Flickr, tumblr, mash ups, other image heavy tools and conclusion

I've considered switching blog platforms early on during this assignment as the various web applications require different login accounts. Blogspot which is now connected to Google (in the past it wasn't) gets difficult to switch between my non academic gmail and my RMIT Gmail which I need to access to view Google drive documents and updates from the various web 2.0 application accounts I've setup using that email address. I did not migrate over to Wordpress or any other blogging platform as my group had already established means of commenting through Blogspot.

Blogspot does allow for comments from other blog platforms however the accessibility and quick and easy use of the Google account makes one less inclined to migrate.

(screen shot of comment options.)

Another blog platform that has made me critical of it's service and platform not only personally but academically as well is 'tumblr.' The image heavy blog with an infinite scroll function, initially created as a blog platform for fashion designers to scan through 'looks' and styles. This blog platform has quickly attracted hordes of bloggers from 13 year old girls to mid 30 year old professionals and with no content filter and a format which is device independent (I believe a lot of users access it through their smartphones) one can go from kittens to pornography in 0.001 seconds. It's most popular function is 'reblogging.' Just like twitter where one can 're-tweet' another user's comment, tumblr allows users to reblog another users content, from text, image and video all in the click of a button. These 'reblogs' get 'linked' and 'liked' by thousands of other tumblr accounts until the original source of the material gets lost in a sea of comments and reblogs. Also it depends if the original user credits where they sourced the content posted.

(Here are screen shots of a tumblr site and the linking process)

 

(Clicking on AUG 01 brings us to the screen below)

(This screen shot shows us a list of account holders who have reblogged and liked this quote)

 

(This screen shot is a user's tumblr blog which has been clicked on, through the list of account holders who have reblogged and liked the previous blogger's quote. As you can tell this process can go on infinitely.)

Here is another example of how an Information Organisation is currently using tumblr to reach a broader and it's current patrons: http://saiclibrary.tumblr.com/
The School of Art Institute of Chicago, Flaxman Library has a tumblr blog, it's mostly image based an contains information related to past events, quirky on going activities within the library.
And here is a tumblr I made last year: http://inflowersandbees.tumblr.com/


On the other end of the spectrum is Flickr a web hosting service with a lot of sharing capabilities. Flickr unlike tumblr has clear definitions for copyright use and hosting. When uploading images to flickr, one can set the level of Creative Commons licence. Creative Commons allows for creators to set the level of share alike premissions for a work. For example the Antelope Document I've uploaded: http://www.flickr.com/photos/antelopedocument/8645205354/in/photostream is set to: Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0) meaning users are free to 'to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work, to Remix — to adapt the work 'With the understanding that: Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Public Domain — Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected...' (please see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ for more information)

(screen shot of flickr page account.)

These drawings came from a set of instructions I provided:

Welcome to the Antelope 2.0 project.

Instructions:

1. You have 60 seconds to draw an Antelope from memory without using any visual references

          on the yellow post-it note.

2. Once you have finished turn over your Antelope/Document so that no one can see it.

3. Place it in the brown envelope.

4. Within 24 hours you should be able to identity, tag and claim your Antelope/Document with your name and your classification, Antelope or Document? through a variety of web 2.0 technologies. You can also classify other peoples Antelope/Document based on your own judgements.

5. Something to think about before you begin:

antelope |ˈantɪləʊp|

noun ( pl. same or antelopes )

a swift-running deer-like ruminant with smooth hair and upward-pointing horns, of a group native to Africa and Asia that includes the gazelles, impala, gnus, and elands.

ORIGIN late Middle English (originally the name of a fierce mythical creature with long serrated horns, said to live on the banks of the Euphrates): via Old French and medieval Latin from late Greek antholops, of unknown origin and meaning.

6. Your 60 seconds begins now!

Several attempts were made at trying to connect the Antelope Documents to their creators in an interactive form. I tried Google Drive but their image embedding capabilities were severely lacking.

(screen shot of Google Forms)

Yammer was another option but failing to find users from this year proved difficult. Facebook was another option however I am morally opposed to Facebook's privacy policies. In the end I opted for twitter, dropbox and flickr.

(screen shot of Dropbox Antelopes / Documents. Downloadable but not tagged-able.)

Two well known Information Organisations who currently utilise flickr are 'The Library of Congress' and 'The National Library of Australia Commons.' Both provide albums and sets for their works as well as copyright guide lines for their images, which the majority of their photographs have been 'no known copyright restrictions' that is until someone presumed dead steps forward to claim their work.

(screen shot of The National Library of Australia Commons flickr page)

Mashups are an interesting aspect to flickr, where users can harness flickr's APIs which supports many protocols. For example The State Library of South Australia has it's own map where they combined flickr images which were tagged as place markers on a Google map: http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/qld/default.aspx
There are many other mash ups out there some useful and others not quite and list is exhaustive.

So far my journey into Web 2.0 technologies has been educational and interesting. While I wasn't able to successfully, disperse my Antelope Document drawings which I collected from various isys1166 participants. I believe as technology progresses and new advances are made, forms of collaboration and sharing will become more fluid (that or the current services and technologies we use will go the way of Geocites, see my first post.) And as Tim Berners-Lee said

"Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along." 

- IBM Interview http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int082206txt.html