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Old 28 Feb 2019, 01:51 AM   #1
ChinaLamb
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Contact Pictures

Where do Contact pictures come from for Contacts in Fastmail?

I have some gmail contacts, who's pictures show up, but most don't. I have others who have random pictures show up, but not for most... What's the current story on contact pictures?

/cl
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Old 28 Feb 2019, 03:49 AM   #2
FredOnline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ChinaLamb View Post
Where do Contact pictures come from for Contacts in Fastmail?

I have some gmail contacts, who's pictures show up, but most don't. I have others who have random pictures show up, but not for most... What's the current story on contact pictures?
Does that not depend on whether or not the sender has a Gravatar image?
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Old 28 Feb 2019, 05:03 AM   #3
ChinaLamb
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I had no idea that Fastmail was still using gravatar...

You know, I've worked in tech for many years, and I've never heard ANYONE except for Fastmail talk about Gravatar.

Many years ago, I tried, multiple times, to make my own gravatar... I don't know how many times over how many years. The login on the gravatar page never seemed to work for me.

Finally today, I got in, and it took me to some wordpress page I had tried to make 10 years ago. Confused on how my wordpress page was connected to gravatar, I logged out. I searched for more videos and was again even more confused.

I tried again, and I figured out that it must be linked to a wordpress profile picture (why they don't call it that is BEYOND me) ... BUT, I still don't know how to connect that to a specific email address. The whole thing is still bizarre to me.

I honestly don't get why Fastmail would use Gravatar, and I honestly don't think there's any number of people out there who really know what a gravatar is.

Why doesn't fastmail check an email address to see if it has a google/yahoo/or other image associated with it?

Or is it just me?
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Old 28 Feb 2019, 06:27 AM   #4
FredOnline
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I've found it difficult to access my account in the Gravatar website, so much so that I've made a note of how to do it:

https://en.gravatar.com/site/login

Sign in with WordPress.com

Sometimes it says not signed in, but if I then click the sign in button again, the Gravatar account magically appears.

I currently have 22 e-mail addresses set up with Gravatars!
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Old 1 Mar 2019, 05:40 AM   #5
janusz
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ChinaLamb View Post
Why doesn't fastmail check an email address to see if it has a google/yahoo/or other image associated with it?
Are you sure email addresses are associated with images? Is only one image associated with an address?? And what if the sender doesn't want you to see his/her picture?

Setting up a gravatar means you define a publicly-visible image associated with your online identity. It doesn't have to be your image in the colloquial meaning of the word, it usually isn't BTW.
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Old 1 Mar 2019, 09:01 AM   #6
Berenburger
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How to set your profile picture on FastMail.
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Old 1 Mar 2019, 01:30 PM   #7
ChinaLamb
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Originally Posted by janusz View Post
Are you sure email addresses are associated with images? Is only one image associated with an address?? And what if the sender doesn't want you to see his/her picture?
That's pretty simple. With Google and the other major email companies, people define a public profile image that's linked to their email account. You know it's public, because that's how Gmail, Yahoo, etc. Work. Same as gravatar, but it's built in. There's a simple api to call the public profile image associated with the account. No need to create a separate gravatar. My

Just saying, most not FastMail users I know don't use gravatar. They already have a public profile image associated to their account. Well never get 500 million people to get gravatar... If there's a simple api to grab the Google or Yahoo image, why don't we do that?
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Old 1 Mar 2019, 09:45 PM   #8
Walter Eagle
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I have many contacts who have never created an image associated with their email addresses, so there's nothing for FastMail to receive or associate with them.

In my FastMail contacts I have about six where I have attached custom images - taken from photographs etc. - which remind me of the person in question. This was done some time ago and I can't find out how I did it. I'd like to do more contacts like this so they have an associated image, or update some of the existing ones, but I just can't see the option anywhere in FastMail Contacts to add or change the image. Is this an option that was subsequently removed?

If I look at one of the existing contacts I'd modified and right-click on the image > "Copy image address" I get -

https://www.fastmailusercontent.com/...t=image%2Fjpeg

[NOTE: I didn't want to post a real contact image for privacy reasons, but you can see the general format of the URL when the page loads with an error. I changed one digit in the URL to ensure an invalid address.]

Can anyone remind me how I originally added this image and others to my FastMail contacts, and how do I continue to do it?

Thanks and regards.
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Old 1 Mar 2019, 10:02 PM   #9
BritTim
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter Eagle View Post
In my FastMail contacts I have about six where I have attached custom images - taken from photographs etc. - which remind me of the person in question. This was done some time ago and I can't find out how I did it. I'd like to do more contacts like this so they have an associated image, or update some of the existing ones, but I just can't see the option anywhere in FastMail Contacts to add or change the image. Is this an option that was subsequently removed?.
The way this has been done in the past is to use a client (such as the IOS Mail app) that supports images to accomplish adding and removing of Contact images, and to subsequently synchronise the contacts using CardDAV.
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Old 1 Mar 2019, 10:25 PM   #10
ChinaLamb
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter Eagle View Post
I have many contacts who have never created an image associated with their email addresses, so there's nothing for FastMail to receive or associate with them.
Another reason grabbing publicly available avatars from other email providers is preferable.

I'm imagining it could be done with client side scripting, to check the various email providers if there is a contact image out there. If there is, it could be loaded onto the client, then saved to the server. That way, Fastmail wouldn't need to overburden their bandwidth and servers looking constantly for avatars for each of the millions of contacts stored by users...

Again, just a thought.
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Old 1 Mar 2019, 10:30 PM   #11
ChinaLamb
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Originally Posted by Berenburger View Post
Thanks, Berenburger, there's a merely a link there to the gravatar website on that page, and there's virtually no instructions there on the gravatar site. So...

I eventually figured it out, but I'll have to say, I only figured it out yesterday after trying off an on for over 10 years. Non-intuitive, esp. because it's a wordpress blog site. But I havn't fully figured out the process, because it was taking too much time...

I assume you have to put an image in your blog profile, that you then associate with an email address. That was a deduction I had to make. NONE of the videos on the gravatar site had anything to do with what I actually saw when I logged in. and No wher did I see that I would be logging into Wordpress... That little bit confused me for years.

I havn't done this yet, and probably wont, honestly. It's convoluted and, in my opinion, a stupid way to handle email avatars - completely unknown to a majority of email users out there. The 1000+ contacts I store in Fastmail, a very small percentage (less than 1%?) have an image stored in gravatar.
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Old 2 Mar 2019, 02:34 AM   #12
Walter Eagle
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BritTim View Post
... use a client (such as the IOS Mail app) that supports images ...
Thanks Tim.
This may well account for it.
I did once have an Apple device a few years ago and I may have used this to set up some of these contacts. No longer, however, so most of my contacts will probably remain image-less.
Anyway, I appreciate the very prompt response.

Thanks and regards

Walter
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Old 2 Mar 2019, 04:27 AM   #13
pjroutledge
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I think, to be fair, Gravatars were looking like they might take off once (about 10 years ago maybe). It was possible to create (and maintain) one or more avatars and use them at various sites (eg Fastmail, and I think they worked with Yahoo for a while). It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The reason they're associated with Wordpress is because Wordpress later bought the concept and the site.

After that Gravatars seemed to languish.

I can't speak for Fastmail, but I suspect that after they'd set up the Gravatar thing they've focussed on other priorities.
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Old 2 Mar 2019, 04:41 AM   #14
ChinaLamb
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Originally Posted by pjroutledge View Post
I think, to be fair, Gravatars were looking like they might take off once (about 10 years ago maybe). .... I suspect that after they'd set up the Gravatar thing they've focussed on other priorities.
I would definitely agree on that. It would be nice to see them pull in images from other services...
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