Thing 7: Technology is our future

Everyone a Professional
Wow, I've seen some amazing "amateur" photos on Flickr, Kodak EasyShare, Shutterfly, Picasa, and Smugmug! It used to be that only professional photographers with really good cameras and expensive attachments could take great pictures. And those of us who appreciated them had to pay a lot to own a copy. Now the regular person can take artsy, dramatic, beautiful, or memorable pictures and share them with the world. Not only is it making our world smaller by bringing us closer together, albeit not physically, but we can learn so much by exploring the unfamiliar scenes now available at the click of a finger.

Love-Hate
I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I've been involved with computers, both hardware and software, for over 20 years and I've seen a lot of technology come and go. It's great when it works, providing accessibility, reliability, and productivity, When it doesn't work, there's frustration, but some comfort in realizing that it can usually be made to work, if you only have patience, are systematic, and have a toolbox of tricks or resources to help you figure out the problem.

I don't attempt to keep up with all the new innovations; if only I had more time to explore more of what's out there. But I'm intrigued by all of it, amazed at the knowledge of fellow users, the fearlessness of younger generations, and loving the capabilities (for free!) offered on the Internet. I've read some futuristic writings, but I think we can't even begin to envision what we'll be able to do next year or 5 years from now. The possibilities are endless and it's going to be a great ride!

Thing 6: Flickr mashups

It was fun playing with some of mashups and web apps, although I couldn't get to Mappr at all and Montager took a very long time to load images. I tried Color Pickr in hopes that I could find a new picture for my blog that would combine the right shades of green and lilac and, although interesting, many of the photos that came up were chunks of sky or indistinguishable objects. With Retrievr it's just not possible to create a detailed picture with thick lines and a small drawing space. When I drew a cat's head I got photos of eyes and all sorts of things that sometimes weren't even close to the shape or color I used.

On the other hand, Flickr Slide Show Generator seems like a cool tool. I was unsuccessful at putting a slide show in my blog, but I plan to try again another day. FlickrFly is great and has good documentation. I placed my photos on a Google map of Mt. Rainier within Flickr. Now I'd like to experiment with being able to "fly" to a map from the photo on my blog.

Thing 5: Flickr

I am really impressed with Flickr and understand why so many people use it. I've tried Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Shutterfly, and Picasa Web Albums and been frustrated with the slow upload speed. Flickr was much faster when just using the browser, and it was quicker to select and add the photos to upload. The mini menus for the various functions make it easy to navigate, and organizing into sets is a cinch. It's robust, with tons of features, and the little balloon help messages are truly helpful. I can only upload 100 MB every month, but I guess that's reasonable. It only costs $24.95 a year to add more! I did have some trouble finding out how many MB I had already uploaded.

This is a photo I took of Mt. Rainier on a recent trip to Washington state, and uploaded to Flickr.