Flickr

Just one week after announcing Events grouping for photos, Twitpic is rolling out Face Tagging.

Just as you do on Facebook, you can now tag images of you and your friends and acquaintances on Twitpic. Below the image in question, just click the blue link reading “Add/Edit Faces.”

When you tag your pics, you’ll also have the option to tweet out who you’ve tagged. You’ll be able to add real names and/or Twitter usernames to the pics, and others can see the tags when they mouse over the picture.

Users will be familiar with the Facebook-like interface. Here’s what the feature looks like on the site:

Last week, the service added the ability to group your photos based on the event at which they were taken. In practice, this feature works a lot like a Flickr set, letting users organize, define and showcase their pictures quickly and easily and making the discovery process easier for both humans and web crawlers.

Twitpic has also just reached its 10 million users mark and is gearing up for more group and geo-location features from this service. To get a better idea of where Twitpic might be heading in the months to come, you can check out this video interview with Twitpic founder Noah Everett on the future of Twitter-based photo sharing.

Are these new features going to make Twitpic more interesting, fun and useful for you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Twitpic, Twitter

Tags: Photos, pictures, Tagging, twitpic, twitter

If you want to see if Yahoo is censoring any of your photos go to the Flickr organizer here. Once you are there, click on “more options” at the bottom of the page. Where it says no privacy/safe search filter, change that to show restricted or moderate content. This will show you what photos of yours that Flickr is currently censoring.

Yahoo today announced that as part of their 2008 “Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS) initiative” they are integrating with Facebook. Every time I hear about this so called Y!OS “open” strategy I’m puzzled.

So Yahoo will integrate with Facebook. But will they do it with the full version of Yahoo content? Or will they do it with the censored version of Yahoo content? At present Yahoo censors Flickr photos on the web institutionally. From the Flickr FAQ:

Note: If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Hong Kong, India or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service (this means you won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off). If your Yahoo! ID is based in Germany you are not able to view restricted content due to your local Terms of Service.

So this means that photos of mine (like this 1874 painting from the Art Institute of Chicago) are effectively filtered out of view as indicated by Yahoo above.

Further, these photos are also completely stripped out of all RSS feeds even for all *USA* based accounts. So if I want to feed my Flickrstream into FriendFeed or Google Buzz these photos will be censored from that feed.

My Pal Merkley does some amazing work with fine art nudes. These are not pornography, these are elegantly structured intensely detailed productions. Right now there is only one way to see these photos of Merkley’s. You have to go to Flickr itself, change your default settings from “safe search” to allow moderate and restricted content and then I can see them on Flickr. But what if I don’t want to see them on Flickr? What if, you know, with a more “open and social Yahoo/web” I want to see these photos in my RSS reader or on Google Buzz or on FriendFeed or (apparently soon) on Facebook? Will I be able to see them? No, I will not. Because Flickr feels that RSS feeds must be sanitized of most of Merkley’s art, even for adults in the U.S. Even though I’ve designated on Flickr that I want to view this content. Even though I’ve certified that I’m over 18. Still, the only place that Yahoo will let me see these photos is in the official Flickr silo itself. (And not even then if I unfortunately happen to be from India).

Unfortunately Yahoo seems to be unwilling to have an open and transparent conversation about this problem. I’ve been permanently banned from the Flickr Help Forum for asking pesky questions like this. I posted a very respectful question about this subject to the Yahoo Corporate Blog (see screen shot above) and it’s presently be censored (er. moderated). The Yahoo Corporate blog has no problem posting comments that kiss up to them. But dare criticize them and your comment is “moderated.” How is this more open and transparent?

If Yahoo truly wants to make Yahoo and the web a more open and social place, then they should stop censoring places like India and Germany and Korea. They should also stop filtering RSS feeds in the U.S. Believe it or not, some people actually don’t find paintings from 1874 at the Art Institute of Chicago offensive, even if the nanny’s at the Flickr Censorship Bureau do. By the way, I tried to appeal Flickr’s censorship decision on the painting from the Art Institute of Chicago and they refused to uncensor it.

Apparently full frontal male nudity on Michelangelo’s statue of David is ok, but a tasteful painting by Lefebvre showing the backside of a woman is not ok. How’s that for a double standard.

Tomorrow Yahoo will announce a relaunch of Yahoo Profiles and their “all in” integration with Facebook Connect, including on the Yahoo home page. We’ve all known deep integration with Facebook was coming, but until now it wasn’t clear exactly how deeply Yahoo would go.

The answer – pretty deep. Users will be able to log into Facebook right on the Yahoo home page as well as other places throughout Yahoo, like mail. Most interactions on Yahoo will, like leaving comments on stories and status updates in mail and on the home page, will give users the option of posting that content as well to Facebook.

All of this goes hand in glove with the recent privacy updates and move from a friend to a follower model within Yahoo.

The new Yahoo Profiles will be called Yahoo Pulse. More than 15 Yahoo sites are included. Here’s part of the official announcement:

Facebook Integration – Yahoo! has reached an important milestone in its partnership with Facebook. Starting globally today, people who use both Yahoo! and Facebook can link their accounts and view and share updates with friends across both networks. People who connect their accounts can consume their Facebook newsfeed on the Yahoo! homepage and in Yahoo! Mail and other Yahoo! sites and services. Additionally, people who create and share content on Yahoo! sites – including Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Flickr, and many Yahoo! entertainment sites, such as omg!, Yahoo! TV, and Yahoo! Movies – can easily share their contributions across Facebook. Additional integrations will be ongoing.

A Refresh of Yahoo! Profiles – Launched in October 2008, Yahoo! Profiles has allowed people to manage their identity and activities across Yahoo! from a central location. Today, Yahoo! has refreshed the experience to make its privacy settings easier to use and to give people a central dashboard to manage the external social network accounts and apps that they have linked to Yahoo!, starting with Facebook and with others to come later this year. Yahoo! Profiles has been renamed Yahoo! Pulse to better reflect its broader ability to manage settings, privacy, and account links. The updated experience is available at

http://pulse.yahoo.com.

The screenshots tell much of the story. Here are a few that Yahoo supplied last week in a briefing:

Memorial Day is being celebrated today across the U.S. This is a holiday we typically associate with barbeques and three-day weekends; however, the somber and nationally important reason we celebrate should be remembered, as well.

Here are a few websites that are showcasing the stories of veterans who have fought and died to preserve our freedom throughout America’s history. When sharing, don’t forget to tag your tweets #MemorialDay!

One of the pages getting shared around the tubes today is this collection of four amazing stories of wartime heroism, ranging from WWII and Vietnam to our present-day fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. These stories, like most stories of those who fight and die for their country, are profoundly touching and will serve as an instant reminder of why we celebrate today.

If you need visual reminders — or if you have images you’d like to share — Flickr has a pool for veteran remembrances and war memorials. This group of more than 13,500 photos features pictures of veterans, cemeteries, statuary and other monuments, such as the Vietnam Memorial.

Over at WhiteHouse.gov, President Obama’s weekly YouTube address centers on honoring men and women who’ve given their lives for our country:

Also from Washington, PBS’ Memorial Day Concert with the National Symphony Orchestra was filmed yesterday and will be rebroadcast on many local PBS television stations today. On the concert’s page, you can find listings for your area. You can also read and submit eulogies, read stories from various wars and learn about the meaning and history of Memorial Day.

And speaking of history, History.com has an amazing Memorial Day collection of images, videos and interactive content around this holiday. From Civil War battles to the D-Day invasion of Normandy, History.com has a ton of information for anyone who wants to learn more about the lives, battles and stories of American soldiers.

Finally, the Library of Congress has a special page dedicated to veterans. The Veterans History Project “collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war,” according to the website. Its pages contain audio and video of personal memoirs from soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, as well as images and personal correspondence. You can search for stories by conflict, by military branch, by gender, by whether the story is about a prisoner of war and more. You can also volunteer to interview others, be interviewed or donate a veteran’s collection through this site.

We at Mashable hope you’re all having a safe and happy Memorial Day as you honor the memory of our fallen troops.

[img credit: wstera2]

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Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Mashable, Twitter

Tags: concert, history, memorial day, military, obama, veterans

The Twitter of News? — Liz Gannes has written an intriguing story about the new version of Digg coming soon, saying it aspires to be "The Twitter of News." This is very interesting.

Think of Twitter as "at least a dress rehearsal for the news system of the future." They gave it a diminutive name, easy to dismiss, but Twitter does something important. It makes composing and reading news easier than it's ever been.

But Twitter has been standing in the same place for a long long time. Why shouldn't Digg be able to catch up and pass them in a meaningful way? If they're motivated enough and good enough the answer is they should.

What's wrong with the tech industry that it lets Twitter stagnate so long without raising a serious challenge. Google didn't do it with Buzz or Wave. Yahoo could have done something with Flickr, but they're too disorganized. Even Facebook has failed to mount a realistic challenge to Twitter.

So why not Digg? Let's hope they have something good. Let's also hope they have innovated with their API, kept it simple, and perhaps offer developers a little more to play with than Twitter has.

It's time for some rock and roll.

Update: Zee sees it too.

See that photo above?

It’s by a famous artist Jules-Joseph Lefebvre and hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. It was painted in 1874. I took it last year when I visited the museum. It’s also a photo of mine that is presently being censored by Flickr. Apparently showing full frontal cock on Michelangelo’s David on Flickr’s ok, but showing the backside of a woman from a 1874 painting is not. After they censored it I sent them an email saying, “c’mon guys, really?” trying to have the censorship decision appealed. But after getting my email they told me that it needed to remain censored.

So let me ask you this. Which is more offensive, a photograph from a painting in a public all ages gallery in one of the finest cultural institutions in the world, or Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz very publicly telling Mike Arrington to “Fuck Off” at a crowded technology conference?

Another friend of mine had over 25,000 photographs of mannequins online. Flickr didn’t like that some of his mannequins apparently showed a little nipple so they just censored all 25,000 photos in his stream. Wouldn’t want anyone being offended now by seeing a little nipple on a mannequin that sits on a public street seen by thousands of people a day.

So I guess it’s ok for a CEO to say “Fuck Off,” a phrase that surely is offensive to some. But it’s not ok for users of her site to do things like say publish photographs of paintings or plastic mannequins. Personally I don’t give a fcuk if Carol says fkuc as much as she fukin wants. But I think it’s a bit hypocritical for her to allow the censors at her Flickr site to censor things that are far less offensive. And it might be nice to have the fukcin picture above uncensored, thanks.

You can watch Carol tell me to “fuck off” below yourself if you’d like:

Thumbs Up on New Seesmic App for the iPhone —

Thumbs Up on New Seesmic App for the iPhone is a post from Chris Pirillo

Seesmic is already one of the leading desktop Twitter clients available right now. @loic and his team have put together a very solid client and they work hard to keep it that way. Just a few hours ago, they announced the brand-new Seesmic for iPhone app, and @Scobleizer is already lovin’ it. He’s stated publicly that he will be using this as his primary Twitter app on the go from now on.

Seesmic for iPhone is NOT just for Twitter, though. It allows you to update dozens of your social network pages all at once, including Twitter, Facebook, Ping.fm, MySpace, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Flickr and more. It lets you see your friends’ timelines, your mentions and private messages and check out the profiles of others. You can update or delete your own status messages, post links and pictures and even geotag your updates. It’s a powerful little app, and one that just may replace the new client from Twitter for a lot of people (and not just Scoble!).

When you are writing a message, one of the functions you’ll see is photo sharing. You can take a new pic right from within the app, or grab one out of your gallery to upload. Also while composing, you can quickly add your location to the status by clicking “add location.” Shorten up those URLs while dashing off a quick message by entering your bit.ly credentials ahead of time in the settings of the app.

I will be checking this out later today for myself. In the meantime, let us know your thoughts as you download and play with the app for yourself. Seesmic welcomes your feedback, as well.

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• Twitter Expanding Short URLs – Accessible via Search
• Twitter Threats Can Result in a Criminal Record
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• Why I Think Apple’s iAd Sounds Amazing

Privacy Reboot Needed —

I’m sitting in a talk listening to Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare (that’s a photo of Dennis during the talk above). I’m sure you’ve heard of Foursquare, but with it we check in.

In the building there are 101 other people checked in. Keep in mind this is NOT New York. It is NOT London. It is NOT San Francisco. It is freaking Omaha, Nebraska!

On stage Crowley is explaining where Foursquare came from. One slide he has is when he took a trip to Denmark he posted a map of where he’d be going onto Flickr. Within minutes he had dozens of comments from his friends giving advice of where he should go.

People ask me why I friend everyone on Foursquare (I have more than 7,000 friends, all added manaually). That is exactly why: my life has gotten much richer since everyone shares where they are located with me. Many even share their phone numbers, Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts.

This sounds like the worst thing for privacy ever, right?

It is.

But I find that we’re also finding out a new construct of what privacy means.

I really love danah boyd’s thoughts on radical transparency. She says that most people don’t want to be radically transparent like me.

But yesterday Gary Vaynerchuk said you will check in if you get free beer. Damn straight!

People are already checking in before the free beer has arrived.

And that gets to the heart of our new privacy construct: we will share our privacy +if+ we get something in return.

Most of the compelling arguments I’m hearing about Facebook is that Mark Zuckerberg has forced us to share something private WITHOUT giving us the “free beer” in return. Or, at least, Zuckerberg hasn’t explained what we are getting in return for his throwing our privacy under the bus. Let me explain.

Facebook used to have a privacy setting that would let you hide your social graph (geek talk for who your friends are) from me. Today you can no longer hide your friend graph and some other profile details, like what kind of music you like.

See, this is why people think I’m on the wrong side of the privacy problems Facebook is having. I see that there are real benefits to being radically transparent and so do many people (more than you would think).

But on the other hand, I think Zuckerberg is wrong to rip away something we thought was private and give that over to the world without properly explaining the “free beer” we’re getting in return (or, even, giving us a choice in it).

That said, Facebook is a free service that I don’t control. Neither do you. The only control we have is whether we use it or not. I’ve decided to use it, but have already gotten ahead of Zuckerberg: I’ve turned every privacy setting to “as public as possible.” If Zuckerberg wants to make Facebook as public as Twitter or as public as Foursquare, I’m cool with that, but will not use it to store anything private.

I think we need a reboot on what privacy is in this new world and when we need privacy.

And, as radically transparent as I am with tools like Foursquare and Twitter I still need privacy. I still need to know that Google won’t take my email into public. Some people have called me a hypocrite because I won’t share my Gmail password. They are right. There are some things that we need to keep private.

I interviewed Maryam (I’m her husband) the other day about how she approaches privacy on Facebook. She has a nuanced view of it. If Zuckerberg throws her privacy under the bus (she hasn’t perceived that he has, yet, you should listen to what she says about Facebook — her views match more what I’m hearing from most people, not the pundits) she’ll change her behavior.

She is clearly willing to give away some of her privacy (she doesn’t care, for instance, that you know what restaurants she’s liked on Yelp — she sees that as different than photos of our kids or discussions of our life).

The thing that Zuckerberg needs to explain is why we should believe that Facebook won’t take even more privacy away in the future. I believe Facebook HAS lost a lot of trust here and has overstepped the line. It took me a couple of weeks to get there because I live such a public life and I don’t use Facebook to store anything private (I really do wish Facebook had an even more public setting than it already has for the same reason I use Foursquare — I see that by being public my life gets better). But Zuckerberg did overstep the line by not giving us the choice and, worse yet, not giving us the free beer in exchange for throwing our privacy under the bus.

So, where do we go now? It’s clear Facebook is something different today than it was six months ago. Something a lot closer to Twitter or Google Buzz. Let it all hang out baby! And that’s cool, I’m still going to use Facebook and so is Maryam. It still is a very valuable service. But it is clear that Facebook can’t be trusted with really private data in the future. It’s not Gmail or Hotmail.

What is the reboot we all need?

1. We need to realize that putting anything onto a computer COULD become public. Even private emails COULD be dragged into public view. Jason Calacanis had an email dragged into public view that I’m sure he didn’t want put into public view. At Microsoft I learned that anything I put on a computer could end up on the front page of the New York Times (several executives had that happen). So you are always safe if you never put anything on a computer you aren’t willing to see in the New York Times.
2. We need to get over our “privacy.” Services like Foursquare show that there’s a lot of benefits over sharing your previously private info. Even Facebook now is showing me music on Pandora from my friends. That’s freaking awesome and a major side benefit of Zuckerberg throwing your privacy under the bus.
3. We need more skills to understand the impacts of sharing online. Early adopters need to explain the pros and cons of sharing better. I’ll try to do more of that in the next few weeks.
4. If Facebook wants to be trusted it must make a privacy contract with its users that will have real consequences if Zuckerberg throws it under the bus. I don’t know what that looks like. This is why the alternatives to Facebook just don’t matter either. They all could break their privacy contract with us. Even Google or Microsoft could and we all know it. So, we’re just going to have to live in this new world where privacy is a myth.

How do we have that privacy reboot?

Now, excuse me, I need to check in on Foursquare, join me there as I throw my own privacy under the bus.

Everyone is talking about location now. But back in 2007, basically no one was talking about it. But Tom Coates was. That’s the year that Fire Eagle, an early location platform spearheaded by Coates first peeked its head out of Yahoo’s now-defunct Brickhouse. Yes, Yahoo had the pieces in place to be perhaps the key location platform 3 years ago. Obviously, that never happened. And now Coates is leaving Yahoo.

In a post tonight on his personal blog, Coates details some of his favorite memories at Yahoo over the past four years. In it, he singles out Yahoo Hack Day, Brickhouse, and Fire Eagle (as well as a dozen or so former colleagues). Coates came to the U.S. to head product for Brickhouse, which Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake started for Yahoo in 2007. A number of products launched out of there, but Coates is clearly most proud of his work on Fire Eagle. As he notes:

When I first joined Yahoo! in 2005, Simon Willison and I wrote a list of some areas we thought could be really fascinating to work on, and which could be a really huge deal over the coming years. We’d become really interested in location and had come to the conclusion that every website on the planet could be enhanced in some way if you could add some element of location.

That dream is of course coming into existence only now. Coates acknowledges that his dream was perhaps a bit ahead of its time.

In 2008, Fire Eagle launched the the public. I was at the launch event and recall it being one of the first location-based ideas that fueled my excitement about the topic. Location had just started to come on my radar with the launch of iPhone 3G and its GPS chip (and the App Store), and I was particularly interested in how services such as this would deal with privacy issues (a problem which is still an issue today). Fire Eagle actually had a very smart approach, and Coates knows it, writing today:

We spent an incredible amount of time thinking about the privacy implications of users sharing their locations. Many other services see privacy as a problem and attempt to gloss over it for their users. We thought of it as an opportunity and made the privacy features the core part of the project. Users could choose where to share, how much to share, hide themselves and change or retract their permissions at any time. I think we progressed the state of the art in that area.

But the money quote in Coates’ post has to be, “Someone once referred to Fire Eagle as the Pixies of the latest batch of Location Services, and if that’s at all true, it may be the biggest compliment I’ve ever received.” In many ways, Fire Eagle was the precursor to some of what we’re seeing now. It’s too bad, that for whatever reason, it never really took flight.

Coates notes that over the past year at Yahoo he had been working on taking some of the ideas behind Fire Eagle and applying them across Yahoo’s other location services. We’ll be seeing the results of what he’s been working on in the months (and years) ahead, he says. Let’s hope that’s true, but I’m not too confident in Yahoo’s commitment to the future of location, considering that the Director of Geo Engineering just left a few days before Coates did.

Yahoo had been making a run at the hot location network Foursquare, but the latest word is that that is now off the table too.

Coates won’t say what he’s up to next beyond taking a break. He does note that he’s been talking to a few people about interesting projects though. Hopefully he’ll be able to contribute to the exploding location field now that he’s outside of Yahoo.

[photo: flickr/patrick h. lauke]

Until her Supreme Court nomination turned Elena Kagan into big-time news fodder, there weren’t an abundance of great pictures of her to be found on the Web. Among the better ones to be found were a couple I had posted on Flickr a couple years ago, when she was still Dean of Harvard Law School. Here’s one. Here’s another.

The second of those (cropped a bit) was put up on Wikimedia Commons, and for awhile accompanied her Wikipedia entry, and continues to be used in a number of places.

Both shots have a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 license, meaning anybody can use it, and should also give me credit for having shot it. And both shots have appeared since then in many publications. Some, like Wikipedia, do a good job of following the license. Some, for example Outside the Beltway — in this piece stirring the shit about Ms. Kagan while accusing CBS and other news organizations of bad journalistic practices — do not.

None of that is troubling, or even very interesting. Instead what prompts this post is a comment under one of the two photos, from an entity called TEA PARTY LEADER. It’s a diatribe that verges on hate speech, but (in my amateur judgement) doesn’t quite cross the line. The question for me, when I saw the comment, was Should I kill it?

My photo pile on Flickr isn’t a public space. It welcomes comments to the degree that it simply allows them. It has no rules (of my own or defaulted by Flickr) regarding comments, beyond the ability Flickr provides for editing or deleting them.

I asked fellow Berkman Fellows list for their thoughts, and those went both ways. Some said the space is mine to manage, and if somebody is rudely spamming the premises I should feel free to delete their icky work. Others said doing so indeed would violate free speech principles, even if I doing so would be within my rights. I was also probed with questions about whether I would delete the comment if its positions were more agreeable to me — though with manners just as rude.

I’ve been inclined from the start toward leaving it up, and that’s where I’m staying. But in the meantime I thought I’d pass along the same questions.

What would you do, and why?

Top 10 Ways to Get Attention on Flickr, All New, Fresh and Updated for 2010 —

“What is more pleasant than the benevolent notice other people take of us, what is more agreeable than their compassionate empathy? What inspires us more than addressing ears flushed with excitement, what captivates us more than exercising our own power of fascination? What is more thrilling than an entire hall of expectant eyes, what more overwhelming than applause surging up to us? What, lastly, equals the enchantment sparked off by the delighted attention we receive from those who profoundly delight ourselves? – Attention by other people is the most irresistible of drugs. To receive it outshines receiving any other kind of income. This is why glory surpasses power and why wealth is overshadowed by prominence.”

Caterina Fake, Co-founder of Flickr, 2005.

Over the course of the past 4 years, about every 2 years or so I’ve written a blog post that has been one of my most popular entitled “Top 10 Ways to Get Attention on Flickr.” It’s been a few years, Flickr’s changed a bit, and so I thought I’d take a bit of time today to outline some of the techniques that active power users use on Flickr to get more attention for themselves and their photos.

Fundamentally it comes down to a pretty simple equation:

quality photos + reciprocation² = attention.

But there are lots of other little tricks and tips, so let’s get right into them.

1. The order that you publish your photos in matters — alot. A lot of people will take 50 snapshots of that killer sunset on their vacation and then upload them at random to flickr. Some are better, some are worse. At Flickr, those that call you contact predominantly only see your last photo uploaded or your last 5 photos uploaded (depending on their settings) from the popular “your contact’s most recent uploads” page. The other 45 are effectively buried. Always upload what you feel are your best, strongest, etc. photographs as the last five and save the very last spot for the photo you want to pimp the most.

2. Explore, you whore. Explore is a section of Flickr where Flickr highlights what they feel are 500 interesting photos every day.

I used to have photos show up in Explore pretty much every week. Then Flickr staff blacklisted me from Explore (and their help forum) about 7 months or so ago after I wrote a blog post criticizing Flickr staff for nuking a popular group on Flickr that I administered. Payback’s a bitch, right?

After having photos regularly appear in Explore every week since it started, they capped my ass in there at 666 photos (cute, because I’m the devil, get it?). That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t consider Explore though. It’s probably the fastest way to get a lot of views on any of your photos. Whilst everyone bitches about how full of crappy photos Explore is, secretly you know you all love it when your photos show up there.

Flickr claims to have a “magic donkey” formula which picks the photos for Explore. This “magic donkey” is really just an excuse though to avoid transparency/accountability about Explore. In general, the more activity a photo has (activity = faves, comments, notes, blogged, etc.) the more likely it is to show up in Explore. By putting your best foot forward (see item 1) and by focusing on promoting a popular photo of yours on a given day, (see below) it just might get there.

3. Promote your photos outside of Flickr. What are you doing to promote your photos outside of Flickr? Some things are super, super easy and involve no active participation on your part other than setting something up. Popular content aggregators on the web allow you to publish your Flickr photos out of Flickr, with valuable links back to your photos on Flickr.

Have you configured Flickr Tab on your Facebookery page yet? Why not? It’s free and easy.

Have you signed up for Google Buzz yet? Google Buzz does a great job presenting your Flickr uploads and has a killer lightbox feature that allows people to see your photo BIG (if you allow it) on Google Buzz. I’m faving more Flickr photos that I’m finding on Google Buzz these days than from any other source. I fave more photos from Google Buzz than even Flickr itself.

Have you linked your stream to a FriendFeed account yet?

How about a photoblog? Anyone can set one of these up. They are so easy. And they have cool widgets that can do a lot of automated things for you. Check out the widget I’m using for my Flickr photos (to the right over there). It’s called Fidgetr. It automatically pulls in the six most recent photos from my “10 faves or more set” on Flickr, making sure fresh new photos are constantly being published to thomashawk.com. Don’t those large thumbnails rock!

4. Avoid watermarking, small-sized low-res photos, frames and other gimmicky crap. People don’t want to see this stuff. It’s a turn off. It pushes them away. Yes, yes, I know, you cry, but the thieves, the photo thieves, they all want to steal from me. GASP!

Get over it. You know what happens when people steal your stuff? Recently a friend of mine had an image of hers taken by a commercial entity. Do you know what we did? We contacted them, and after a little arm-twisting they paid her $700 for her photo. You know why? Because they had to. Because she could have sued them if not and probably gotten a lot more than $700 if she was inclined to put the time in it. Courts award statutory damages (not actual damages) for copyright theft. Trust me. If you like getting paid $700 for your photos, you WANT people to steal them. Put a big sign on the photo. “Steal Me, I Dare You.”

With tools like Tineye, it’s getting easier and easier and easier for you to find unauthorized commercial use of your photos on the web.

Sure, some dude is going to print up your big bouquet of sunflowers shot and hang it in his living room to impress his friends while they drink beer and watch football and you’ll never find out about that use. Trust me, that dude wouldn’t have paid for your photograph in the first place anyways.

As a byproduct, uploading full, glorious, high res, original photos to Flickr gives you one more backup of your precious photos in the cloud.

5. Moooooooooooo. Do you know about moo cards? Get some. They’re cheap — well, at least the little ones are cheap. Give them to everyone you can. When you are out and about and people talk to you about your photography say (in your best Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad voice possible) “Hey Yo, I’m slinging this camera, check me out here Yo,” and hand them a moo card. Trust me, it works.

6. Groups. Most groups on Flickr are a waste of time. Dead groups where photo whores dump billions of photos in pools that nobody sees. Your photos are quickly buried deep, deep, in the pool, never to be seen or heard from again. Avoid these groups. They typically have names like “Baskets! Show us all your photos of baskets!” or “You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato, show us all your photos of tomatoes!” Don’t just dump your photo into 30 random groups.

Instead pick a few meaningful groups and actually hang out there and interact with people. You might consider a local group for where you live. Or a photo critique group. Or whatever. But find a few active groups (meaning several new threads are engaged in a day) and participate. I belong to a number of groups on Flickr, but 95% of my Flickr group time is spent in the critique group DMU. (Note, DMU is uncensored and not for everyone. Remember above where I told you that Flickr nuked one of our groups? yep.)

7. Fave it Forward! Have you heard of Billy Wilson? Because if you haven’t, you will soon. Not to be confused with his second cousin and other Flickr legend Billy Warhol, Billy Wilson is the original Flickr fave machine! Billy has favorited more photos than anyone else on Flickr and he’s showing no signs of slowing down. Want to know what happens when you fave almost 200,000 photos on Flickr? Just check out Billy’s stream. How’s that for getting some attention?

Now, you don’t actually have to copy the Billy Wilson favoriting machine. He’s an original and that’s his gig. But. Don’t be stingy with your faves either. If you like something fave the hell out of it. You can start here at my “10 faves or more set” if you’d like. You have an unlimited amount of faves to give out on Flickr. People love getting faves. People reciprocate.

Be like Billy, fave it forward.

Same goes for comments too. If you like something say so. Maybe you can be the next “nice photo” guy. Or maybe you can be known as that super hot chick who writes deep, meaty, insightful, witty, quirky comments on people’s photos — especially then, you’ll be loved.

8. Tag for discovery. You know how people find many of your photos? Search. Don’t be “that guy” who tags the 300 most commonly used keywords to your photos no matter what they are. I don’t want to see that photo of your bikini clad girlfriend when I’m searching for puppy. Good boy.

But. Be descriptive. Be sure to tag the place the photo was taken. The subject matter. Anything relevant that people might use to search for your photo. Consider geotagging as well. The more discoverable your photos are, the more likely they’ll be seen on Flickr.

Oh, also keyword at the file level, not on Flickr itself. It’s much faster to keyword and geotag that way and also when Flickr ends up nuking your account (KABOOM!) you won’t lose all of those tags and geotags that you worked so hard on adding to your photos. When you tag/geotag at the file level, these tags/geotags are automatically populated at Flickr when you upload your photos. Read about my workflow here for more on that.

9. Are you allowing the search engines to index your photos? If you aren’t, you should be. You can check your settings on that here. I’d estimate that about 20% of the traffic to my own Flickr photos comes from search engines.

10. Certain subjects just get garner more attention. In general I’ve found that certain subjects tend to do better on Flickr than others. Your (and my) Egglestonian masterpiece of the sidewalk curb? Not so much.

But. Subjects that seem to garner a lot of attention. Attractive women (number one attention getter on Flickr, especially self portraits), motion or blur, silhouettes, images with stories in the description, some HDR, bokeh, abstract architectural photography, bridges, cityscapes, artwork by famed graffiti artist Banksy, you get the idea.

Also sometimes an interesting looking thumbnail will pull people in as well.

Well there you have it. 10 tips to get you more attention on Flickr. Use them in good health and with good company.

Disclaimer: remember my equation above? “quality photos + reciprocation² = attention” It doesn’t matter how much work you do optimizing the promotion of your photos if they suck. Find your voice. Make your style. Create your art. But put time, energy and pride in the work that you share. Make the world a more beautiful place with the amazing work that you are capable of creating. The best photos in the world have yet to be taken.

Oh, and one final way to get a lot of attention on Flickr? Write long blog posts about getting attention on Flickr. It works every time.

You can find me on Flickr here.

Just trying to figure out wether a video on Flickr appears on FriendFeed in the same way. Extra information on it: lots of spiders were born yesterday. In my garden. They are flocking together. But when I touch something they come to live again. That's wh —

Posted by Henry Wong, Software Engineer

One of the things people like best about Google Buzz is the ability to have conversations in the comments. But until now, if you were reading a post in an email client (like the native mail app on your phone or Outlook), you couldn't easily join in on the conversation -- you could only email the original poster. Today, we rolled out a new Google Buzz feature for you to try out: comment via email. Now, you can comment on the post simply by replying to the email message.


Plus, last week we made it possible to view entire photo albums in Buzz (rather than the handful of photos from a given Flickr or Picasa album you could see before). So if you share an album with tons of photos, people can now click through all of the photos in the Buzz photo viewer.

We're chipping away at the feature requests we've been receiving, so keep them coming. And if you want to keep up with everything Google Buzz related, follow our team at buzz.google.com/googlebuzz.

Google Reader has released a slew of new updates today, the most prominent being support for HTML5-powered videos and audio.

As HTML5 gains steam, partially due to Apple’s war against Adobe Flash, more and more websites are switching to HTML5 interfaces that work on both the desktop and mobile phones. Google, understanding this reality, has intelligently responded by adding HTML5 support for the video and audio HTML5 tags within Google Reader.

That’s only one of many changes the company announced today. Google Reader has added a new link at the bottom of recommended items, “Not Interested,” which gives you the ability to hide recommended stories that miss the mark and provides Google with more data to give you better recommendation results. Reader Play has also been tweaked with more options, such as hitting the space bar to move between posts and new options to personalize the interface.

Google Reader tends to release these types of small updates often, so it has also added a prompt to refresh whenever Google Reader is updated. The HTML5 additions are the big updates of this release though, and while Google is currently supporting Adobe Flash in the face of Apple’s assault, the reality is that HTML5 is rising as the primary alternative to Flash. Expect to see more and more websites adopt the standard, including Google Reader.

[img credit: Justinsomnia via Flickr]

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Tags: Google, google reader, HTML5

Dropbox, the free, web-based file backup service, has rolled out a new API that gives developers a way to access, edit and save any file in a user’s Dropbox account.

The Dropbox API works a bit like an Amazon S3 storage bucket except that you, not the application in question, have control over your uploaded files.

The Dropbox API uses familiar tools like JSON, OAuth and OpenID, so web developers can essentially offload their user’s storage needs to Dropbox. For users, the usual risks of tying your web app to a cloud storage mechanism are mitigated by the fact that Dropbox keeps a local copy on your hard drive.

While the potential for integration with web apps is very cool — imagine if all your Flickr uploads automatically synced to the Dropbox folder on your hard drive for an instant backup — the first place you’ll likely see the Dropbox API in action is on mobile devices.

Storage limitations and, in the case of the iPhone/iPad, Apple’s imposed restrictions, mean that it’s difficult to build mobile apps that can access local files, let alone read, write and sync.

That’s the basic problem the Dropbox API seeks to overcome — using the Dropbox API means there’s no need for local files on your mobile device and everything is automatically synced back to your PC. The only catch is that you need an internet connection for the syncing to work.

Dropbox has already worked with a number of developers to integrate the new API prior to the launch. For example, Air Sharing, GoodReader and QuickOffice can now tap into your Dropbox account to edit and sync your Dropbox files. The new API ships with client libraries in Objective-C (pretty much required for the iPhone/iPad), Python, Ruby and Java. To create an application you’ll need to register with Dropbox and then, once you have access, you can grab the client library of your choice and check out the online documentation.

See Also:

• Google Cuts Online Storage Pricing, Fuels Anticipation for Cheap Cloud-Based OS
• Dropbox Backup Service Adds Linux Support

College Advice —

College Advice is a post from Chris Pirillo

If I had a nickel for every time I was asked this question, I’d have paid off my student loans 10x over:

My Name is Daniel, but go I by the name Nico. Everyone asks me how i got that nickname but i honestly do not know why my percents started calling me that. I am Filipino, currently living in the Philippines, and a senior in high school. I’ve been watching your videos for a long time now, and what you do really interests me. I, like you, love technology.

I am going to the US for college to take up industrial design. I’m emailing you because I was hoping you would be able to give me some advice. My parents are spending almost double for my college tuition than what they spent for my older siblings for their college education – and I really want to figure out a way to help pay for it, or find a way to pay them back eventually. There will be added costs as a need to purchase a laptop, hopefully a Mac, for the major I’m planning to take, and I think I’m going to constantly buy materials for my classes. I really, really want to pay for as much of all of this as I can.

One thing that I think I have some talent with is photography, and this may be a way I can generate some money. I am very passionate about photography. I post some of my photographs on my flickr. I take photos of almost everything. I’m heavily involved with my school yearbook, both as a photographer and a layout editor, and the school magazine. I’m hoping to eventually make some money with my photos, but don’t know how to start. It would be great if you could give me some tips on maybe starting my own website and how to generate some money out of it. Any other advice on selling photographs online would be great. I’m not expecting to make tons of money, and I don’t expect it to happen overnight, but I am willing to work hard and be patient for it.

Let me first say that I’m impressed with your ability to communicate in a fairly coherent fashion; 90% of the emails I receive from U.S. students are sloppy (not to mention, beyond illegible). I’m not sure if English is your primary or secondary language, but your literary skills will be what spells success in your initial and continued endeavors.

Hell, most American adults can’t even grasp the concept that Apple’s “Mac” computer isn’t written as “MAC” (which is a store brand for cosmetics).

That, and your personal responsibility for finances should also be a lesson to the lazy.

You likely have a certain set skills which are valuable to others. It’s now your responsibility to find the intersection between what you can do and who can pay you to do what you do. You’ll figure out the “how” after seeing what works (and, more importantly, what doesn’t work).

There are near-infinite ways for you to make a Web site and countless opportunities to sell your photo work. Remember, however, that tools are merely the means to an end – and you’re not the only person using them to achieve your goals.

The information is out there on how to do anything – but nothing will ever teach you as much about a task as figuring it out for yourself. If I have a single tip for you, it’s simply: DO IT.

You’ll figure “it” out.

Of course, I’m sure people will have specific recommendations for you – but good advice is relative, and (still) only valuable if you apply it to your set of circumstances.

• Do Computer Majors Mean Anything Anymore?
• Is Traditional School a ‘Must’?
• iPad or Touchscreen Laptop Computer?
• Education is the Key
• Where to Buy College Textbooks
• TeachStreet
• How to Get Free Microsoft Software
• A Quick Way to Save Your Marriage in Three Easy Steps
• How to Apply to Graduate School in the U.S.
• How Young Were You When You Finished College?

30 Useful Adobe AIR Applications —

Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is a free runtime environment that can be used by the developers to develop highly interactive internet and media applications for multiple platforms. It enables web developers to utilize their current development skills and deliver rich applications and content to user’s desktop. It combines the web development technologies like Ajax, HTML, Flash and Flex so that developers with existing knowledge of these technologies need not learn a new framework and they can utilize Adobe AIR integrated platform to deploy extremely sophisticated internet applications.

Today, we present 30 Useful Adobe AIR applications to give you an overview as to what you can achieve with AIR.

Rich Media

Flickroom
Flickroom is an Adobe AIR application that provides Flickr users an enhanced browsing experience of photos.

Flickr Flipper
Flickr Flipper allows you to search for Flickr photos in general or by specific users. It allows one by one picture navigation and also allows you to download the photo on your computer.

Blokt
Blokt is a game built with Adobe AIR with the concept of removing the red block out of the maze of other blocks by sliding them out of the way.

Business Applications

eBay Desktop
eBay Desktop is an AIR application that provides a way to shop at world’s largest marketplace on your desktop. Salient features of eBay Desktop include 1 click search filters, alerts, history, and feeds.

The NASDAQ Stock Market
NASDAQ Market Replay is an extremely powerful replay and analysis application that allows users to view the consolidated order book and trade data for NASDAQ, NYSE and other regional securities instantly.

Task Management

Doit.im
Doit.im lets you focus on items on hand instead of worrying about pending ideas in your mind. It manages your tasks and organizes the process of your work so that you feel easy when faced with bulk complicated projects. This way you can just focus on what you are working at the moment instead of thinking about previous or future work.

AgileAgenda
Agile Agenda is a project management software that allows project managers to enter data about thier activities. The software dynamically adjusts varying conditions during the project lifecycle. Agile Agenda supports the sharing of data through XML, PDF, and a web interface.

MiniTask
MiniTask is a free easy-to-use task management application that helps you manage your daily tasks easily. It supports features like alarm timers, drag ‘n’ drop reorder, task sheet printing and customization of styles.

Klok
Klok is a time management application that allows you to accurately track how much time you have spent on past projects and estimate better timeline for future projects. It makes easier to manage time for meetings, documentation, follow ups, sales calls etc.

Social Media

skimmer
Skimmer is an Adobe AIR desktop application designed to streamline, beautify, and enhance the experience of participating in your most frequently used social networking activities. It improves upon your everyday interaction with multiple social networks by providing a rich experience that is particularly suited to multimedia related content.

twhirl
twhirl is a desktop client for the popular microblogging platform
Twitter that builds on the very cool Adobe AIR runtime.

Spaz
Spaz is a free, open-source, award-winning twitter client developed with Adobe AIR offering features such as access to direct messages and replies, CSS themes, and event sounds.
Spaz was the winner of Best HTML Community App in the AIR Developer Derby.

Posty
Posty, an award winning application, will automatically deliver your messages to the services you select among Twitter, Jaiku, Tumblr, Friendfeed and Identi.ca.

facedesk
facedesk is a desktop application that will handle all your facebook related stuff, so you don’t need to open the browser for facebook related activities.

Facebook for Adobe AIR
Facebook Desktop for AIR is a new desktop application developed with Adobe AIR using facebook API. It goes through all the authorizations and deliver the news feed on your desktop. You can publish your content straight from your desktop to your wall.

AirTalkr
AirTalkr is a multi-protocol Instant Messenger that connects to MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk, AOL and ICQ. It also connects to other Web 2.0 services like Flickr and YouTube. While chatting with your friends, you can browse flickr photos and youtube videos. You can also view each of your buddies AirCard, a profiling system in AirTalkr that gathers your buddies profile from the web.

Feeds

diggREADER
diggREADER allows you to chose from one of the main 4 Digg RSS feeds to read the latest headlines refreshed every 2 minutes on your desktop.

ShareFire
ShareFire is a news aggregator that allows you to share stories via AIM, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, email and more. It allows you to read all the stuff at one place and share from there.

Designing

WebKut
WebKut is an AIR application that takes screenshots of full or part of the web pages. It provides you 3 capture options: the entire page, the current view, or only a selection.

WebSnapshot
With WebSnapShot, you can take the snapshot by entering URL of just dragging the website into the application. You can create Thumbnail, Browser size and Full page screenshots.

Icon Generator
Icon Generator is an Adobe AIR application that allows you to create CS3 or Web 2.0 style icons in three easy steps. You can create icons in multiple sizes.

Livebrush
Livebrush is an Adobe AIR drawing application that employs an easy-to-use brush tool. Packed with several other designing controls, Livebrush offers a fun and unique way to create graphics.

Development

Lupo Manager
Lupo Manager extracts strings from your source code, manages resource bundles and implement i18n logic in your Adobe Flex® / Adobe AIR applications in a very productive manner.

Lita
Lita is a free SQLite database administration tool for Windows, MacOSX and Linux.

Google

GMDesk
GMDesk is an application that lets you run Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Maps as a stand-alone application to do all your mail handling, calendar event reading etc. with no need to open it up in a web browser, or have it clutter your workspace.

GMDesk offers an easy menu as well as keyboard shortcuts to switch between different Google services, and you can specify what default service you want the application to start with. It also supports Google Apps access as well.

Polaris
Polaris is a desktop widget for Google Analytics. It provides an easy way to view your data instantly with 8 standard reports.

Miscellaneous

Moderator
Moderator is a WordPress Plugin and associated desktop application, built using Adobe AIR, that allows you to view and moderate comments from your desktop. Features include are viewing unmoderated comments, dock and system tray notifications of the number of unmoderated comments, accept, delete, and spam comments from within the desktop client, close application window, or minimize it to the system tray while running.

Xdrive Desktop Live
Xdrive® Desktop Lite is a desktop client for Xdrive that enables users to drag and drop files and folders directly to their Xdrive account from their local computers. Users can also browse, search and publish files to Xdrive using this desktop client.

Doc?
Doc? allows you to view, search and bookmark all your favorite ASDocs. It can also handle some legacy books like the ones you find in Flash CS3 and older. Online books can be downloaded and viewed directly in Doc?.

Popling
The Popling desktop application gives you an extra POP of motivation by showing you a new flash card every few minutes. You can set the frequency of the pop so you won’t get disturbed when you don’t want to be. The idea is simple you can learn while you work with short quick questions. With correct answer you move on to the next question, and with wrong you can either try again or skip to the next one.

Further Resources

Following articles are suggested for further reading:

• Adobe AIR Developer’s Toolbox: Resources And Tutorials
• Adobe AIR – Showcase Applications
• Adobe AIR Application Showcase and Resources
• 17 Adobe AIR Apps That Can Save Your Time

About the author

Muhammad Usama Alam is a software engineer and web developer with over 8 years of experience in designing and developing business solutions for enterprise. You can follow him on Twitter.