Bing Image Of The Day Project

Do you like pics that along the blog post?


In one of previous posts I mentioned ideas overflow and Google Application Engine who comes to rescue. There , I also mentioned that I'm gonna write about hacking a bing.com images.
Oh, argh I'm gonna but ... Well, at that point, it seemed that I'm kicking bing's ass by exploiting unprotected AJAX RPC call, which eventually helped me to get all bing background images from bing launch till date. At that point, no one have been doing anything similar. There was no competition!



So, I took my time playing with GAE implementing service that will send random daily bing image background to subscribers. It seemed like peace of cake. But, then I have run into GAE limitations regarding cron task DeadlineExceededError and funny constraint in GAE datastore regarding sorting queries with inequality property. Also, I had devoted less and less time to implementing it.



Then, one day I checked bing.com and saw navigation arrows in lower right corner. Bummer! When I tested navigation, I realised that it shows only last couple of images. Thats not so bad. I can still offer all bing images ever for subscribers. I still have value to offer! But, not so fast ...



Within next days, search results for bing images started showing other projects with same idea. Only, instead of mailing lists - they implemented web sites/rss feeds with all images and third-party comments implemented. hmmm , that is bummer!

Ok, I got lessons learned!
1. If you want to swim with sharks - you must be aware that a lots of eyeballs are pointed in their direction. So,
2. You gotta iterate and iterate fast, before your competition gets you and
3. Get to know your competition as soon as possible.

Regarding point number one. I faced this issue couple a weeks ago, while working on another project regarding blogging using tweets. Discussion can be found on avc.com and my comment hat happened when I tried to swim with sharks.

But there is no room for disappointment and ,

I still think that my approach has some value and it could be more attractive for users then web site with all bing images. Also, I'm thinking introducing National Geographic Photo Contest winners.

For me personally it's important that I enjoy every picture I receive and they make me to fly away ,a least for a moment, into some distant beautiful place.

Don't hesitate and subscribe for Bing Image Of The Day on the left column next to this post.
Enjoy! Here are some other images from list:




2 comments:

  1. perhaps a small app that updates your wallpaper with bing images of the day?

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  2. nice idea for next steps of project. even though desktop apps have bigger engagement user then web apps on long run - web services are my starting point due to social hooks ;)

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