Louis

Hi, If you are Louis Rossmann please fix Template:Cite web. Great Wiki. Thanks. Jack Franks (talk) 19:32, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

can't fully agree to user page, seems like a biased opinion

The user page doesn't disagrees with the mission statement. There isn't any reference attached to it and I never heard Louis say he is a cool person. Please add references! Tpat90 (talk) 13:07, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Incident infobox template

Hey @Louis, I noticed that in LG Television sale of personal data and VitalSource "Lifetime" false advertising you used a template for an infobox to include basic info. Is this something you want to exist? We currently only have infoboxes for companies and products. Kostas (talk) 23:37, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

I use claude to correct all my wikitext failings since i always mess up making references or headings, i am used to markdown but not wikitext. i am guessing it added that and pulled the template out of its ass Louis (talk) 00:43, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Got it. Probably lifted the naming convention from the other templates. In any case we can add that fairly easily if it's needed. Kostas (talk) 08:58, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

(nixplay) Google may share the blame

I'm sorry, but I can't place this on the nixplay page. The CAPTCHA doesn't show bug. I've posted the links supporting the information as text to comply with the rules.

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I own a nixplay digital picture frame, and I am angry about this too. But I want to be accurate and fair (unlike nixplay). It appears that Google is likely responsible for the changes related to the frame's use of Google Photos.

developers.google.com/photos/support/release-notes#2024-09-16

tl;dr

A couple of years ago, we helped my mother cut the cord and moved her from cable to a Roku and streaming TV. I also added PhotoView (www.photoviewapp.com) to her Roku, so that after inactivity, it started showing pictures from a family Google Photos account. I had intended for the family to add photos, but the app has weird limitations on how many pictures, meaning pictures need to be deleted for new pictures to be added. Plus, it's difficult for family members to share pictures. (more below)

She recently turned 80, and she isn't interested in material things, but loves the pictures of her kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, grand nieces, grand nephews...you get the idea. She was getting tired of the ones on the Roku. So, having not checked on commercial frames in a while, I researched them. I could not find one that worked. a) many required a subscription, b) many required uploading pictures to their cloud, c) I'd never heard of many of the companies, meaning if they go out of business, the frame goes dark, d) most require an app to use, e) most that require an app wouldn't easily allow family members to upload pics, f) one major brand informs users not to remove power while in use, and one customer found out why when, inevitably, there was a power glitch and the frame permanently crashed, etc.

As a software engineer myself, I looked into creating my own, and that's what I did. I wanted to use Google Photos as the cloud storage, knowing that users can share photos between Google Photos accounts. Not wanting to re-invent the wheel, I drew upon existing projects to piece together the digital frame. One projects, rclone (rclone.org), supports numerous cloud services, including Google Photos. But looking at the rclone documentation related to Google Photos (rclone.org/googlephotos), I found it had limitations like PhotoView and the nixplay, due to the Google API.

In spite of that, I pushed forward to use Google Photos and ran into the arduous task of connecting the frame to an account. That is clearly aimed at commercial users. To obtain the keys necessary to access a Google account, they require verification. Verification requires submitting a web site about your product and your privacy policy. The only alternative was to use a test mode, which limits each key to a week, which was a non-started.

But worse than this, I stumbled upon a set of changes to the Google Photos API (developers.google.com/photos/support/release-notes#2024-09-16) that takes effect on March 31, 2025. The way I interpret them, in addition to the already existing limitations (no access to shared folders or files), Google will remove the ability of the API to get a list of photos. Clients must already know the photo name to download it. This appears to be related to the push to the new Google Picker API (developers.google.com/drive/picker/guides/overview), which seems to require each user to choose the individual photos themselves. And from what I have seen, this pretty much requires a custom app, or at least a custom web page to enable users to do this.

Obviously, this is a no-go for my mother's gift. But I also realized this would break every existing product that uses Google Photos! That includes the nixplay frames and PhotoView.

I did not look into this much more, but based on nixplay's email, and other hints I saw (and I'm sorry that I didn't collect links for), I think behind the scenes, Google is charging for access to these new or newly neutered APIs, at least when associated bandwidth is above a certain level. It's my belief that this is at the foundation of nixplay's move.

To be clear, this is all speculation on my part, but I also believe the reason nixplay didn't throw Google under the bus in their announcement (how I read the intentionally vague "ever-increasing compliance requirements", although this could also apply to GDPR) is that this would potentially break an agreement with Google or otherwise sever their ability to use Google Photos at all.

Again, this does not excuse nixplay. But I want to be fair that it may not be only them to blame for this fiasco.

Footnote: She loved the idea of the frame, but wanted the pictures to be on the TV. I hooked the device to the TV on another input, but she balked at using a second remote to switch. I've looked into creating a Roku app, but even using the open-source PhotoView as a baseline, given that I've never written a Brightscript program (Roku's proprietary language and environment), this would be a several month task, if I were working on it full time. I mentioned that PhotoView would go dark at the end of the month (I don't see anything on github (github.com/chtaylo2/Roku-GooglePhotos/issues) that assures me it will be updated for these changes), and she said she might be able to accept the manual switching using the non-Roku (TV) remote. Plus, I told her I could clone the unit on the frame and she could have both. We'll see. Rtillery (talk) 14:25, 24 March 2025 (UTC)