Flickr Video
Posted by admin | Filed under Random, Web
Flickr recently released a new feature which has caused a bit of an uprising. The videos can only be 90 seconds long, and are higher quality than many websites. Currently, only Pro accounts are able to post these videos.
Here’s an example of a video posted to the service:
The argument against videos on flickr seems to be “youtube is just for video, flickr is just for photos.” I know youtube has gotten a bit of a bad name with so much less-than-useful content. This is probably what most people are afraid of Flickr becoming. But 90 seconds isn’t long enough for an effective rant. The simple fact that flickr video isn’t free will keep most whiney teens away.
The next argument being used is how much bandwidth it will take and the site will turn into molasses. Well there seem to be a lot of videos on there already, with no slowdown. The site is owned by Yahoo, not the neighbor next door – they know what they’re doing.
There are actually petitions with over 2600 signatures to remove video from Flickr. I expect a lot more signatures from selfish people who want to take away a great feature from probably millions of people who love their videos. No one’s forcing them to post video, it hasn’t affected the quality of the service, and the time limit is too short for the average whiney teen in their 30’s.
Picasa handles videos along with photos, why shouldn’t online storage of our media have everything in one place?
Tags: flickr, Photography, Web
Adobe Photoshop… Online?
Posted by admin | Filed under Web
Adobe has already created an online video editing tool called Adobe Remix, but they want to beat the competition to a good online photo editor in the next 3-6 months.
More on c|net
Tags: Photography, Web Apps 2.0
Blue Marble
Posted by admin | Filed under Random
Ever needed good imagery of earth but didn’t want to attempt to download all of google maps? NASA has some high resolution images of amazing resolution (including some 40mb TIFFs at 16384 x 8192 resolution). Its interesting to see the most developed parts of the world by the city lights at night. Take a look at the Daytime and Nighttime images, or explore the rest of the catalog…
Tags: Photography
Moo!
Posted by admin | Filed under Random
For a short time MOO was offering 10 free mini cards for flickr pro users. They’re similar to business cards but more for personal use. You can still make these cards and get 100 for only $20. The ratio is best suited to panoramas, but you can crop photos any way you like and change the text on the back to be whatever you want.
Tags: Photography
A FooGoo Wedding
Posted by admin | Filed under Random
It’s been over a month since it happened, but a bunch of us made it to Petah’s wedding in Sioux Falls for June 10th. It was the first time most of us had met in person, but it was easy to identify everyone with the FooGoo hoodies and t-shirts. Starting at the top left of the picture we have David from Florida, then me from BC, Jim from Oregon, Dave from Oregon, and Petah the groom. Jim is being attacked by the daisies. I haven’t been to the interior of the continent very often, but I was glad to get home and see mountains and ocean.
Tags: General, Photography
Web 2.0 Solutions for all your needs
Posted by admin | Filed under Random
I’ve been using web applications a lot more recently, and I’d like to spread the word a bit about what is out there and what can be done online. I access my information from many different places so I prefer these websites that I can access from anywhere.
Flickr (Photos)
http://flickr.com
Any good photos I want to keep get put on flickr. I liked it so much, I’ve paid for a pro account. The only problem with something like flickr is many of us tend to store copies of images from websites that aren’t ours. For personal use, that’s fine – but flickr is designed to share photos we’ve taken. Basically, flickr is fantastic for shutterbugs, and not so much for web clippers. Flickr’s recently had an interface facelift too; the organizer is looking a lot better. And don’t forget to tweak the settings at http://flickr.com/account/ to fit the way you use the service – you might even discover things like posting by email or auto-rotate.
Del.icio.us (Bookmarks)
http://del.icio.us
The best-known social bookmarking website out there, and also now owned by Yahoo, I use delicious for all my bookmarks. Not only does it use tags to make it easier to find things, you can discover related sites and have your bookmarks with you all the time. While I was testing Flock, a firefox-web2.0 hybrid, delicious bookmarks were integrated into the browser, which I’m sure is the way of the future. Flock is still in beta so it was just for previewing the future, but I can’t picture anything else catching on as well. The second-place for online bookmarks goes to Windows Live Favorites (still in beta) which syncronizes your IE bookmarks with the website via the Windows Live Toolbar. I won’t open that can of worms now, but if you use IE, try the betas
Gmail (Email)
http://mail.google.com
Almost everyone knows about gmail, so this is more of a confession that I have gone with the flow and adopted it for my personal mail. Something you may not have known however is that you can keep your old email address with gmail. I have my personal @foogoo.com address setup to forward to gmail and gmail setup to show my @foogoo.com as the sender on outgoing messages. Part of the reason I use gmail is for the integration with Google Desktop (now in version 4!), which shows the latest messages on the side of my screen, all the time.
Google Calendar
http://calendar.google.com
If it wasn’t for Google Desktop, I wouldn’t be using any calendar outside of Outlook at work. Google Desktop version 4 now shows events from google calendar, which are backed up online. Plus I have an iCal address and rss feed for my calendar which I can use at other websites. The only problem so far is the lack of syncronization. There is import/export functionality, but nothing automatic – nothing that would syncronize with my pocket pc easily.
Box.net (File Storage)
http://box.net
I’ve been with box.net for a few years now and they have been reliable and lately really working hard to innovate and create. A few months ago they launched a redesigned website, and currently are the best they’ve ever been. Navigating folders and executing operations is almost instant, uploading has a variety of methods to get through, you can publicly share any file or folder, plus they are almost ready to release a desktop sync application. They’re even planning to allow posting files via email. I was lucky enough to have paid before the new version and slight price hike, but they are now offering free accounts. On top of everthing else they have been doing, they have an api now which has allowed box.net to integrate with other websites such as goowy and netvibes just for starters.
Netvibes (Homepage)
http://netvibes.com
Speaking of netvibes, they have become my new homepage. I’ve played with many customizable homepages but this one does it the best. I currently have my homepage showing my Google Calendar, new Gmail, the weather, my newest flickr photos, my box.net files, and my newest delicious bookmarks on the first tab. I have another tab for all the news. This may not be the best site to use as an rss reader, but it’s great to start the day off with.
43Things (Goals)
http://www.43things.com
Keeping with the social nature of web 2.0, 43 things aims to share goals among people and provide support for completing those goals. My goals aren’t updated as often as I’d like, but I think that’s because a list of 43 things gets to be overwhelming. Maybe I should start thinking smaller.
Tags: Freeware, Photography, Web, Web Apps 2.0
Lightbox JS
Posted by admin | Filed under Random
Here’s a great little script for anyone wanting to include a larger preview of an image without sacrificing screen space. It’s called Lightbox and it’s of course free. It does one image, or a series of images, as well as displaying a description for each. Best of all, it’s fully backwards-compatible and will turn into a normal link to the image.
http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/
Tags: Design, Development, Photography, Pixel Gfx
Gallery 2.0
Posted by admin | Filed under Random
Better late than never, Gallery 2, which came out in september, has some great features. The last time I was looking at PHP photo gallery options, this was the one I liked the best. Version 2.0 adds things like groups, subalbums in the url, uploading any type of file, disk quotas, user albums, improved navigation, and more.
Tags: Photography, Web Apps 2.0
