Practice In Context

STORING

The basic feature in Flickr is uploading photos. Either photos are downloaded from a camera or a scanner, once it’s in the computer, it can be uploaded easily via Flickr website at http://www.flickr.com/upload/. Click on the ‘Browse’ button, where a new window will open giving you options to choose an image file on the computer. Once the photo is chosen, click Open. The local path of the photo will be shown on the previous blank field. There is a maximum of 6 photos you can upload at a time. Other settings are giving tag name to simplify image search in future and privacy settings with options of private and public. Once these photos are uploaded, you can add titles and descriptions to individual photos. (Bausch & Bumgardner in Flickr Hacks, 2006) There are other ways to upload photos to Flickr, in addition to using Flickr’s own upload form. Below are the upload tools used:

• Flickr Uploadr for Windows XP, 2000, ME & 98 and Mac OSX 10.3+. Once this tool is installed, it will allow you to drag and drop photos from your computer, and add tags.

• Upload by E-mail. Click on the ‘Your Account’ link at the top of Flickr page and choose ‘Uploading by email’ under the Photo Settings header.

1. Flickr Mobile. Just open up browser from your mobile phone and go to m.flickr.com, use the Subject line for title and the body as the description. Special codes are used to add tags. There are other 3rd party uploaders – Nokia Nseries, ShoZu and ZoneTag.

• Flock, new web browser. It has built-in Flickr uploading tool and other extra features. Run on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

SHARE Once you have created your account and uploaded to Flickr, it can be free to the public if you choose to or if set to private, there are options where it can be visible to friends or family. You can share by giving out your Flickr URL which looks like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarabas57/ linking from another website. From Flickr too, photos can be shared automatically by posting them to a weblog or by displaying photos with a Flickr badge which looks like a an ID card. So, these methods of sharing means that one does not necessarily have to be a Flickr member by having to go through the registering process to view the photos (Bausch & Bumgardner in Flickr Hacks, 2006) Kunkle and Morton (2006) commented – “Whoever said a picture is worth a thousand words surely never had to find one particular image in a database of millions. Sometimes a single words connected to a photo can be much more valuable than all the photos in a shoebox.” As mentioned before, you can add text or title to your photos to make them searchable. This can be done to individual photos or if there are many of them, edit the photos as a batch and then changes could be made. However, comments cannot be added. After each or all changes, do not forget to click ‘Save’.

NOTES Another way to add information to your photos is by adding notes. Select a portion of your photo and attach a note to it by clicking on the ‘Add Note’ icon which is on the top left side of your photo. You will see a small box and an area to input text appear. Then, do not forget to ‘Save’. This feature is collaborative, therefore others too can leave a note if permission is given.

COMMENTS

By using this feature, you can add comment on what you think about the photo and can even reply on other comments made on your photo.

FAVOURITES

In addition to comment, making a work a favourite is another way of letting how much you like their work. When clicked on ‘Add To
Faves’ the star changes from clear to pink.

TAGGING PHOTOS

This feature is very useful because it is a way of categorizing photos using descriptive words by clicking on he ‘Add a tag’ link on the photo’s page. Once they are tagged, retrieving them is absolutely easy. Another way to get to your tags is by clicking on ‘Your tags’ link and it will show 150 of your most popular tags. The font sizes vary indicating the time you have used it.

SETS

Another option of categorizing is to use sets which allows you to group your photos by a common theme and make them easily accessible. These feature allow you to select a main photo to represent the whole set and add a description for the whole set.

PHOTOSTREAMS and SYNDICATION FEEDS (RSS)

Photostream is a significant concept that Flickr uses where each time an image is uploaded, it is added to our own personal photostream in a chronological order which is also visible in the global photostream.

Photostreams published uses a standardized syndication format called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). These are XML (Extensible Markup Language) code called ‘feed’, similar to HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) language, which enable readers to ‘subscribe’ to the content of a website and so it automatically updates the information. To have this feeds working, an application called ‘Aggregator’ is used to allow you to select different ‘feeds’ and have them located in one place( for example – Bloglines, a web-based personal news aggregator)

ORGANIZR

This feature is a flash-based application that is built into Flickr which allows you to do all the basic organizing function. It is user- friendly unless you have a slow network or slow computer which will make the usage slower than the actual or main Flickr website.

BLOGGING

Before you can start blogging, you have to set up your blog by going to your account setting which will take you to do the administration page. Click on ‘Set up your blog’, select the type of blog you want to use from Blogger, Moveable Type, WordPress etc, then click ‘Next’ to enter the API (URL), username and password. Now that all is set up, you can now photos directly from Flickr to your blog.