My Flickr Badge

Just got to say that I really enjoy my Flickr badge (over there on the right hand side of the blog). It shows random, ever-changing photos from my Flickr site and reminds me of the portraits and the newspaper photos in Harry Potter, where the photo subjects would be moving around and waving- talk about interactive!

You can get one here. I love Flickr!

Flickr and podcasting in libraries

Flickr is a must for libraries- I liked the Hennepin Library's "Bookspace" series, in which patrons submitted photos of themselves reading books. It's fun to look at pictures, and people who attend library events will feel more a part of the library if they see themselves on the libray website- in fact, they'll probably tell their friends and relatives to take a look, too. I really liked Westmont Public Library's idea of showing the new books, with the option to link directly back to the library catalog - I have to figure out how that's done- something involving objects I guess. Knowing how simple Flickr makes things, it's probably not too difficult. Also want to explore the Swan Online Catalog they are apparently using.


Podcasting is a bit harder- all the downloading and whatnot probably deters alot of novice users. The explanations are kind of wordy- all the sites needed clearer, simpler explanations, but Denver did a nice job. Their page is so friendly looking that it inspires trust in the user.

Flickr mashups: Thing #5

I have spent some time (way too much time) fooling around with Flickr mashups.
Here's a cute one, called FlickIt which generates thumbnail images based on a word. In this example, I set the image size to 85 and the query (or subject) to "book":

Images from FlickIt!



FlickIt "is the simple yet extremely useful web service for dynamically generating thumbnails of anything."

The images are somewhat random and change with each screen refresh, lending a certain air of unpredictability but a nice feeling of dynamic content.

Another fun mashup is depictr which combines photos from FlickR with song lyrics.

Flickr fun: Thing #4

I uploaded photos from my son's college graduation to share with family and friends. Setting up the account and uploading the photos was a breeze- Flickr's instructions are simple and clear. Sharing was a bit of a challenge, but I now realize that was because it takes some time for the system to incorporate uploaded photos and tags. You can also create a personalized url that leads people directly to your photos. I created mine to make it easy for people to find the pictures, and also used a Flickr utility to "invite" others to join.