Flickr
When Flickr.com first launched, I didn’t pay much attention. But as it happened, Austin voiced his enthusiasm for the service just when I had a batch of photos I wanted to share, so instead of posting them to Tawawa, I opened a Flickr account and posted them there, just to see what it was all about.
It’s a lot more than I thought. First of all, the site is very well made; crisp, clear, friendly, quite unlike some of the other photo sharing sites I’ve seen.
But it’s also more than a grab-bag of images. A a free account allows you to upload 10 megabyte’s worth of images per month, and the one-hundred most recent images are stored and displayed in an “image stream.” The images are either “public” or only accessible to people marked as “friends” or “family.” Each image can be commented on individually, and users can freely band together in groups that share a bulletin board and an “image pool”. So, whith all this easy-to-use functionality in place, Flickr does what the Internet was probably made for: it organises conversations around content.
It occurred to me that images might be a more evocative starting point for conversations than text and that I could use Flickr in one of my classes next term: I will probably ask my students to upload images — either from their cell phones or from other sources — and discuss them.
To make sure things will run smoothly, I need a volunteer with a camera phone — or, better yet: several volunteers with camera phones — who will help me test the service and anticipate difficulties.
Anyone?
If you want to help out, please contact me and I’ll send you an invitation.
Oh, and Bill has something disgusting but intriguing in his yard. Yuck!
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