[Web] Flickr Users Against Microsoft

Flickr users are some of the most vocal ones on the planet. I suppose it's because of all the creativity involved with the people, I suppose so they have been known to resist change, especially change associated with bigger companies. Thus in the same way that they protested the forced migration of all Flickr users to Yahoo! accounts for logging in, now they're protesting Microsoft's unsolicited bid for Yahoo.

Yeah, I bet nobody saw this coming. =P

[Google] Picasa Web Albums Upgrades

Close after the heels of their release of Google Desktop 5 comes the release of several new features to another Google product - Picasa Web Albums.

For those unfamiliar with the service, Picasa Web Albums is a photo-hosting site similar to Flickr. Originally the albums were designed to work solely with their Picasa, which is a photo organizer and baseline editor. Think Adobe Photoshop but more for conventional users. Given it only had 250MB of storage space, it really wasn't much.

Now they've upgraded all users to 1GB of space - 4 times as much as before. In addition, they've also enabled a search facility for those photos which have been uploaded to Picasa. Picasa Web Albums now also work with your Blogger account given any photos you upload via Blogger are now sent to your Picasa Web Album as unlisted images (not available for search). This way you can see and organize your blog-related pictures alongside your uploaded ones. Not too shabby, Google.

Overall, it's an upgrade that has been long overdue given everyone seems to be offering 1GB of photo storage space and beyond these days. The search engine is useful but users still need to enable whether or not they'll allow for their photos to be shared. It also doesn't have any considerations (yet?) for applying Creative Commons licenses to your images like Flickr does, which is essential for truly determining fair use of the community's photos.

While it's not yet time to leave your favorite photo-hosting site just yet, it is a good reason to keep Picasa handy if you want another location to store your photos without restrictions. Hopefully they'll add to the feature set in time to make it a more competitive product.

Related Links:

• Official Google Blog: Store and find even more photos on Picasa Web Albums
  
• Google Operating System: Major Update for Picasa Web Albums
  
• Google Blogoscoped: Picasa Adds (Real) Search
  
• Lifehacker: Picasa Web Albums adds storage, features

[US] NYC Pillow Fight 2007

Over the weekend newmindspace hosted a public pillow fight at Union Square in New York City. Apparently this two-person group regularly organizes free public events like this. Now why won't anyone try something like there here?

The net is swarming with pictures of the madcap event. The best place to look is still Flickr.

Related Links:

• CNET News.com: New York gets in on the pillow fluff
  
• Flickr Search: New York Pillow Fight

Photo linked from Flickr user MacRonin47's photostream.

[Web] Creative Commons 3.0

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Just a heads-up to everyone that Creative Commons has announced the release of their version 3.0 licenses for public use. While version 3.0 doesn't add anything significant in terms of license types beyond renaming the generic license as the US license, it does provide more useful icons that instantly tell users the extent of your copyright using the symbols that have more or less become publicly accepted in terms of meaning.

You can always get a Creative Commons license for any of your online or offline work, which comes especially handy for original works like blogs and your photos. Case in point - you may not have realized but Flickr allows users to apply Creative Commons licenses to their photos in order to not only protect the users' copyright but also encourage true sharing and limited usage under their "Some Rights Reserved" style licenses or by officially putting all your photos out their in the public domain.

[The Web] My Favorite Online Services

In this interesting Web 2.0 age that we live in, a lot of services are becoming more and more user-focused and dynamic. We're also seen a lot of developers move towards developing online applications that don't require files to be installed on your computers to work. While I have to admit I'm still exploring the full range of such web-based services, here are the ones that stand out for me:

1. GMail - this remains to be one of the best web-based email services out there primarily because of its interaction with other Google products. While some would argue that the UI for services like Yahoo! Mail beta and others is better, I've come to appreciate GMail's cleaner look. Throw in the ever-increasing storage capacity and the interconnections with other services like Google Calendar and Google Docs & Spreadsheets makes this a definite win for me. Oh, and I did forget to mention you can chat through GMail as well?
   
2. Preloadr - this is a great online photo editor for users of Flickr, the ever-popular photo sharing site purchased by Yahoo! It works seamless with Flickr once you enable permissions and you can upload and edit your photos that you host on Flickr.
   
3. Google Calendar - Google's online calendar tool is great for most users. It's fairly easy to use and the UI has that classic clean Google look to it that helps keeps things running fairly lightly. As with all other Google products, the lack of solid technical support apart from the Google Groups forums does get in the way at times but on the whole it's a pretty solid product.
   
4. Google Docs & Spreadsheets - What a lot of people believe to be the beginnings of "Google Office," Docs & Spreadsheets is a great set of online applications that handle basic desktop publishing and spreadsheet creation. Between the two, the document program (formerly Writely) is the more solid application with a great UI and intuitive controls. Spreadsheets is still somewhat lacking in the feature department especially when it comes to more advanced formulas and perhaps #1 on everyone's wishlists - charting. Despite these limitations, the two tools are great for the average user wanting to venture into more collaborative projects.
   
5. Google Reader - I know, this is beginning to sound like one long Google advertisement, but you have to admit they're one of the few companies really exploring this area of Web 2.0 development. Google Reader is another online tool, this time best for viewing RSS feeds anywhere. While some might argue that they prefer using the tools with browsers like Firefox or IE 7 or other such tools but I like Google Reader because of its mobility. I'm not tied to a single PC in terms of viewing my RSS feeds - perfect for viewing them at home or at work using a single list. The recent addition of Google Reader Trends adds extra amusement in managing one's feeds.
   
6. Gliffy - rounding up the list is Gliffy, an online charting tool similar to MS Visio. It's a bit clunky in terms of its icons and flowcharting symbols which appear a bit cartoonish but on the whole it's a pretty solid application that meets the requirements for basic process documentation and flowchart generation. The collaboration feature is a great bonus which is fast becoming something we're all accustomed to in these Web 2.0 times.

Whether you agree with the list or not, all of these tools are worth a shot in case you're interested in exploring the realm of online applications.

[The Web] Badflickr

Another CNet blog posting a few weeks ago brought to light the growing dissent regarding account deletions over at Flickr.

For those unfamiliar with the service, Flickr is one of the more popular photo sharing communities on the web, having won the 2005 Webby Breakout of the Year Award and this year's Webbys for Best Practices and Best Navigation / Structure.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Flickr given it's given a lot to the Web 2.0 community in terms of what are now common internet practices like tagging. It changed the way we thought about photo sharing and I've long been considering getting myself a paid account just to be able to fully utilize the service. However when I read this article, I did become rather concerned.

The article talks about the plight of Appy, former Flickr user and now the owner of the Badflickr website. It seems that his account was deleted one day for violating the sacred Yahoo! Flickr Terms of Service (TOS) somehow, although it's not clear how exactly he violated it. The main issue is not just the deletion in itself but how Yahoo! Flickr has appears to have decided on the deletion quickly without warning or consulting the user in question - definitely not a nice way to do business with people.

A lot of the user forums question the authenticity of the story and I have to agree that we're not seeing everything here. However, given the dedication of this one person, I have to admit that I think for the most part he is telling the truth.

Moral of the story - be careful what you post. Big brother Yahoo! may be watching.