't. It's called "content scrapping".

You might also run into copyrights infringements.

david.lpower

Ok I read up on content scraping and it does look like people who do it for profit get blacklisted or fined,

I wonder, because this site doesn't aim to make money in anyway would it be overlooked, is it illegal to host copies of images that appear in goggle search results, Hmm It is isn't it, like you said the images could be copyrighed ?

Any other thoughts?

I guess the content will have to be mine...

the site is located at ourvortex.net

Liam Byrne

david.lpower wrote: »

is it illegal to host copies of images that appear in goggle search results, Hmm It is isn't it, like you said the images could be copyrighed ?

It's illegal to host copies of anyone else's images, unless they've given you permission.

Basically, you're trying to make your site look and work better by using those images, so you're benefitting from someone else's work.

So if you want to go via iStockPhoto and pay them the paltry €1 per image used, then you're fine, but otherwise you'd be doing something illegal and benefitting from it; maybe not financially, but since it's a feature that you'd like your site to have in order to make it "better", you obviously view it as a benefit, and you're not entitled to get that benefit if you haven't paid the photographer or whoever.

david.lpower

Liam Byrne wrote: »

It's illegal to host copies of anyone else's images, unless they've given you permission.

Basically, you're trying to make your site look and work better by using those images, so you're benefitting from someone else's work.

So if you want to go via iStockPhoto and pay them the paltry €1 per image used, then you're fine, but otherwise you'd be doing something illegal and benefitting from it; maybe not financially, but since it's a feature that you'd like your site to have in order to make it "better", you obviously view it as a benefit, and you're not entitled to get that benefit if you haven't paid the photographer or whoever.

Thanks man, I understand now, I'll have to create the images myself or change my plan.

Hmmm..... maybe get people to send me pics of different random items, ID them and add to database..

I'd love to automate the process, google was my answer to that.