June 6th, 2008, 20 Comments »
If you’re a regular Flickr user with Creative Commons-licensed photos, you’ve probably received a request from NowPublic to use one of your photos. I think this is a great application of the crowd-sourcing model, and they’ve got it 90% correct. I sent a feature request to NowPublic on the subject, and thought I’d share it here:
I’ve received a couple of recent requests to integrate Flickr photos into news stories. I’m happy to receive and approve them. However, your current setup obliges me to create a NowPublic account and subsequently log in every time I want to approve a photo (I’m not comfortable uniformly approving all future requests). That’s a pain point I could do without.
Philosophically, I think the question is ‘who’s doing whom a favour?’ The login implies that NP is doing me a favour by publishing my photo. I feel the opposite, that I’m doing NP a favour by permitting you to use my photo. If we work from my assumption, then it behooves NP to make the act of approval as effortless as possible.
Do you think I got this right? Or am I just whinging, and should be grateful for being asked to share my photos? And should that be ‘whom’ or ‘who’? I never committed the associated grammar rule to memory.
I’ve recognized that, personally, I feel quite differently about my photos on Flickr than I do about, say, this blog. While I strive to improve my work on this site, I feel much more ambivalent about my Flickr photos.
Flickr is really just a handy place to put and reference my photos. While I used to obsess about the visitor stats for this site, I almost never check the number of views that my photos have. It’s strictly a question of personal taste, but it’s probably that apathy that’s motivating this feature request.
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March 4th, 2008, 3 Comments »
We’re back in Essaouira after, all told, about 1000 km of driving in and out of the desert. I’m catching up on email and such, but I wanted to post to say that we’d survived, and to point to our 88 photos from the trip (here’s a slideshow, if you prefer).
In honour of my Aunt Lynn, who only ever wants to see one’s best three vacation photos, here’s five. Click for larger versions:
Photographically speaking, this trip kicked my ass. Looking at the photos, I recognize how much more care I need to take, how much more practice I need, and how I could really use some instruction on technique. When we get back to Victoria, I’m going to look around for a good 200-level photography course.
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January 30th, 2008, No Comments »
It’s a busy day, so I’m fobbing you off with a couple of photos from our Essaouira photos. Yes, there are quite a few gulls at the port:
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January 6th, 2008, No Comments »
Yesterday afternoon we hired a guide and meandered through Djemaa el Fna, Marrakesh’s extraordinary, sprawling souk. Wikipedia says it’s the busiest marketplace in all of Africa, and I believe it. I’d need a week to write a satisfactory description of the place, which overpowers the senses at every turn. Instead, here are a few photos we took, both before and after dark. These are three of my favourites:
Our ultimate destination, Essaouira, apparently has a nice, smaller-scale version of Marrakesh’s market. We can take the next couple of months to explore that at our own speed.
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November 16th, 2007, 6 Comments »
I agree that record companies are mostly evil. Still, I’ve always felt a little sheepish about downloading music without paying the artist. Often discovering a musician or band will lead to buying their CDs and attending their shows, but not always.
Plus, don’t even get me started on an adolescence of music taped off the radio and my Dad’s records.
So, how to assuage this musical guilt? I figured I could send five bucks to some of these artists I’ve never paid. Then I figured I could start a site documenting that process. Then I figured I could invite other guilty music fans to do the same thing.
Four hours later, I came up with DearRockers.org. Here’s the official spiel:
Many of us own music that we didn’t pay for. We don’t feel guilty about shafting the record company, but what about the musicians themselves?
Here’s how it works:
1. Pick a musician
2. Write them a letter
3. Scan or photograph the letter and send it to us
4. Mail off the letter along with $5
5. Enjoy your new, guilt-free life
That’s it, in a nutshell. I suppose it’s a bit of an homage to Post Secret. Subsequent to launch, Kirsten pointed me to MusicNeutral, which kind of does the same thing without the letters and fun and with transaction fees. The site is brand new, and only has nine letters, but I’m hoping to get more.
If you want to assuage a little guilt, please consider submitting a letter. On top of the good karma, you also get:
- A link back to your blog, website, Flickr gallery of vintage pants, whatever.
- If you submit before the end of 2007, a chance to win an iPod Shuffle. Your chances would currently be 1 in 8–the first two letters are mine, and I won’t be buying myself another iPod.
Thanks to the friends who answered my pleading call to submit a few seed letters and provide feedback on the idea–264 karma points for each of you.
Apparently the Maffinator mentioned Dear Rockers yesterday in his weekly tech column on the CBC, but I’ve yet to hear it.
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October 22nd, 2007, No Comments »
Julie just spent five days at Fontana Del Papa, a cooking school outside of Rome (booked via the excellent folks at Responsible Travel). That’s kind of an anti-holiday for me, but she had a great time. She took a bunch of photos, and here are three of my favourites:
She also spent a day in Rome, and some time in Barcelona and the south of France. I quite like this photo of seats awaiting Catholic bums in the Vatican.
It’s really a photo-bloggy kind of day today, isn’t it?
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October 2nd, 2007, No Comments »
I read about TiltViewer, a sexy photo viewer on del.icio.us. It displays Flickr photos, sorted by interestingness, in a three-dimensional black void that you can manipulate. The folks at Airtight Interactive built this bit of webby fun, and have a good attitude about it:
Does a 3D UI give more functionality than the equivalent 2D interface? No, but its certainly a lot cooler! Part of the motivation to build this was to explore ways to make 3D interfaces simple and intuitive.
Make sure you read about the controls. They’re not super intuitive (we don’t necessarily expect to use the keyboard)–the app could do with a little ‘?’ icon that users could click for pop-up instructions.
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