Friday, July 25, 2008

# 4 (Week 2): Explore Flickr and learn about this popular image hosting site.



Photo sharing websites have been around since the 90s, but it took a small startup site called Flickr (now owned by Yahoo) to catapult the idea of “sharing” into a full blown online community. Flickr uses "tags" or what we would call keywords to help identify and search for photos.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a good look at Flickr and discover what this site has to offer. Find out how tags work, what groups are, and all the neat things that people and other libraries are using Flickr for.


New Zealand Libraries that have Flickr profiles include the National Library, LIANZA Conference 2008, Rodney Libraries, and our own Birkenhead Library.

Discovery Resources:

Flickr Learn More tour (6 steps)
Mediamazine Flickr Tutorials
Flickr:
Popular tags Interesting- Last 7 days
Flickr Services (3rd party applications & mashups) and here's another Flickr site that lets you create movie posters, CD covers, magazine covers and so on.
Libraries that Flickr


Discovery Exercise (#4):


Watch the Common Craft video "Online Photosharing in Plain English."

Take a good look around Flickr and discover an interesting image that you want to blog about. (You can explore Flickr photos, search the tags, view various groups, and more without a Flickr account).

Use any keyword(s) (Auckland, beach, library cats, library signs, library, whatever…) to find photos with those tags.

When you find an interesting image or group - create a post in your blog on your experience finding images, using Flickr, and anything else related to the exercise.
Include in your blog post a link to the image.

Use your gmail account to email northshorelibraries@gmail.com with a link to your blogpost. Please put Exercise #4 in the subject heading.

So go ahead, explore the site and have some Flickr photo fun and if you're interested in looking at some photo hosting sites, then check out Picasa Web Albums from Google and another service called Smugmug.


To upload photos to your blog:

You have two options for doing this, either:

Flickr's blogging tool (you need a Flickr account to see the button) lets you click the Blog This button (right above the picture) and add any public photo on Flickr to your blog. Be sure to give credit to the photographer, if it is not your photo.
or
Blogger's photo upload feature lets you add photos from your computer or from the Web and choose the placement in the blog post. Click the little photo icon in the toolbar on the New Post page—it is in the row of tools above the post box. Follow the instructions in the pop up box.

PS: A quick word about photo posting etiquette - When posting identifiable photos of other people (especially minors) is it advisable to get the person's permission before posting their photo in a publicly accessible place like Flickr. Never upload pictures that weren't taken by you (unless you have the photographer's consent) and always give credit when you include photos taken by someone else in your blog.

1 comment:

madmothette said...

The flickr site was very interesting and like a whole new experience in photo storing, saving, changing. I will visit this site now to store and find pictures in the future.