Nov 2008

1. Rice paddies at sunset near Yangshou, China. By saintjason.

2. Off to market in Sapa, Vietnam. By robjwood.

3. Curious children at an abandoned palace in rural Rajasthan, India. By Ardy.

4. Windmill in the Alblasserwaard, Netherlands. By Utrecht.

5. Bringing in the timber, India. By dinah1.

6. Salinas Grandes, Argentina. By JOSE_MARIA.

7. Traditional farming methods in Ankober, Ethiopia. By kiwilara.

8. Wooden church, Iceland. By Utrecht.

9. The very quiet, unspoiled hamlet of Gropina in Tuscany, Italy. By david.byne.

10. The good ol' swimming hole, Cambodia. By Daver141.


11. Ox cart in hill country, Myanmar. By john7buck.


12. Golden fields of wheat on the way to the terraced amphitheatre of Moray in the Sacred Valley near Cuzco, Peru. By joffre.

13. Wall and houses in the little village of Faial de Terra, located on the large island São Miguel of the Azores, Portugal. By Makini.

• **

Every month, Travellerspoint throws a travel photo competition with a unique theme. The photos above are the favourites from last month's Rural photo competition.

Congratulations to saintjason, whose photo of rice paddies in Yangshuo was this month's winner. Jason wins a $50 Amazon voucher, a Globetrotter's Logbook and a 5GB increase of his photo storage limit on Travellerspoint. Runner-up robjwood will also receive a Globetrotter's Logbook and a 5GB increase of his photo storage limit.

If you missed out this time, be sure to check out our new competition. This month, the theme is Winter. Find out more about the competition here.

Check out the results of past competitions:

• 12 Urban Scenes Captured by Travellers
  
• 15 Beautiful Images of People Around the World
  
• 15 Exceptional Photos with a Blue Theme
  
• 10 Images of Sport Around the World
  
• Top 13 Transportation Photos: Your Picks
  
• 13 of the Best Watery Travel Photos
  
• 10 Photos to Whet Your Appetite for Food and Travel
  
• Red: 11 Evocative Photos by Travellers
  

So Dodgey has been asking about why you can't put photos exactly where you want them in your moblog entries (those email entries you email or MMS to your blog). To be honest, I thought we were limited here due to some technical restraints, but Sander made a great suggestion the other day on how to work around this, so today while it was raining outside and my wife and daughter were having a nap I decided to give this a shot. I'm going to use my daughter Malia as a model for the photos, but any photo should work (jpg/png/gif etc.).

Here's photo number one; inserted automatically in this position. Text should continue under the photo.

The 'problem' basically was that in the past if you added or attached photos to your email, it would always put those at the very end of your post. Whilst that's a good first step, Dodgey wanted to include the photos exactly where he had planned them, and seeing as I've run into this myself, I could certainly see the added value of this!

Here's photo number two; inserted automatically in this position. Text should continue under the photo.

So, how do I do this I hear you all asking?!

When writing an email that you plan to email in to your blog, put [img] whereever you want to have the photo inserted. Then attach the photos in the order you want them inserted and hit send. The photos will be uploaded as they are regularly and inserted in the same order you have attached them.

QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT HAVE

Q: What if I just want to attach them at the back of the email like I always have?
A: Go for it, nothing has changed. Just don't add [img] to your text anywhere!

Q: What happens if I attach 5 photos, but only include [img] 2 times?
A: It will put the first 2 images where you have the [img] tags and the remaining 3 photos will be put at the end of the blog entry. Nifty? I think so!

Q: What if I attach 2 photos, but include the [img] tag 9 times?
A: It will replace the first two instances of the [img] tag, and the remaining ones will just say [img]. A good example of this in action is this very blog post

Q: What if I want to add in photos from another site in my emailed in blog entry?
A: We're so cool, that's always been possible! So let's say I decided to include a photo of a different Malia, like the one on this page on Flickr. I just have to include the tag with the proper image link in it and it will add it to your blog entry. In this case, the photo is located at http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3254/3008257287_6fc70d5538.jpg , so I type [ img=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3254/3008257287_6fc70d5538.jpg] (remove the space right at the very beginning) would insert the photo whereever you put it, like right here:
Malia Obama, creative commons from Flickr

There you have it; this entire post was emailed in and I haven't done any editing on it whatsoever. Everything down to the links added in right here in Apple Mail, but any old email system would work. MMS should also work, but I'm not even sure if you can add multiple photos to an MMS?

Thanks for the suggestion Sander and if anyone has any questions; please ask in the comments or reply to the forum thread.