For Stayokay I was looking for software which would allow us to improve the organization and usage of logo’s and photo’s. Apparently the term for software which does this is digital asset management or media asset management. Being indoctrinated with 37signal‘s software-approach I started my quest with several rules in mind:
- No dirty hands – no coding from our side
- Good enough – silver bullets kill werewolf’s in fairy tales, but in real life werewolf’s are rare
- No Enterprise - “we sell a basic version, but to really use it we charge you 5x as much”
- User management – some people are allowed to do stuff, others just aren’t
This couldn’t be too hard, right?
Endless features!?
Meet Coppermine. Yeah, it’s open source! Or free software to be precise. Although I support free software philosophy, I needed to solve a different problem. Coppermine might be great for certain situations. The UI is cluttered and seems to originate from a long gone Forum-oriented Internet. Poor UI-design somehow seems a pertinent weakness of open-source software. The “endless features” somehow warn you: why does it try to do everything?
Flickr
The term still gets funny faces in the Netherlands. It resembles a negative term for guys who like guys. But I mean the photo sharing service. Flickr is a great tool for uploading, sharing, and organizing images. They even have a great gallery which you can easily embed elsewhere. But user management and hosting non-images are things Flickr doesn’t do. So sorry: next.
Jeez, isn’t there kind of Wufoo for managing digital assets?
Enterprise?
Going from open-source to paid is okay. But going from paid to enterprise is a leap. There is a crisis! For gods sake the future of the Euro is unknown. And who is waiting for another huge project anyway. But there is a lot of serious enterprise stuff out there: Portfolio Server, Canto Cumulus, Brandworkz. They magically solve all problems, and instantly deliver a perfect coherent brand image. But something as simple as how much the software costs – they only give you if you fill out the form.
Pixaria AssetDeck
It was love at first sight when I found AssetDeck. This was the tool I was looking for. It fitted our budget, was a lightyear forward in user experience (we used coppermine before). It does the right things right:
- Organize images in galleries
- Keyword tagging
- Selected multiple files and download (zipped)
- User management
- Support non-image filetypes (PDF, PowerPoint, Office)
- PDF contact sheets
- Localized front-end (even in Dutch)
The only thing you have to keep in mind is the hosting. This you need to organize yourself. Great if you fear the cloud – but also something which you can organize simple. Buy a VPS somewhere. Give it at least 512 MB, if you use direct admin/control panel stuff.
And it even seems the company is run by one guy. Contact Jamie and Jamie responds. Keep up the good work Jamie. My advice: keep the focus righ and “under do” the competition.
Here is a screenshot of our new tool:
Perhaps some people will complain it isn’t fancy, or that it doesn’t give us a magic brand consistency. But more importantly it will empower us to upload, share and tag assets. So in the end we can better communicate our product to our customers. And this for just € 406,61. Remember: Good enough is fine.
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