Flickr

Sometimes the best things happen by chance. The other day I was updating my blog (agora843.blogspot.com). I wanted to add some photos. I clicked on the "insert image" icon. A dialog box appeared telling me that while blogspot did not provide functionality to embed images, other services provided this option. One service suggested was www.flickr.com. Since I knew nothing about this service, I decided to see what it was about.

About Flickr
Flickr is a free online photo service that allows you to share your photographs. It also provides functionality to stay in touch with friends and some interesting blog-related services. For example, Flickr provides an automated method for embedding pictures into your blog. It supports a variety of blogs. You select the picture, add some comments and click on the "post" button.

There are two ways to place your photos on Flickr. You can upload them or email them.

Flickr, while still in beta, provides a nice variety of well-designed, useful functionality. This includes storing photos, determining who can access these photos, adding tags to photos, inviting friends (called contacts), sending messages to friends, Flickr’s instant messaging tool, and user groups. They also have a useful FAQ.

Privacy Settings
You determine who views each of your photographs. Each photograph can be set as public, friends, family, or private.

My photographs are public. Anyone can view them. They can also critique them, share them, and post them to any blog.

Photographs are protected under traditional copyright law. Flickr also allows you to choose one of the Creative Commons licenses. (creativecommons.org). I chose the "Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs 2.0 license. This allows people to use my photographs as long as they give credit to the original photographer (me), the work is only used in a noncommercial manner, and the photograph cannot be altered, transformed, or built upon. They need special permission from me to use the work in any other manner.

You can set a default copyright for all photographs you upload to your account. I set the previous license as the default and can individually change the copyright for those applicable photographs.

You can also set a default privacy level for all photos. Mine is public. I can change this level for individual photographs for those that are applicable.

Some photographs are for friends only. I have been out of high school for thirty-one years. Life has made it hard for us to keep in touch. We live all over the United States. I invited those that I have kept in touch with, asked them to do the same, and we plan to use this service to share photos. It will give us a chance to laugh at how we changed.

Some photographs are for family only. If I am at a family function that proves boring, I always seem to find a way to liven it up. And, there is always someone to capture that moment forever.

Some photos are private. I may use this feature to invite a specific person to review some photographs. For example, I may be writing an article or designing a web site. Which photograph should I include?

Enhancing Photos
You can add tag lines to photos and part of photos. For example, a photo includes 3 people. You can create a tag for each person that identifies them. You can also include a tag that describes where the photo was taken, and so on.

This feature provides a nice solution for a common problem. It is an easy way to identify people in photos especially for people that use photography as part of an online family tree. For example, click on a person and you can easily view their name, date of birth, where they were born, and other pertinent information. This is easier than listing names "from left to right", plus you can include more personal information.

Inviting Friends
Inviting friends (called contacts) is easy. Enter their names, email address, and an optional message and click the "preview this" button. Verify that everything is correct and click the "ok send this" button. When you invite them, you determine which category of photos they see.

Communicating
Flickr includes an instant messaging (IM) tool. It allows you to talk to individuals or to groups. Groups are people sharing a common interest (for example, politics, art, people living in Paris, etc.). You can post a topic in a bulletin board format or use the Flickr IM tool to chat with group members.

It is easy to share photos in a conversation. I clicked on the Flickr Live tool, began chatting, and just dragged a photo into the conversation that I wanted to share. The person I was chatting with dragged in a photo. I clicked on the photo and the thumbnail increased in size.

In Conclusion
Flickr email allows you to send messages to your Flickr friends. This with the other features completes a nice package that allows you to keep in touch with your friends and family.