IMatch Anywhere...

Mario · September 17, 2016, 03:53:44 PM

Over the past weeks I've been very busy with implementing the new customer portal and moving all photools.com contents, this community and other stuff to a faster server. Although this was quite a bit of work, it went surprisingly well. Some users with slow internet connections reported download problems, but we could solve that by Wednesday.

On Monday I've also released the anticipated 5.7 update for IMatch, with many small enhancements and some substantial new features. This was also the first stress test for the new customer portal and the new server. Both handled the traffic without any problems.

Implementing the new customer portal was required for several reasons. The old portal did not match the new photools.com look and layout, I wanted everything on a single server and under one domain, secured by SSL. I also wanted on-line the release notes (finally) and I needed some special features for the upcoming IMatch Anywhere^TM product line.

Now I'm back working on IMatch WebServices and the browser-based IMatch WebViewer. Thanks to the IMatch users who volunteered to help with the testing and and the two local tester groups it personally work with, IMatch Anywhere and the related products and technologies are now nearly finished. Well, at least the 1.0 version

Currently I'm polishing things, trying to reduce complexity and making things even simpler. Although IMatch WebServices (IMWS) is what you would normally call a server product, it has to be easy to install and use for 'normal' users. For a standard installation, all you need to do is to choose the IMatch database to use. Then you press START and that's it. Your local computer and all devices in your local network can then browse your IMatch database remotely. From your tablet, your smart phone, your TV, ...

The front-end app IMatch WebViewer is a responsive app that works in your browser. With it you can browse your IMatch database. Search. Filter. View images in a window or full-screen - of course with support for keyboard, mouse and touch.

While IMatch WebViewer cannot do as much as IMatch for Windows at this time, it has some unique features, for example the ability to play MP3 files directly in the file window (maybe videos later as well) or the dynamic time-line feature, which makes it super easy to browse several years worth of files with the mouse or by touch. It looks good, to:

(Click to zoom)

And for users who will use IMatch WebViewer on an Apple device (or who just prefer the look), there is even a whitish, applish skin (click to zoom):

jeknepley · September 17, 2016, 04:59:44 PM

My face is turning blue waiting for the big day....

jelvers · September 17, 2016, 05:47:50 PM

Looks brilliant! Exactly the piece of addition to IMatch I was waiting for!

Regards, Juergen

Frank · September 17, 2016, 06:58:19 PM

This looks great and I know what hardware I am gone buy for that.
https://www.qnap.com/de-de/product/model.php?II=211&ref=product_overview

There I am able to setup a VM as a server :-)

So I am prepared for the release

Frank

Mario · September 17, 2016, 07:16:06 PM

Remember: IMatch WebServices requires a Windows PC to run. You cannot run IMWS under Linux directly. The NAS box you have linked in your post does not run under Windows. I don't know if it has enough 'juice' to run Windows in a VM...

I know that IMWS runs on an Intel Compute Stick, though ;-)

thrinn · September 17, 2016, 07:28:31 PM

Wow, exciting things to come! Impressive!

Frank · September 17, 2016, 10:50:56 PM

Mario, this one you can run aWindows VM on it. There for I choose it.
Frank

Mario · September 18, 2016, 12:50:04 PM

Quote from: Frank on September 17, 2016, 10:50:56 PM
Mario, this one you can run aWindows VM on it. There for I choose it.
Frank

Yes, I know. That's what I meant with 'enough juice'.

Although IMatch WebServices^TM has been designed to run on 'small' computer systems and to perform well, I have no experienced with NAS boxes with (only) a Celeron, which then must run a Linux kernel, a VM on top and in that a Windows 10 installation. This stack can suck up quite a lot of computing power and RAM I guess.

Most NAS boxes are not really designed for large computing power. They have specialized built-in chips to get good performance for compression/encryption and video streaming and de-coding. The real processor is often not that fast.

I suggest you check out this link, it has some in-depth information about your NAS box of choice:

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-06/qnap-ts-253a-test/

The slowest PC I've run IMWS on so far was my 2 year old ASUS tablet with Window 10. It served 5 users over a local network without a problem (70,000 files database). IMWS performed well, despite the fact that the system has only 2 GB RAM. Of course the larger the database is and the more users connect, the more IMWS benefits from more RAM.