Actually it's not my thing to send out warnings, but since I'm in a good mood today and after I had some really good fish for breakfast, I will introduce myself:

I'm the nasty penguin!

You might wonder what I do here and what this is all about. Well ... you're lucky, I'll tell you ...

Prisoned in the body of an admin, I'm the dark spot on his soul. I'm the guy who always knows better and I don't care about names and issues.

Be aware that you can buy me! Isn't it all about fish? So send me some and you might be mentioned in a good way, don't and you will learn about "penguin's revenge" ... :-D

Feel free to comment my postings - feel free to threaten me ... I don't care, because I'm not a real existing person and you can't hurt me! Well ... and as I said: I don't care ... even if you hurt my admin's body - I'll find a new one if the actual one is down!

The rules are: There are no rules!

And since this is my "be nice to the people day": If you find any errors in spelling or grammar, you can keep them as a gift!

Ok ... I feel that it is enough of being nice!

And never say, I didn't warn you!

Always remember: You have to share your passion - even with me!

Penguin out!

We ran an update on fotocommunity over the past weekend and renewed all the forms as well as we updated to the new memberships. Unfortunately all this didn't succeed without any problems as we wished it would happen. One could also say it was a pretty bad crash landing. We experienced all kinds of problems which didn't come up during our testing phase before.

Because of that and the thereby caused problems and inconveniences I would like to apologize to all of you! At the same time I want to thank our programmers and technicians which solved almost all bugs within the past week. A very special and big thanks goes to all supporters. They spent most of their weekend right after the update with answering a few thousand questions sent to them via support!

We have thought a great deal about how to avoid those problems for any future updates. We do have two test systems for new software updates and versions, one of these servers is located in our office which is used during new developments. The other one sits directly at the computing center and this one is set up just as if these updates would already be online. Because of the quite hurtful experiences we recently made, we will implement a third one within the next weeks and hereby kindly ask some of you to help us testing those future updates of fotocommunity. You could call this some kind of half public beta testing.

In the meantime almost everything is running again the way it should run. Today we are working on the last minor problems which will go online tomorrow morning. And then I am very convinced that fotocommunity will be running as good as it should :) If you should whatsoever find out any mistakes, please let us know! We are always happy and need your feedback!

As an apology all of you will receive a little "present" from us on Wednesday morning. In order to do so we first have to add a little feature to our system that will enable us to give you some extra uploads. So just go ahead and check your available uploads at noon on Wednesday. :)

Always good light and a quiet and happy fotocommunity experience in the future wishes you,

Andreas Meyer
fotocommunity founder

Last's weeks update of the new forms and the new and better account structures has led to some difficulties which we couldn't avoid unfortunately. As a little thank you for your patience and understanding we have a present for you: Each member of fotocommunity who already was signed up at that time, receives 5 extra uploads. These uploads will not expire and you can use them whenever you like. :)

Did you see that? You're getting five uploads as a present ... only for being here!

Well, if this would be my community you would get nothing! That's for sure!!!

He's such a nice guy, this Andreas Meyer, forwarding presents to users ... Why does he do that??? Maybe I will send him a note and show him how to handle users the "nasty penguin way"!

Did you read the comments under my initial posting??? Funny stuff ... the first comic heroes, "Batman" and "Orca", showed up and thought about getting into the clinch with me! Poor fellows ... dream on!

But maybe you dream your dream the right way and use some of your nice new uploads to make a comic strip. Show me how you bash me up ... make me laugh!!!!

[Burbs] ... Ahhhhh ... better now! Too much fish today!

So, is there anybody out there who can show how to make a comic strip, produce one and present it to me???

You could also inspire your community friends to do one - I heard that there are some theories about the intelligence of swarms ... but that is another story ....

Are you taking the challenge, you Superheroes??? Probably not ... but we will see ...

Penguin out!

We are working on many new features for fotocommunity. Just watch and see our new front page which we'll be launching tomorrow. We have cleaned it up a bit and set focus on the most important functions and latest information, such as login/logout, the newest posts from our blog and other interesting themes.
For this new and clearer design we won't show that many photos any more, but a single large one together with the latest three uploads of the just shown photographer. These photos will change frequently with the last gallery photo or the latest contest winning photo. Additionally we will display photos chosen from our office team.
Doing so we will bring the photo and its photographer into focus. We are really looking forward to these changes! You can have a preview right below this article.

We hope you will enjoy our new front page!

First of all we'd like to thank you all for your feedback to our new start page! We are of course always open for input on how to improve. And that's why we now present the new new start page of fotocommunity. We do stick to our concept on it and stand tall for it - but because of the many requests we will now add three random picked photos from all channels. These random pics will change on each new page call!

By the way: above these three pics we placed a link "new photos" via which you will get to a whole bunch of new photos since you told us that you had missed that.

For the future we are planning on slight changes and improvements regarding the menu structure and design - we will inform you on time right here in the blog.

Many of you waited and asked for the next contest on fotocommunity.com - here we go:

April's contest will be related to the topic "Time" ...

Upload your idea of time, no matter if it is a technical approach or more abstract - everything is welcome without two exceptions:

Since our contests are public, you're not allowed to upload nudes and second limitation is that your photo must not have been published on fotocommunity before.

Upload (2 available) will be possible from April 1 - April 30 2007
Voting from May 1 - May 15

(Photo by: Dominikus Sepiasto)

Prices for this contest are vouchers as shown below:

Winner - 3 months of World Membership
2nd - 3 months of Pro Membership
3rd - 3 months of Basic Membership

So grab your camera and show us your understanding of time ...

We have to inform you that in the future we will have to delete photos of the glass pyramid in the inner court of the Paris Louvre. Public use and display for these photos are copyright protected by the Paris Louvre museum who are holding the copyright of architect Pei who built and constructed the pyramid and therefore is the "owner" of it.

All inquiries for usage of such material are to be addressed to the Louvre directly. They will decide on permissions of publishing or other use.

Since we are not in the position to proof whether such photos do have such a permission, we kindly ask you to not upload those in order to prevent troubles for you and us. Also, we ask you to remove your photos by yourself and save us a lot of work by doing so.
This rule only regards photos on which the pyramid is central motif and main topic of the photo.
As a reminder, the same rules are valid for photos of the Brussels Atomium and the illuminated Eiffel tower, all of these must not be shown on fotocommunity.
Thanks for your kind understanding.