Millihelens: the blog

New Pictures Page

The "new pics" page displays all of the newly uploaded pictures for your viewing pleasure. I also updated the top 20 page to show more pictures at once, so you don't have to scroll so much. That is all for now. Possibly more minor improvements in the coming week.

Thanks for Flagging

Thank you all for flagging inappropriate pictures (i.e. pictures of models / children / nudity). Your help has removed about 20 inappropriate pictures so far.

Some of you may be wondering why every picture you've flagged hasn't been deleted. I'm currently trying to let the community (that is, all of you fans) decide what's appropriate for the site. Therefore, I'm only deleting pictures that have been flagged by multiple people. I'm still trying to figure out the number of flags required to delete a picture (which is a bit complicated, since it depends on how many people have seen the picture, etc.), which is why some flagged pictures haven't been deleted yet.

I'm also a bit confused by some of the pictures that have been flagged (this mainly applies to pictures flagged "other"). I thought I covered all of the common reasons for flagging a picture, but it looks like I was wrong. If you have been flagging pictures for some reason other than the three explicit ones (model / children / nudity), could you please let me know why? I'm sure you have a good reason, and I will delete the pictures once I learn the reason. Just send me an email or leave a comment.

Thanks again for flagging pictures; please keep at it! It's a huge help in cleaning up the site.

Mark Pictures for Review

The comments have made it abundantly clear that some of the photos on the site aren't real or are inappropriate for other reasons. I've added a little "Flag" button on the vote page by each picture that lets you bring problems with photos to my attention. A picture that gets frequently flagged will be taken down.

This feature should finally address all the problems with model photos on the site. I really think they make the website less fun, but I have a hard time telling them apart from normal photos. Now, if you see a fake photo, just flag it, and I'll take care of it.

Thanks for bearing with all the bad photos for all this time. With your help, we can clean up the site and make it fun and real.

Comments!

Rejoice! Now you can leave comments on pictures! Click the "leave a comment" link on either the main page or on the picture detail page. You need an account to leave comments.

This addition is the first step toward making millihelens more interactive. Depending on the reaction, I'll add more interactive features in the future.

The statistics browser I was talking about is done, but unfortunately the graphs are somewhat unclear. You can check out the statistics browser here. Just to get you started, here's a graph comparing blondes and brunettes. If you have any ideas to make the graphs clearer, let me know.

Hard Puzzles

My friend and I started a puzzle website in the style of College Puzzle Challenge. The puzzles don't come with rules, and each one is different. To solve them, you may have to do anything from looking up river names on the internet to folding some origami. They're a lot of fun, and I encourage you to give them a shot!

(If you like the site, Digg it!)

Also, for all you math-y types who like statistics (e.g. me), I have something cool in the works for millihelens. It's a score browser that lets you compare the score distributions of various tags. Soon we'll be able to answer the age-old question: are blondes really hotter than brunettes?

I'm also working on adding comments for the pictures, and finally releasing user-to-user messaging. I've debated the messaging feature for a long time: on the positive side, it will let you meet people on millihelens, but on the negative side, there's potential for harassment. I've decided that I'll give it a shot and hope that some people don't ruin it for everyone. These changes should be up in around two weeks.

Millihelens Facebook App

Check out the millihelens facebook app! It works just like millihelens.com, but in facebook! Show off how hot you are!

New Look

I've never really been much of a graphic designer, so I'm actually quite surprised by how much I like this layout and color scheme. I'm not thrilled with the individual page layouts yet, but that's a problem for another day.

Leave a comment on this post if something is broken in your browser. I tested in Firefox and IE, but it's still possible that something doesn't look quite right. Be specific about the problem, and let me know what browser you're using so I can check it out myself. Thanks!

Time to move on and work on bigger and better things! I'm working on a facebook application, which I hope to finish sometime in the next few weeks.

Grrr... School...

I haven't made much progress on millihelens in the past month. I've been bogged down with midterms, labs, and job interviews. Sorry :<

I always feel like I have a ton of ideas for millihelens, and it drives me crazy when I can't get something done on the site. I'm planning on spending one day in the coming week working on user-to-user messaging and user profiles. I think being able to talk to other people on the site will really make it more fun. The only problem is that there are some privacy issues that I'll have to think about. I'm also working with a friend of mine to fix up the look and feel of the website.

Hopefully November will be a more productive month than October was.

Secret Crushes Facebook App

I made this cool Facebook application to help you find out which of your friends have crushes on you.

Here's how it works:
1. Get the Secret Crushes application.
2. Create your secret list of crushes. Don't worry, only you can see this list.
3. Invite your friends to use Secret Crushes. If one of your crushes adds you to their crush list, you'll both be notified.

This was just practice for the millihelens Facebook application. I'm going to start working on that next.

Facebook / Myspace tie-ins?

So far version 2 of millihelens has been a success in my book. I think it looks a lot better than it used to, and it's definitely easier for me to work on. I'm once again pondering where to go with this site. I was considering adding user profiles and messaging features: it would be really cool to be able to talk to other users of the site. I think everyone already uses some sort of social networking however, so I'm thinking about tie-ins with myspace and facebook.

Quick poll for you all:
1. Do you use facebook or myspace?
2. In either case, do you think a millihelens plugin would be cool? Imagine an app that would show your score in millihelens on your profile.
3. What about links to peoples' profiles on the site? This would let you message other users.

I'm currently working on: live.com and netvibes gadgets.
ETA: soonish (it's rush at my fraternity, so things are pretty hectic).