Store · Sort · Search · Share · Sell
Millions of photographs, thousands of people, hundreds of tags and categories… and a massive untapped market for all of it. We call it The Power of CrowdTagging™Our Product
Why are we doing this?
There are thousands of people taking photographs of transportation infrastructure every day. Hundreds of Facebook groups are dedicated to the hobby and business of obtaining and using transportation photographs. Roads, bridges, freight trains, transit trains and buses, airports, planes, ferries, and every form of ground, water, and air transport are the subjects that both enthusiasts and professionals enjoy documenting and collecting. This collection is a massive and untapped market, a useful tool that merely needs to be made accessible in a straightforward way.
What is Transportation Pixels?
Transportation Pixels is the cutting-edge way to store your personal collection of transportation photographs online, sort and categorize the photos with the Power of Crowdtagging™, and integrate the collection with social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Using a massive and managed relational database, we'll separately store the attribute tags assigned to each photograph, allowing for instant search and retrieval, dramatically increasing the accessibility and utility of large and comprehensive collections. You'll earn pxPOINTS that can be used to enhance your search capabilities and sold in the pxPOINTS marketplace for other commercial and private users who wish to upgrade membership levels and conduct in-depth searches.
Store
Every user will have unlimited storage with Transportation Pixels. We've made it our mission to protect your data and guarantee you that you'll have complete control over every photo you upload, forever. You can download your entire collection up to three times every 12 months, eliminating the need for expensive and time-consuming backups. You'll be able to view your images using our full suite of CrowdTagging™ tools or your own native folder structure created when you upload photos. And if you decide you'd like to keep photos private to prevent them from being displayed, we make that possible, too. Your data is yours.
Store and Earn pxPOINTS - every user can build their collection of Pixel Points, which we'll refer to as px points. You'll obtain pixel points merely by creating an account and uploading photos.
Sort
The heart of our innovative platform is Pixels CrowdTagging™, something no one else offers. Conventional image search platforms merely look for patterns within photos and group them together by association with text, related photos on a web site, or other non-applied data. Our solution is to use the intelligence and knowledge of the crowd to apply tags to your photos. We'll define thousands of transportation-related tags, create categories for tags, and allow multi-criteria photo classifications that include and reference important metadata such as the source of the photo, the geographic coordinates of the photo, the date it was taken, and links to prior and subsequent photos.
Sort and Earn pxPOINTS - This community is based on contributions. You'll earn pxPOINTS for uploading photos, tagging photos, having your photos tagged, having tags on your photos and photos you tag confirmed by a community coordinator, and even for views, thumbs, saves, and shares. The ultimate points earning potential comes from the sale of your photos, which we facilitate, offering you the option of receiving cash payments through PayPal when the sale price exceeds a designated amount.
Search
The power of Pixels CrowdTagging™ is indeed the search tool. Remember, you'll always be able to search for your collection using all available search terms. As you earn pxPOINTS, you'll also be able to purchase enhanced options for single-searches or even upgrade your account.
Share
The dozens of existing social media sites form the platform for sharing your collection and publicizing what you have available
Sell
Your collection is worth something to you and it's worth something to thousands of people and businesses around the world. You'll receive pxPOINTS for every photo that is downloaded. You'll also receive the proceeds of any framed photo sales that are made and can create special galleries emphasizing the artistic value of selected photos from your collection and all artistic photos can be searched with artistic value tags such as "Landscapes", "Night Scenes", and "Black&White". Your pxPOINTS can be redeemed for cash at at values dependent on downloads and social media shares of your collection and you'll always retain the right to restrict high-resolution downloads and sales of any photograph or gallery that you upload. You'll also be able to sell pxPOINTS to other users so that they can upgrade membership levels and use pxPOINTS for one-time search enhancements and high-resolution downloads.
Our People Are Passionate
Transportation Pixels is the brainchild of co-founder Scott Kuznicki. Scott, co-founder Ryan Avery, veteran startup guru Ovid Stavrica, and transportation industry expert Faisal Hamood are all working to deliver the dream of a massive searchable imagery collection. To do this, we're partnering with organizations so that we can help others achieve their dreams, too.
Ada Developers Academy
The Transportation Pixels team is exploring a partnership with the Ada Developers Academy (Ada), an intensive software developer training school for women. Ada's unique year-long program begins with seven months of classroom instruction in cutting-edge web technologies in which students learn the most up-to-date development skills from leading regional and national experts.
After successful completion of the in-class work, students are placed in an internship with a Puget Sound tech company, where they learn what it's like to be part of a real engineering team shipping production code. Transportation Pixels will be based in the Seattle area and positioned to bring Ada's interns on board for a holistic learning experience in a multi-cultural setting. We believe, with Ada Excecutive Director Cynthia Tee, that "Gender diversity is key. Diverse teams build a better product overall." We're building a diverse team to deliver a product with incredible diversity.
Scott O. Kuznicki
Scott is a traffic engineer who has been collecting photographs and video on his personal travels for nearly 20 years. His personal collection exceeds 3 TB of photographs alone and would be a fantastic resource for people throughout the world. His dream is to bring the collections of people, businesses, and government agencies together in one huge searchable database of transportation imagery. Scott has project management experience, technology integration and development expertise, and a keen desire to be a fair and effective leader, sharing the success of Transportation Pixels with employees, contractors, and Backers alike. Scott will be leading our team as the CEO.
Ryan Avery, Ph.D.
Ryan is a transportation engineer, planner, and university professor who is paasionate about technology and efficiency. With nearly 15 years of programming experience in over 10 languages, Ryan is also experienced in dealing with large datasets and scalability. Ryan will be managing the development team as our Chief Technical Officer.
Ovid Stavrica
Ovid's 20 years of experience in Seattle's startup scene will be an incredible asset to our team. Ovid has the ability to visualize how products are used and his aptitude in web security is the key to managing our pxPOINTS system, screening user submissions, and understanding how the growing user base will affect the credibility of the product. Ovid launched Wiresoft and Social Gameworks and developed the robust Time Magazine Person of the Year survey while the Chief Technical Officer at Pinnion. Ovid will serve as our Chief Information Officer.
Faisal Hamood
Faisal brings an unparalleled industry perspective to our team and will be assisting us in deploying the Marketplace tagging system and managing our corporate partnerships. Faisal's attention to detail and commitment to mutually-equitable relationships will be a great asset as we develop our revenue stream from the people who manufacture transportation system products and the people who design and build the infrastructure and vehicles.
Our Development Team
Our planned partnership will provide us with a highly-skilled and diverse development team. In our business plan, we lay out the key development activities and our intention to contract with a web developer, a database developer, and a social media integrator.
Our Plans
Our Transportation Pixels team has thoroughly examined intellectual property, database management, and media storage issues related to this project. Our goal is due diligence and ensuring that we will be good stewards of your Kickstarter pledge and deliver this product on time and within the budget. Read our business plan and learn more about how we've budgeted for equipment, development, support, and other services.
Preparation
Our team is ready to work with intellectual property attorneys, business finance experts, and supporters in the industry to adequately address threats to our success. In parallel with development, we'll begin studying creative commons licensing and the personality rights of public subjects, which vary by jurisdiction. We've solved some of these problems already and we plan to thoroughly explore them all.
At the same time, we'll begin publicity efforts with a social media campaign, advertising on pertinent web sites, and begin reaching out to manufacturers of transportation products to begin pitching Marketplace Membership sales.
Working with a panel of experts assembled from Backers and our friends in the transportation industry, we'll begin the process of developing the potential metadata tags that users will use in the Crowdtagging™ process. As we do that, we'll create a user community that will serve as the forum for discussing tags and the organization of the metadata.
Development
Our Chief Technical Officer will lead our development efforts, working in an integrated team with our staff of developers and our Chief Information Officer. We'll contract with a web developer, a database developer, and a social media integrator. We'll develop and test the database and media repository, develop the content management system and web portal, and begin testing the social media integration. Subsequent to the beta deployment, we'll finalize our social media integration and purchase additional equipment based on load testing and anticipated user needs, including a scalability assessment.
Deployment
Before we deploy our full product, we'll deploy a beta system using the web browser only. We'll offer the opportunity for beta testing to our Backers and those who've supported us on social media. All of the uploads and tags will be preserved for the full deployment. Based on feedback from user experiences, we'll improve our product and develop the mobile application for uploading and tagging photos, with additional functionality being planned.
The Future
The future is limitless! With this massive, searchable repository of transportation imagery from all over the world, we'll revolutionize Open Data and create an enormous market for a previously-untapped resource. We expect that we'll eventually be able to provide crowd-sourced inventory of transportation infrastructure and our partnership discussions with government agencies are already laying the groundwork for this brand new market. All along, we'll give back to you, our Backers and our contributors, ensuring that you receive the credit and the compensation for the use of your personal collection of transportation imagery.