Posts Tagged: Flickr

Flickr and the abuse of the Creative Commons

Posted by & filed under art + photography, ideas + opinions.

With the following Tweet today, Jeffrey Zeldman started a very good twitter conversation about Flickr, commericial/retail photo usage, and copyright/licensing/creative commons:

Andy Budd then linked to Zeldman’s blog post, What’s Wrong With This Picture? Flickr is about to sell off your Creative Commons photos, and started another good conversation on the topic:

Jen Simmons further drills into the debate with two succinct tweets and a blog post:

Jen Simmons’ blog post on I Don’t Want “Creative Commons BY” To Mean You Can Rip Me Off

And then Ms. Simmon’s linked to this Wall Street Journal article: Fight Over Yahoo’s Use of Flickr Photos

The quote that sums up Flickr in this situation and my own opinion* comes from Zeldman’s blog post:

I’ve had a Flickr Pro account for about ten years. I love Flickr. Sometimes, for years, it has been like loving a friend who is in a coma. Now it’s like helplessly watching a cocaine-addicted friend snort up their kid’s college fund.

Come on, Yahoo.

* As for the larger scope of my own opinion on Flickr and other photo sharing sites is a blog post in the making, as I am still collecting some comparison data.

** Please note that I am pro-Creative Commons, but chose a few years go – due to abuse by others – to switch from a CC-NC license on my Flickr images and my blog images/posts to a Copyright – All Rights Reserved.

the sentinel. Or Why Heather Champ is one of my Favorite Photographers

Posted by & filed under art + photography.

the sentinel.

Tues. 02.23.10 – If you aren’t already a fan of Heather Champ’s photography, please bookmark | favorite | subscribe to the feed of her Flickr Photostream, as Heather takes delightful photographs.
I love this photo of her dog Chieka. I love the framing. I love the composition. Formally this is a brilliant piece with almost all the tones in mid to dark and then a spot of bright Chihuahua.
Lovely.

Should I Declare Flickr Bankruptcy?

Posted by & filed under art + photography, moleskine to mobile, photos + text from the road.

The big question that I have had over the last month is should I declare Flickr bankruptcy?
For a variety of reasons, I have not managed in the last 5-8 weeks to post my regular daily photo or two from my phone to Flickr, I have made a valiant effort to keep up here at Black Phoebe, but Flickr has fallen to the wayside.
Part of the problem started back in late April when I returned the lovely little Nokia N79 it its rightful owners and reverted back to my good, old, faithful Nokia N95 camera phone. In early May, after a firmware upgrade, I found that there was no more Shozu mobile application to download unless I wanted to purchase it. Given that I have planned to purchase a new camera phone this summer, I didn’t want to commit to any new mobile software until I knew which phone I would be getting, and thus which software or app would be best for the phone in question.
Starting in May, I tried to remember to download my photos to my computer every few days and then upload them to Flickr. Anytime that I involve my computer in a part of the photo upload process, there is failure, as my computer is always a black hole for photos, which is why I started blogging directly from my phone in the first place.
The winning equation for me the last 4.5 years since I got my first internet enabled camera phone was as follows:
Take photo -> Add subject -> Send Directly From Phone to Internet = Win
This is the bad equation:
Take photo -> Save on camera or camera phone -> download to computer -> fiddle with and|or forget != Photo on Internet (quite the opposite actually of photo on the internet, the photos never leave my computer)
Because of the fact that I am not into photo processing on my computer and that photos that enter my computer very rarely leave (Hotel SoCal MBP), for the last 4.5 years ever since I got the lovely Nokia 7610 and an unlimited data package, I have used a variety of methods to daily post photos to Flickr and to this blog (or at least attempt to do it daily).
This spring’s camera phone disruption has lead to me getting out of the habit of posting daily photos to Flickr. It has gotten worse. I am not a few days behind, or even a week or two, but five – Yes, 5 – weeks behind in posting photos to Flickr.
I now have 140 – 180++ plus photos from San Francisco, life around SoCal, Germany, Carl Zeiss Factory Tour, London, and Fourth of July that I could post to flickr.
Should I just do it – upload them all, name them, add them to sets, etc – or declare Flickr bankruptcy?

Testing PixelPipe with Nokia Share Online

Posted by & filed under moleskine to mobile, tech + web dev.

Tue 03.17.09 – Purple and Pink at breakfast.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

—
Update: Will PixelPipe push the photo to my server or will it live on their server just like Flickr does? If PP pushes to my server, I can use it for moblogging when I have a phone without Lifeblog (new Nokias), but if they just send the link to the photo that lives on their server, then why use it over Flickr for the same purpose?
Further update via my twitter: “Huh. PixelPipe is not any different for moblogging than Flickr or others. Photos on their server, not mine. Fail. #ownyourownphotos”
Even more: If Nokia is going to stop putting Lifeblog on their new phones after the Nokia N82, I wish they would open source Lifeblog so developers can iterate and continue to make direct phone to Movable Type moble blogging with no intermediary service or server.

Flickr Video : What a Tasty Chicken!

Posted by & filed under art + photography, design + web, tech + web dev.

Flickr is a Tasty Chicken

About two weeks ago, I received an invitation to join a Flickr beta test. I was intrigued, so I said yes. I had to sign an NDA stating that for the love of a tasty chicken I would not breath a blog, twitter, or in person word that I was beta testing Flickr Video. Yes, Flickr can have my silence in return for uploading 60 seconds of various tasty chickens from India, SXSW 2008, and Scruffy & Belle.
Oh, what a delight. I have had quite a bit of fun over the last 2 weeks uploading videos, really participating in a Flickr group in a way that I have not been interested in or invested enough in before, and watching with baited breath what folks would post as their videos. And then there was the Fridget meme that Derek started…
In all truthfulness, while I appreciate YouTube, Google Video, and Vimeo, I am not drawn into these services. I don’t wait to see what will be posted, I only go when someone else sends me a link. If the video is longer than 5 minutes, I don’t watch, be it too much work or just plain not interested.
It has been very different with Flickr Video. I am drawn in. I love the short format of 60 to 90 seconds. As the Flickr folk said – think of it as a long photograph. I also love the fact that I can use the same uploader and same Flickr tagging and interface that I use for photos. The user interface is simple and easy to use and not just because I am used to it.
Most of all, I am having fun with video on Flickr in a way that has never been fun before. Thanks, Flickr! Y’all rock.

My Day with Nokia’s Sports Tracker

Posted by & filed under art + photography, moleskine to mobile, tech + web dev.

When I first heard of the new Nokia mobile app shipping with the new Nseries phones, Sports Tracker, I envisioned a mobile stop watch combined with GPS and a how many steps have you taken monitor. Dull. Sigh. Where is an updated, GPS enabled Lifeblog?
Ok, I grew up in a family that was sports obsessed, esp. my first stepdad – my mom’s second husband. He was on the Olympic committee, competed in the Pan American games and has won in the Master’s division of the some sort of spin off of the Olympics (Allison, help me here). My childhood, from ages 3 to 13, was spent with the stepdad, mom, and various other mom-related relatives who were pathologically compulsive about exercising at very darned opportunity.
Beach volleyball in the evenings? Check. Olympic style kayaking and canoeing? Check. Surfing? Check. Running? Check. Skiing? Check. Hiking with a pace meter and stop watch? Check!
By the time I was 8 years old, I was hiding when the folks were ready to go out for yet another bout of daily evening EXERCISE! Me hiding with my mom yelling at me that it was time to leave. My high school rebellion was to cultivate super-white, never see the sun skin. To do this in an ultra-athletic, sun-worshiping family was even more rebellious than teenage pregnancy or drug use. I kid you not. The cousins that got knocked-up and/or were smoking pot were excused as long as they were in competitive sports and winning.
The cousins have sports trophies and I have a great collection of black vintage dresses and goth jewelry. I also now have great skin.
So, the nice folks at Nokia’s WOM World asked me to evaluate the Sports Tracker app, as it will be used on the Urbanista Diaries adventure as our way to track our path and upload our photos to the Nokia server.

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Ms. Jen & Social Networking

Posted by & filed under writing + blogs.

After many years of bulletin boards and mailing list and a few years of organized social networking like Friendster and MySpace, I have come to the conclusion that I hate Friendster & MySpace but I love Flickr.
On the old school boards and lists, there was, by and large, an equality of posters. If you posted and were a part of the conversation, you were rewarded with a community that you may not have in meatspace or tormented by trolls depending on the circumstance. On most of the current popular social networking spaces, like MySpace, it is too closed in concept & action, and too much like a high school meat/meet market.
Flickr is refreshing in comparison. Everyone who participates is a creator, not a lurker, not a troll, but an active participant who adds to the pool of photos. If you wish to make friends, you add folks who you like their photos to your contact list. And then you comment on their photos and they can comment back.
Community develops from Creativity. Lovely.