Flickr v YouTube : Crisis Response

Just reading a post from the Flickr blog about photos people have been posting about the Minneapolis bridge collapse. Once again I was fascinated by the perspective on news events that we get from the Flickr community. The world news services invariable present a very narrow and predictable window onto events. But Flickr allows a wide range of individuals to share these moments from their perspective.

One question that came to mind as I browsed the Flickr images relates to how video sharing services respond to these events. To test this I used the same search terms on YouTube as had been used in Flickr. The contrast was amazing. There were no personal videos of the event on YouTube (except for headshot of some guy talking about how he heard about it). Every video was taken from the news. Why is this? Does it tell us something about the communities that use Flickr compared to YouTube? Does it tell us something about the quite different relationship with have to photographs as compared to video? Is it really just a reflection on the availablity of still cameras compared to video cameras. My guess is that it's a combination of all of these (and no doubt a few I haven't considered). What are your thoughts?

widgetboxing my Throbbing Thumb

Yesterday I was doing some tests with widgetbox. Specifically I was trialling the Flickr slideshow on my other blog (The Throbbing Thumb). The Flickr slideshow can be customised to show photos from a specific user ID and/or a specific tag. In my test I decided to display all the Flower photos from my account.

Widgetbox is a brilliant idea. Essentially developers create code snippets and define parameters and users select and customise the component. Widgetbox manages this process delivering custom javascript to the users blog. This system allows for a very wide range of widgets that are easily installed by the blogger.

I was really impressed by what widgetbox offers. Still after a day of testing I removed the Flickr slideshow. Mostly because it made the page load much slower. But also because for all it's customisation I couldn't tweak the widget to really fit my blog. The biggest problem was the Flickr ad (there was also a second option: a yahoo ad) which was too white and too close to my photos.

I hope to test some of the other widgets in the near future to determine if the slow load was specific to this widget or typical of widgetbox and to see if I can find widgets that better fit my design.

Flock : a life changing discovery

After reading Micheal Arrington's article on Web 2.0 companies he couldn't live without. I found myself checking out the Web 2.0 companies I'd never caught up with. Some I bookmarked for future reference. Some underwhelmed me. But I suspect that one has changed my life forever. That thing is Flock: the social web browser. Sure I'd heard of Flock prior to reading the article. But I was busy and didn't really have time to install and play with yet another web browser. The other factor is that I've recently been getting right into Flickr and del.icio.us. If you aren't uploading photos, managing your bookmarls online, browsing RSS feeds (or blogging) then Flock is just another browser. But as soon as you start to engage with the media potential of Web 2.0 then Flock is the browser to have.

Until yesterday I was reading my Feeds in Feedreader. But then I exported my feeds into Flock and for now at least that is where they will stay. What is great about Flock is that there is a RSS reader button right next to the location bar which changes color when feeds are updated. It has all the functionality I was used to from Feedreader but with greater convenience.

The same is true for Flickr. There is a Flickr button which opens a toolbar for previewing yours and everyone elses Flickr content. It's not everything that Flickr is but it's a great place to start.

Bookmarking : the friendly star button allows me to add the current page to my del.icio.us bookmarks. Sure I'll need to go and tag and share them. But this is overcome with a shortcut.

The other great feature is the search bar. Type in a search and it performs live searching within your favorites and selected toolbar.

If you haven't tried Flock then you should have a look. Especially if you use Flickr, del.icio.us, RSS or blog.

technorati tags:internet, browser, Flickr, del.icio.us, blog, rss