Mobile Technology in TAFE

Flickr was a Web 2.0 tool that initially did not grab me because I didn’t get the idea of sharing photos online. Now I can’t live without Flickr, and it offers so much, that it is definitely worth taking the time to learn how to use more effectively.

If you are new to Flickr I strongly recommend that you check out Josh Lowensohn’s Newbie’s Guide to Flickr and Alan Levine’s What we can do with Flickr (especially the links below the photo).

Copyright Free Images

Most of the photos I use on my websites are sourced from Flickr Creative Commons images using FlickrCC. Remember when using photos from Flickr:

• To check their license and only use in a manner stated in their license
• “All rights reserved” means you can not use the photo without permission from the author
• There are a range of different Creative commons licenses; each impose different restrictions on how you use the images. I strongly recommend that you read Skellie’s A Complete Guide to Finding and Using Flickr Images for an excellent overview of creative commons licenses.
• All images licensed under Creative commons means that you are required to credit the author with a link back to their profile. You do this by inserting below the photo the link e.g. Photo by Sue Waters.

Making Friends

The benefit of making Friends on Flickr (Flickr calls them contacts) is you learn about the cool stuff your friends are getting up to e.g. snowman, playing with Santa in Second Life, the “must have” computer mouse (Darren - I think you need some friends).

Best way of seeing the latest photos from your friends is to subscribe to the RSS feed from photos from your friends using your Feed Reader.

Remember the Conversation

We should also remember that Flickr is not just about photos, like blogs, the conversations are important. Take the time to write comment below photos that interest you because it is important to participate in other people’s spaces. But to be effective at this with Flickr I suggest you:

1. Subscribe to recent activities on your photos using your Feed Reader- this lets you know when people write comments on your photos so you can respond back to comments quickly.
2. Subscribe to updates on photos you’ve commented on using your Feed Reader - so you are advised when people make further comments so you can choose whether you want to respond back.

Organising Photos

If you use Flickr a lot it is definitely worth paying for a Pro Account because it only costs US$24.95 per year for lots of extra benefits e.g. unlimited Sets and Collections for organising photos.

The difference between a set and a collection is a set contains photos whereas collection contains sets e.g. I may have my photos arranged into sets called Snowman, Christmas trees, Christmas Decorations and then have all these sets organised in a Collection called Christmas.

Editing Photos

Flickr has lots of great options for editing your photos by:

• Adding notes to your photos - check out Alan Levine’s example
• Editing them within Flickr using Picnik
• Creating new images from Flickr photos using tools like Dumpr, fd’s Flickr toys and FotoTrix

FINAL THOUGHT

Flickr has so many features that it is impossible to cover them all in a blog post. Please let us know your tips for getting more out of Flickr or if you use another photosharing website, what do you like about the site you use.

Sarah Stewart (Sarah’s Musings) commented on my These Are My Favourite Tools! What Are Yours? post that as a result of my posts on presentation skills she has discovered FlickR and have started using the images on blog and in presentations but she is finding it time consuming finding images. What she would like is advice on quick and easy ways of finding images that you are allowed to use.

So here are some of my suggestions:

Search for images using FlickrCC

FlickrCC is the best online tool I have found for quickly searching creative common Flickr photos. It is considerably faster than using FlickrStorm, Creative Commons Image Search or the creative commons advanced search at Flickr. Unlike the other search options FlickrCC also provides facilities to edit the image using their online editing tool - click on this link to view their image editing options.

Thanks to Judy O’Connell (Hey Jude) for telling me about FlickrCC! Check out Judy’s post on Find Free Images Online - My List for options other than using Flickr creative commons photos. I personally prefer using Flickr creative commons photos because there are more photos at Flickr so I am more likely to find photos faster.

Remember that when you use Creative Commons images you are allowed to use these provided you follow the terms specified by their Creative Commons license. In simple terms you are allowed to use these images provided you credit the original source by linking back to that source - you need to refer to Flickr Creative Commons information for a more detailed explanation as there are a range of different licenses with different restrictions.

Creating your own images

There are several ways you can create your own images:

1. Start building up your own collection of photos
I now tend to carry my camera wherever I go and like to share my photos online at Flickr.

2. Use an editing tool to create your own images
I use SnagIT to take screen shots of web pages, software applications or add check information to photos (my screen shot of FlickrCC above was created using SnagIT)

3. Use an image creating tool to create images
I love using fd’s Flickr Toys to remix photos into lots of different images like Mosaics etc.

However today I decided to check out Alan Levine (CogDog) Web 2.0 Gem Starter List because I knew Alan was bound to have some cool tools for editing photos (he loves photos). As a result I came across Dumpr which is a lot better than fd’s Flickr Toys. Here is a same of the different photos I created using Dumpr (can use photos from your computer, Flickr, a Web 2.0 mashup or URL)

The other tool that Alan suggested that I liked was spell with Flickr.

FINAL THOUGHT

Hopefully you find these tools save you time. Please let me know if you have any similar photo editing, image creation or photo searching tools that I should check out.