After a few minor changes and exchanges with Google I have managed to rectify the problem relating to inappropriate images on the detail pages.

Because of your kind support, and the resolution of issues with Google, I’ve changed my mind and decided not to sell ObSrv.

I plan to keep it running indefinitely.

If you have any issues, or need support, please leave a message or contact me at:
mail at neilennis dot com

If you’d like to donate to help keep the site running, I’ve added a couple of paypal buttons on the site.

The content is updated hourly, allowing you to provide high-quality, relevant graphics for any website, or feed reader.

I’ve been able to maintain this site and host it because of the modest income stream I derive from Google ads that appear on the info pages that are displayed when a website visitor clicks on an image.  This has been great because:

1. Web publishers didn’t need to pay anything.
2. The ads didn’t intrude on your site – they only displayed when an interested user clicked on an image.
3. Clicking on the image redirected to an intermediate site which displayed the ad, and allowed the user to proceed to the original site.

I didn’t have any say on what sort of images web publishers displayed – my only request was that web publishers did not use ObSrv to display adult-related images.

That’s not because I am a prude – it’s because Google prohibits ads on these sorts of sites.

Unfortunately, some people ignored this request, Google cancelled ad serving for the ObSrv site, and now it’s not paying me anything.  I can’t afford to keep it running for free.

So I have decided to sell it.

If you’re interested, please make an offer.  No serious offer will be ignored.

I’m sorry for any inconvenience.  I’m willing to be flexibile to help you out:

If you need access to ObSrv prior to it being sold, please email mail@obsrv.com.  If you’re one of the incredibly generous people who has made a donation to me in the past, or if you would like to make a modest donation, I will send you a temporary URL which will keep images being served to your site until ObSrv.com is sold.

If enough people continue to make regular modest donations I won’t sell it.

What’s a reasonable donation?  I’m flexible, but $20-$30 per site per year seems like a reasonable amount.

If you want to buy it, here’s what you get:

1. The domain ObSrv.com.  A cool five letter dot com domain – imagine what you could do with it!

2. The ASP.NET and MS-SQL Server Source Code.

3. The data.

4. 12 months hosting for the site until you find somewhere else to host it.

5. 12 months tech support for the source code.  I’m not going to over-promise here.  The source code is well documented.  I’ll answer any questions you have.  I’ll even do minor mods for you – but it has to cut both ways, and the level of support depends on the price at which you buy from me.

About me: Do a Google Search on me: “Neil Ennis”.  You’ll soon see I’ve been around a long time, I keep my promises, and I value long-term business relationships.  I won’t let you down.

There is a long term problem that we need to address, and I need your help to sort it out.

The problem is that Google is limiting the number of image searches that ObSrv can do to 100 per day. The problem is that once we exceed this limit, no images are returned and you get a blank feed.

I’ve temporarily fixed this problem by changing the image search provider. I’m not saying which, as I don’t want to cause any more waves.

But eventually they’ll start blocking excessive image searches as well.

So I’m considering changing ObSrv to require you to supply a Google API key. It won’t be hard to do. All yu need to do is go to the Google Code API console, log in (or create an account) and request an API key.

Future versions of ObSrv will require you to enter that API key as part of the Feed URL.

For now, you don’t need to do anything. Everything should be working perfectly. Your images should come through as expected.

I’m just alerting you to what may have to happen, and I’d like your feedback please.

You once might have had a feed URL that was something like: http://obsrv.com/General/ImageFeed.aspx?mountain+wallpaper

But I’m suggesting we change that to something like: http://obsrv.com/General/ImageFeed.aspx?mountain+wallpaper&APIKEY=[your API KEY]

This way, any ObSrv feed requests will be linked to your API KEY and not mine. And (provided you don’t go over 100 requests per day) Google won’t hassle you. This shouldn’t be a problem. Image feeds don’t update that often. Even if you refreshed the feed every hour you’d be able to have four separate feeds and stay under the limit.

If you exceed Google’s limit, they’ll probably want you to open up a commercial account with them and pay them something. This has nothing to do with me. I’m not asking for your money – I’m just explaining how Google deals with people who use their resources in an unusual way.

Please leave a comment, or email me, and let me know your thoughts.

The challenge we face is that Search Engines are a moving target. Writing a web service like ObSrv that keeps up with this target is difficult, but not impossible.

I’ve fixed this bug.

If there are any further problems, please let me know.

To most users, you won’t notice any difference, but the problem was that some people were using ObSrv to generate adult images, which got me in trouble with Google Adsense.

This is a business decision, not a moral one. Using ObSrv to generate adult images would get my Adsense account cancelled. No Adsense income = No ObSrv. Everyone would lose. So the simplest solution I could find was to block anything that didn’t pass the Google “Strict Safe Search” test.

If you find your image feeds aren’t generating images any more, please consider using less adult-related search terms.

I’ve also improved the speed of the image feeds. It still can be sluggish at times – that’s because it’s heavily used, but to counteract this, the Image Feed will ignore requests from the same computer if they come more frequently than about once every 3 or 4 seconds.

For most people this won’t be a problem, and the only time you really notice delays on the Image Feed is if you try and display it in your browser.

If site performance is still an issue for you, please let me know.

Why does ObSrv only ever return 21 images at one time?

I thought it was a bug in my code, but it’s not. ObSrv pulls images from Google Image Search, and Google only ever returns 21 images in one go.

But this is not a problem. The images are embedded into a MediaRSS feed. That feed is cached for a maximum of one hour. After this time if you request the same feed, ObSrv will search again, but it will add in up to 21 extra images that weren’t shown last time.  So on subsequent calls you’ll get more than 21 images in the feed.  In the unlikely event that it runs out of images, it starts searching from the beginning again.

So although there’s nothing I can do about the 21 images at a time issue, it’s not a major problem because you will get more images after the feed refreshes – but remember, to save server resources (and to stop Google from banning me) it waits an hour between doing searches on the same terms.

Our server failed, so we bought a new server, which also failed.

Not being one to give up easily, I’ve been on this issue since Friday lunchtime, and am relieved to say that as of about 10pm last night, everything is now working fine.

On the bright side, we have a larger, faster server so things should run much better than before.

They should be working ok now.

If you still have any problems, please let me know or reply to this post.

I didn’t realize it, but it already does this.

Just key in the search words, followed by site:yourdomain.com

For example, if you want a feed of all images of the planet Saturn from Nasa.gov, just type in:
Saturn site:nasa.gov

Or for a feed of all images of Antarctica from NationalGeographic.com, type in:
Antarctica site:nationalgeographic.com

How cool is that?