paul reid • blog

While I don’t actually post or comment on Flickr much these days, the stickiness of the site continues to amaze me. I’ve printed Moo cards, set-up groups, made maps, used slideshows, but it’s the simplicity of adding favourites that keep bringing me back. Usually I find these on my favourite aggregator PopURLs by Thomas Marban. I wish I had the talent of some of these photographers…….One of the most organic social networks I’ve helped mash-up on the web is the Window Seat Please Flickr group. In 2004 I set up this group to join with others who have a love and interest in photos taken outside of plane windows.  This beginning started and continues quite humbly with the following text:

This group aims to collate photos taken from the window seats of aeroplanes. As consumers of window seat airline tickets we are given a special POV on this blue pearl Gaia. 

A wonderful 21C thrill indeed. 

Enjoy your flight. 

Now on March 24 2008 the group has 18,328 photos and 2,792 Members! Since then I’ve purchased the URL http://windowseatplease.com/ and one day I’ll put up some content about the controversial modern day thrill  and process of taking photos out of plane windows, instead of just cloaking the Flickr slideshow loop I have for my own set of photos.  I am sure there are hundreds of ways of using Flickr I haven’t even considered.

metadata, photography, web2.0, WebApp

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   metadata, photography, web2.0, WebApp

Browserwatch is a handy webapp to use when developing websites. As more webbrowsers become web standards compliant we should see less and less discrepancy between he way web pages render on the end-users screen. I took this screenshot from the feedback given to a website I have finished this weekend for the Value Adding Quest.

Interestingly this was the first time I’ve used Apple’s iWeb to create a formal website. Considering it took around 4 hours to build I am fairly happy with the results. There are a few issues with caching of images, but besides that iWeb is the easiest web page creation tool I’ve used - even simpler than RapidWeaver.

ICT, web2.0, WebApp

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   Internet, web2.0, WebApp

Watch the FlickrVision map as it moves across the globe, pinpointing the locations of users who have just added a photo to Flickr - on average this happens these days around 4000 times per minute - so I guess we are getting a compendium.

Another engaging mashup is WikipediaVision which combines Google Maps and live data on updates from the English Wikipedia to display the geolocation of people editing articles in near real-time.

Twittervision is another hypnotic glimpse into the lives of people around the world. It’s a complete waste of time watching mostly casual conversations but can be intersting to watch when you start to note the patterns - one can watch the reactions to global news events unfolding for example.

WebApp, web2.0

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   web2.0, WebApp