Creating a Virtual Collection

PatchLodge.com is a non-commercial effort by single programmer and an ever growing community of users to make trading patches fun, rewarding, and accessible to those new to the hobby.  Below, I try to describe what PL is, what problems it's trying solve, and how it's attempting to solve these problems.

Some of the Problem(s) PatchLodge.com Tries to Solve:

1. there is no good turnkey solution for one to virtualized their collection
2. there is no good way to match up complementary patch trading partners
3. there is no good online analog to in-person patch trading

In a series of post, I am going to address these points. The first of which is the easy one - i.e., a solution to easily "virtualizing" a collection.

Virtualizing a Collection

If you are reading this, then I am sure you've stumbled across about the dozens of hand-crafted websites that technologically savvy patch collectors have cobbled together in their spare time to show of their patch collection. Some sites are actually quite good, but most others are terrible and frustrating to navigate.

This practice of creating a website to show off one's collection is what I mean when I use the term, "virtualizing a collection". It means to somehow present your collection online for others to see - and hopefully more.

My first attempt to virtual my collection consisted of me importing images into Google's Picasa program. It's a great program for managing pictures and it provides a neat feature to export a gallery of images as plain HTML. You can take the resulting exported images and HTML and upload it to a server.  This is nice for providing static content, but it's rather useless if you want to do anything other than just show off a fixed number of static images. Picasa also allows one to associate a label and various keywords (i.e., tags) with an image.

These tags provide a flexible way to associate related images together. Picasa didn't really make much use of these tags, but I thought that if I could create an online application that allowed me to do cool things with the information and associations that these tags provided.  These tags in PatchLodge.com provide the basis for user defined galleries and also image searching. In fact, a gallery is nothing more that a "saved" search.

Functionality has expanded a bit - still largely based on the information provided for by the tags. For example, an image that is tagged as "fortrade" by an image owner shows up on the visitor side of the site with a message that says, "this item is for trade; contact the owner if interested".  As you can see, this provides a very simple way to advertise what you have for trade!

The hardest part about virtualizing a collection is the upfront time it requires to image (e.g., scan or photograph) an item.  I will have a later post on how to do this efficiently, but most of my items on PL were imaged with a digital camera.  Some purists would argue this is a bad way to do it, but I was more interested in efficiency and not perfect images. Others are very meticulous about scanning their images - and the quality against my digital photographs surely comes through.

What Virtualization Features Does PatchLodge.com Provide?

1. item image uploads (single images or in bulk as a .zip file)
2. a means to label and tag each item
3. a means to create public galleries based on tag search strings
4. a means to upload a replacement image of the item when a better one is achieved
5. special tags that invoke features when a visitor views your item; for example, the "fortrade" tag

There are a lot of features planned, including a whole slew of special tags that will facilitate a lot more functionality in a very flexible and intuitive way.

If you'd like to virtualize your collection, please consider signing up. The time spent organizing your collection will be time well spent.

Other Benefits to Virtualizing One's Collection

1. efficient tracking and accounting of a collection - no pulling out binders and shoe boxes all the time
2. an "offsite" photographic record of your collection, e.g., for insurance purposes
3. showing off what you have is fun and rewarding
4. it exposes the hobby to a new, more tech savvy generation
5. oh yeah, it's FUN!!

Thanks for reading, and please continue to visit PatchLodge.com and please consider making a donation to help support the site financially.

Stay tuned while I post more on the aforementioned problems PatchLodge.com attempts to address.

WWW && YiS,
PL