Scrapple: LiveJournal Photo Uploader for Android

By John Stracke

Scrapple is an image uploader for LiveJournal. I created it because the only existing LJ uploader I found required me to have an account with a third-party service, and give them my LJ password. Scrapple, instead, has you upload directly from your phone to your LJ Scrapbook; your password stays as safe as your phone. Free in the Android Market (not even ad-supported), or you can download it right here (provided you've got "Allow other sources" turned on—which you can't do with older AT&T phones). Mind you, I would prefer if you install it via the Market, so that I can see how many people have tried it.

The name is a joke. I wanted to avoid naming it "LiveJournal Uploader", since that would be a trademark infringement. Names starting with "LJ" were descriptive, but not that interesting; I started looking for a name that played off of "Scrapbook" (which is what LJ calls its photo service). Finally I thought of scrapple, which is a really terrible meat product found in Pennsylvania, made out of scraps left over from actual meat. To seal the deal, "scrapple" seems to be a frequentative form of "scrap", and I really like frequentatives.

Version 2.0 adds a major new feature: Automatic Upload. If you enable Automatic Upload, every photo you take will be uploaded via Scrapple. You can specify a maximum size for the automatic uploads; you can also specify that panoramas should be exempt from the maximum size (since squeezing down a panorama to a width of, say, 640 may make its height too low to pick out details). Automatic Upload has to guess which images are panoramas; an image is considered a panorama if (a) its filename contains "pan" (or "PAN", or "PaN", etc.) or (b) its width is at least twice its height.

Automatic Upload may not work with all camera apps. The following apps are known to work as of 22 June 2013:

If there is a camera app which you want to use with Automatic Upload, please let me know and I'll see if I can support it.

2.0 also adds some extra robustness, retrying when uploads fail; and it allows you to specify a maximum size when uploading manually.

Version 1.2 improves efficiency when sharing images which have to be downloaded (over HTTP, or from Picasa via the Android 4.x Gallery): it downloads the image only once. 1.2 also adds a setting for the default security level (public vs. private), and, on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), the "upload complete" notification now shows a large slice of the image. Version 1.1.5 adds compatibility with the new LiveJournal Scrapbook. Version 1.1.4 adds compatibility with Android 4.0. Version 1.1 improves the notification system, providing separate notifications for each image you're uploading, so you can see them queued up. Version 1.1.2 fixes a crash bug introduced in version 1.1. Version 1.1.3 fixes a bug where it couldn't upload images that weren't actually stored in files. Version 1.1.4 fixes an incompatibility with Android 4.x (and possibly 3.x; I never got any bug reports, but I never tried it myself). Version 1.1.5 adds the privacy policy. Version 1.1.8 improves compatibility with LiveJournal's new Scrapbook.

Scrapple se puede utilizar en espaƱol.

Scrapple nutzbar ist auf Deutsch.

Privacy policy

I do not collect your private information. Your username and password are stored on your device and used only to access LiveJournal; they are never made accessible to me. Your pictures are copied to LiveJournal, and, of course, are then subject to LiveJournal's privacy policy.