二十国集团领导人第三次金融峰会即将于9月下旬在位于美国宾夕法尼亚州西部的名城匹兹堡举行。匹兹堡不仅以其实力雄厚的制造业闻名于世，而且堪称美国城市经济成功转型的典范。尤其引人注目的是，执掌这座城市的是一位年仅29岁的小伙子。本报记者日前独家专访了这位年轻的匹兹堡市市长卢克。

　　26岁成为美国最年轻的大城市市长

　　“欢迎到匹兹堡来做客！”当记者步入匹兹堡市长办公室，阳光帅气的卢克早已等候多时。虽然专访前已经通过查阅背景资料对这位年轻的市长有所了解，但卢克灿烂的笑容和爽朗的笑声仍然给记者留下了深刻的第一印象。

　　卢克从小在匹兹堡长大，出身于政治世家，他的祖父曾任州议员，父亲则是一位法官。大学毕业后仅仅1年，初出茅庐的卢克便成功当选市议员，两年后又荣登市议会议长宝座，显露出不凡的政治才华。2006年，机遇再次垂青这位政坛新秀。那一年，前市长在任内突然病逝，把年仅26岁的卢克推上了市长的位置。卢克由此成为匹兹堡历史上最年轻的市长，也是美国最年轻的大城市市长。

　　卢克继任匹兹堡市长的消息当时在美国引起了不小的轰动，因为人们很难把一座拥有200万人口的著名老城与一位年仅26岁的市长联系起来。一些政治评论家还对卢克的能力表示怀疑，认为他的平步青云纯粹是一系列的“运气”所致。

　　面对记者的提问，卢克自信地说：“年龄非但不是问题，而且是我的优势。”虽然长着一张娃娃脸，卢克在谈到自己的执政理念时却显得成熟自信。他说：“年轻代表活力。作为政坛新人，我敢于打破不合时宜的传统观念，把握时代脉搏，解放思想，求实创新；而作为民选市长，我工作的出发点和落脚点都是为了更好地服务于匹兹堡市民，较少受到党派和利益集团的影响。”

　　虽然身为市长，卢克仍然保持着与普通美国年轻人一样的兴趣爱好。他在读大学时曾是一位优秀的橄榄球运动员，并且一直是美国橄榄球联赛6冠王“匹兹堡钢人队”的铁杆儿球迷。2009年1月，匹兹堡钢人队和巴尔的摩乌鸦队举行总决赛前，卢克因为自己的姓氏恰好与客队的队名重合，竟然一时兴起宣布改姓“钢人”。虽然这只是一个玩笑，但却在匹兹堡市民中传为美谈。卢克还喜欢听摇滚乐、泡酒吧、打高尔夫球。他说：“我是个29岁的年轻人，所以我享受的是这个年龄一般年轻人应有的快乐。”

　　不过，现在的卢克可能很少有机会与太太一起去酒吧听摇滚乐了，倒不是因为市长工作太忙，而是因为他去年10月刚刚当了爸爸。记者注意到，在卢克偌大的办公室里到处摆满了儿子库珀的照片，其中一张是他与儿子并排躺在一起的合影，童心未泯，妙趣横生，幸福之情溢于言表。

　　卢克特别关心青少年和老年人的生活。他上任后专门设立了一个“市长青年理事会”，致力于帮助青少年健康成长并引导他们关注社会问题。

　　匹兹堡市长办公室公关主任吉吉·萨拉纳对记者表示，卢克市长为匹兹堡带来了一股政治新风，不仅受到各级政府公务员的欢迎，而且赢得了全体市民的拥戴。

　　经济成功转型成为主办G20峰会主因

　　匹兹堡曾经是世界著名的工业城市，被誉为“钢铁之都”。第二次世界大战后，随着世界经济和科学技术的发展，高能耗、重污染的钢铁工业不得不让位于新兴产业。经历了几十年的艰苦努力，匹兹堡终于实现了从传统老工业城市到新兴绿色产业基地的华丽转身。如今的匹兹堡已经成为囊括钢铁、机电、医药、金融、教育以及新能源、信息技术等众多高科技领域的综合性产业基地。

　　匹兹堡的成功转型和经济稳定增长，卢克市长自然功不可没。卢克主持制定了旨在大力推广绿色环保产业的“匹兹堡复兴计划”，为匹兹堡市经济的可持续发展注入了强劲动力。在卢克担任市长的3年时间里，匹兹堡市从濒临破产转为实现1亿美元财政盈余，多次被评为全美最适宜居住城市和全美治安最好的城市之一。由卢克领导开发的总量高达30亿美元的匹兹堡市中心商务区，是美东地区最大的区域地产建设项目，包括地铁、新冰球馆、新赌场、新高端住宅、新银行大楼，其中还有美国最大的绿色环保建筑戴维·劳伦斯会议中心。该会议中心也将作为此次二十国集团领导人金融峰会的主会场。

　　在这场金融危机中，匹兹堡并没有受到太大影响，经济保持稳定增长，失业率远低于美国平均水平，是全美少有的几个在经济衰退时仍能保持财政盈余的城市之一。卢克强调，正因为匹兹堡的成功转型，才使其有效规避了此次金融危机的严重冲击，而这也是匹兹堡被选为此次G20金融峰会主办地的最主要原因。

　　G20峰会是匹兹堡难得的历史机遇

　　谈到即将召开的二十国集团领导人第三次金融峰会时，卢克表示，匹兹堡已经从各个方面为此做好了充分准备，我们要抓住这一历史机遇，推动匹兹堡的经济发展再上新台阶。

　　匹兹堡是美国钢铁公司、PPG工业公司、西屋电气、PNC金融服务集团等8家美国500强企业的总部基地，也是德国拜尔等350多家外国企业在美公司所在地。卢克表示，匹兹堡市高度重视与中国发展经贸关系，已经与武汉市结为姐妹城市，欢迎更多的中国企业来匹兹堡洽谈投资。他说，这里汇集了匹兹堡大学、卡内基·梅隆大学等32所知名学府，拥有雄厚的教育和科研实力，公共卫生和社会保障事业发展位居美国前列。

　　采访结束时，记者请卢克对本报读者讲一句话。卢克笑着说：“希望我的故事能够激励中国的年轻朋友勇敢追逐自己的梦想，而匹兹堡成功转型的经历能给中国经济的可持续发展带来启迪。”最后，卢克仍不忘加上一句：“欢迎到匹兹堡来做客！”

　　本报华盛顿9月6日电

　　本报驻美国记者 杨丽明 鞠辉

Flickr vs PBase – Which is better for hosting photos?

Web hosting for your photos – this is one of those areas in photography where there’s little agreement on which photo sharing solution is the best.

I have personally used Smugmug.com, Fotki.com and Imageshack.us, but due to a variety of reasons, have decided to drop them and stick only to Flickr.com and PBase.com.

Before I get into the specifics of Flickr vs Pbase, you might want to know what my conclusions are first:

• Go with Pbase.com if you want to create a hierarchy of sub-galleries with no depth limit, and would like to present those galleries in a professional manner, tailored to your needs using CSS (custom stylesheets).
• Go with Flickr.com if you want to share and discuss your photos with as wide an audience as possible. If you’re a blogger, definitely use Flick since it has a publicly-available API (application programming interface) which allows you to pull pictures and information from your Flickr account and have them appear on your blog. Additionally, there are tons of Flickr widgets (little bits and snippets of code) that you can stick in your site and have, say, the latest photos appear in the sidebar of your blog.

Let’s go into the details now.

Price

Flickr charges you US$24.95 per year, while PBase asks you for US$23.

Storage space and file size

Flickr is the king of the hill when you want to store unlimited number of photos. They used to impose a limit on how many megabytes (MB) of photos you can upload in a month, but there’s no limit now. Go ahead and upload 2.9 trillion photos per day, but each photo cannot exceed 10 MB 20 MB per photo (announced in this Flickr blog post, last paragraph) if you have a Pro account (the 10 MB limit stays for free accounts).

Pbase is king of the hill when you want to share the latest JPG photo taken with the latest 24-megapixel camera, because there’s no limit on the size of each individual photo. However, for $23 a year, you only get to store 500 MB worth of photos. If you exceed that quota by even 1 byte, your subscription period automatically drops from 12 months to 6 months (pro-rated over the remaining number of months left in your subscription)

Gallery structure

By default, the latest photos you post to Flickr always appear on your home page. Very much like blogs, where the latest post and articles appear at the top of the page. You can create sets of photos (say My Rome Trip in 2007) and collections of sets (My Lifetime of Rome Trips), but it’s not possible, to my knowledge, to create sub-galleries with unlimited depth.

PBase is great for those who like to create sub-galleries under sub-galleries. It’s very easy to do – just navigate to an existing gallery, enter the name of the new gallery, and indicate whether the new gallery should be a child of the current gallery, or appear at the home page. You can create nice hierarchies of galleries in PBase.

For comparison, see this gallery of full-sized Nikon D70 photos on Pbase, vs. that on Flickr. What’s missing in the Flickr version are two sub-galleries (Sigma 18-50mm images and Sigma 12-24mm images) because I can’t do them in Flickr like I can in Pbase. Also, I’ve elected to denote sub-galleries with double colons (::) on the left and right of the sub-gallery title.

Which do you prefer?

On Pbase, especially if you’ve never visited PBase before, the default image size presented to you when you click on a thumbnail is Large. You’d need to then click on the Original link found beneath the photo in order to see it full-sized, but this preference is remembered on your computer and will be in effect for subsequent images.

In the case of Flickr, clicking on a thumbnail shows you only the medium sized version. You’d then have to click on the All Sizes link above the photo, which shows you the Large version, and then click on Original to view the full-sized photo. Then click on the Back to the Flickr photo page link, click the next photo, and repeat the entire process.

In other words, it’s not generally a cool idea to host photos on Flickr for the viewing pleasure of pixel peepers. You may argue that Flickr holds much more data (IPTC, and more EXIF fields) than PBase, but pixel peepers (like me) prefer to have the convenience of all the images display in the Original size from the get go, and use our own EXIF tool of choice to peek at the underlying data.

Photo titles

If you make it a point to name your JPEG images before uploading them, Flickr is smart enough to name your uploaded photos with the same name as your file without the JPG extension. So, if you upload an image with the filename 1st Flower Macro.jpg, your photo will appear on Flickr with the name 1st Flower Macro. Unfortunately, the uploader created for the Apple Mac OS X platform isn’t so smart – you’d need to manually remove the extension.

On Pbase, that same file will be titled 1st Flower Macro.jpg. I have to manually place my cursor in the name field of the image and hit Backspace a few times to remove .jpg – mildly irritating, but a huge inconvenience if you have tons of photos uploaded at one go.

EXIF

Flickr makes it very difficult to view the EXIF of a photo. What’s shown with each photo is just the camera model. If you’re interested in the technical details of a series of photos, you’ll have to always click the “More properties” link which brings up a separate page showing a smaller version of the photo with the EXIF. Then hit Backspace, call up the next photo, and repeat the process.

On Pbase, basic EXIF such as camera model, shutter speed, focal length and aperture is always shown, and you have the option to call up the full EXIF, after which your preference is remembered for every subsequent photo you view on PBase. Pbase also allows you to tag your photo with the lens that was used.

It has to be said that Flickr does have the upper hand when it comes to completeness of capturing image data. IPTC information, if present, is automatically recorded in the Caption / Abstract field for the photo. Even XMP data can be captured. You can basically put as much information as your heart desires in the IPTC / XMP fields.

Bandwidth

You can be assured of virtually no problems with image download bandwidth. Imageshack.us is pretty famous for showing a picture of a frog the minute your photo has been viewed X number of times in Y amount of time.

No such issues with Flickr or PBase. Be the first person on Earth to snap a photo with the newest camera model, upload the original to your account, share it with a digital camera forum (if you want to be famous online, just post a link in the relevant forum on DPReview.com to that photo), and you can be sure of having thousands of visitors to that photo within a couple of hours. Best of all, you don’t have to worry about your account being temporarily shut down, or suspended, or worse, having the viewers complain that they can’t see your image.

Ease of use

To be fair, I think both systems are equally easy to use once you get the hang of the user interface. For some stuff, I prefer Flickr (single click, AJAX-style, on photo or title field to change the content), and for others, I prefer PBase (hierarchical galleries).

For what it’s worth, my Mum represents the typical photographer who just wants to share her images in a simple way, and she prefers Flickr.

The Social Aspect

Flickr is a Web 2.0 site, meaning that in addition to sharing photos, its primary purpose seems to be to grow your network of admirers as fast as possible. Keeping track of comments made on your photos as well as comments you have made on others cannot be any simpler.

Any new comment made on your photos automatically triggers an email to notify you of that event. This feature can be turned off.

You can also mark other Flickr users as friends, and their latest photos are easily viewable from your account control panel. You can submit your photos (more like tag them) to appear in Flickr groups so that they get a wider (and more relevant) audience. For instance, submit your flower photo to the Macro group, Flower group, Bokeh grou, etc, etc, etc. No re-uploading is needed – just select your photo, and click on the appropriate menu item that drops down a list of Flickr groups you’re subscribed to, and check the box next to those you wish your image to appear in.

Subject to a one-time approval, you can even create your own groups and invite folks to post images to them.

Flickr groups are also very much like forums where people can post questions and answers.

In short, Flickr is possibly one of the best ways to make new friends and contacts through photography.

Pbase has a forum, and does allow comments, but it feels very old-fashioned.

Tracking visitor statistics

Flickr shows you how many times your photo has been viewed. And there are some handy widgets to show how your visitor found your photo.

But Pbase allows you to insert code from Statcounter.com (king of free stats services) into your account profile that shows you much, much more:

1. What search phrase in which search engine was used to find your photo

Which forum discussion linked to your photos / galleries

Visitor path, ie. how your visitors navigated your PBase galleries

Most popular pages / images

Total unique visitors and page views, archived indefinitely

If you ever want to measure the impact in terms of web visits to any particular gallery or photo, PBase is the way to go.

Quality of resized photos

When viewing the uploaded photos at anything other than the original size, Flickr wins because it produces sharper and more crisp pictures without compression artifacts. Compare: This Flickr photo at Medium vs. the same at Pbase, Large.

Sharing videos

In April 2008, Flickr announced its “Video on Flickr” capability. Flickr stresses that this feature is not to be compared to Youtube as uploaded videos are limited to 90 seconds in length, and is meant to showcase “long photos”, that is, short clips that that would give a better idea of an event that transpired better than a photograph could accomplish, while not so lengthy as to bore the viewer. Read more at Flickr’s Video FAQ and Heather Champ’s blog post announcing this new feature.

I kinda like the idea myself, especially if you post up interesting videos to enhance related photographs. You get to embed videos in websites and blogs too – check out this sample by dtrickle69:
 

You can’t upload video clips to Pbase.

Conclusion

Get a Flickr account if you want unlimited storage and bandwidth for sharing photos, meet like-minded photographers and want to put your programming knowledge into practice by incorporating Flickr services into the web sites you build.

Get Pbase if you need a hierarchical approach to presenting your photos, and have complete control over the URL naming of your galleries and sub-galleries.