I first started using Flickr in October 2005. Several months later, I wished I could upload and share some of the short videos of cuteness that abounded. Now, this is reality (yes, it’s been around on other sites for a while - but I wanted a central media repository). Yesterday Flickr launched the ability to upload small (< 90 second) video clips. The clips appear in your photostream just as photos do, and you can basically perform all the actions on them that you would on photos: tag, set permissions, add to groups, etc. Oh, and apparently this feature is currently only available to "Pro" users ($25/year).
I know this is probably going to be a controversial move within the Flickr community, as many Flickr users are very serious about their photography. I know there have been some vocal opponents of this as it has been kicked around in the community. But for a Flickr user like me, who posts mostly pictures of my kids, dog, travels, etc., this definitely has potential. Since the videos I take are very rarely over 90 seconds, they will fit well in the "story" that my photostream tells.
I also use flickr as an emergency backup of my "best" photos. If my hard drive were ever to die on me, I can rest easy knowing that I have the majority of the photos that I care about loaded onto flickr. I hope that I can do the same with the little videos that I take. My big question is if the file that I upload (60 fps 640x480 AVI) can be downloaded again at some point in the future, or if only a converted, web friendly version will be stored by Flickr. I suppose there's only one way to find out. Here's more of Simon's American Idol training:
God said something to the extent of “thall shalt not covet”, right? Drat. Too late.
me: Laura let me play with her iPhone this morning.
me: now I covet. dammit.
Kate: think of the monthly charges!
me: I know.
me: forget the monthly charges, think of the up-front charges. doesn’t stop me from coveting.
Laura did let me play with her brand-spanking new iPhone this morning, and boy is it nice. If I had several hundred dollars to burn and nothing better to do with it (like feed my family), I’d totally pick one up. Kate is right, though. It’s the monthly service fees that are killer. Starting at $60/mo. That’s like twice what I pay now. Kate and I share a cell phone. That means my fictitious iPhone would spend all day in the diaper bag and/or Kate’s purse. Doesn’t that defeat the point? Kate probably wouldn’t mind, though.
Still, from my 15 minute trial run, I have to say it is certainly the sexiest cell phone I’ve ever laid hands on. Apple knows user interface design. Damn.
How do you read your blogs? Do you have a list of bookmarks that you check each time you’re in front of your computer? Do you use somebody else’s handy sidebar list that’s organized by the most recent update? Do you (god forbid) google each site you want to check and use their results to take you where you need to go? Do you put a drunk monkey in front of your keyboard and let him type away until something interesting appears? Each of these involves some varying level of tedium (although the monkey may be mildly entertaining until the poop-flinging begins). THERE IS A BETTER WAY.
Feed Readers. I’ve posted about them before. For those of you who already use a feed reader to keep track of blogs, news, and pretty much any content posted on the web that interests you, disregard this post. Hopefully this is most of you. For those of you who don’t, let me encourage you again to give them a try. Google Reader and Bloglines are both fine readers. If you like those and want to experiment, there are a number of other web-based feed readers, as well as many stand-alone readers that you can download and install locally.
What, you might ask, are the benefits?
Eliminate Clicks - Say you have 15 blogs like this one that you check every day (gosh, I’m honored!). If those blogs are like this one, they only update (at best) once a week or so. So that’s 6 useless clicks per blog (90 for all 15 blogs, if you’re keeping track) per week. Now use a newsreader. Chances are at least one of your 15 blogs was updated on any given day. Every time you visit your newsreader, you’re saving yourself time (your mouse-hand will also thank you for eliminating the repetitive stress of all those clicks)!
YOU are in Control (i.e., Why Feed Readers are Superior to Mailing Lists) - Some blogs allow you to receive updates via email (although this has become more rare with the explosion of RSS feeds). With a feed reader, you don’t have to expose your email address to anybody. You don’t have to give your email address to a shady web site owner (like me!), exposing yourself to spam. You don’t have to rely on anybody to take you off the list. If you want to stop reading the feed, remove it from your reader and you’re done!
Customize Your Reading - Use your feed reader to create “mini publications” for yourself. I roughly organize my feeds into categories by topic: web design, friends’ blogs, comics (gotta have the daily Dilbert), Flickr photos, etc.
Feeds for Everyone - There are feeds out there for just about everything you could want to follow on the Web. For instance, did you know that there is an RSS feed for your Flickr photostream? I follow my friends photostreams (public photos only, unfortunately) so I know when there’s a new photo out there by one of my talented friends like Shannon or Lou Ann.
It’s so Easy - Wonder if a site has a feed? The answer is probably ‘Yes’. Look for the feed icon that accompanies this post (or some variation thereof). The orange icon is pretty standard, but some sites use custom colors.
I would be remiss if I did not present the one major drawback to the convenience of using a feed reader. It’s SO easy that you may find yourself subscribing to more and more content on the Web. Your feeds can eventually become like those magazines you subscribe to that lay around your house waiting to be read. But at least on the Web it’s free!
There are plenty of other reasons to use a feed reader, not the least of which is “Pat told me to.” So what is your current procedure for reading blogs? Would you consider a feed reader? If I push it any more will you stop reading THIS blog?
The Internet is a wonderful and dangerous place. Not dangerous in a “watch out for the weirdos” way (although it is sometimes that too), but rather in the way that the plethora of information can suck you in and not let go. So my stumbling upon LifeHacker is probably both a blessing and a curse. The description that appears in the sidebar states:
Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. LifeHacker recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time. Don’t live to geek; geek to live.
This isn’t entirely accurate, as the subjects at LifeHacker deviate from this quite often. It might be more accurate if they simply said:
Stuff that interests Pat
In other news, Apple today announced the iPhone, and boy does it look cool. I won’t be buying one anytime soon, as I don’t have my own cell phone (Kate and I share one). I’ll go out on a limb and bet that Ken will be the first person I know to own one.
I’ve switched to the new version of Blogger, which has a couple of features that I’ve been hoping for, the biggest of those being the ability to categorize posts. I’m not super-thrilled with how it’s being implemented for non-blogspot hosted blogs like this one, but something is better than nothing.
Update: Oh and look at that, already something I don’t like. I thought that I’d figure out where I wanted to incorporate labels into my posts on my own, but apparently Blogger decided to put them in for me. How thoughtful of them. . . grr…
I’m really not a shill for Google. Really I’m not. But I find myself using their Web applications more and more often. In fact, I’m using one right now to compose this post. Here’s a quick list of google products that I use on a regular basis:
Email - Gmail blew Hotmail away and I’ve never looked back.
IM/chat - AIM’s most recent update is so wretched that I wish everybody were on Google Talk. I reluctantly use both. Google Talk’s smooth integration into Gmail is also really nice.
Blogger - Owned by Google. Simple and yet feature-filled. Not as filled with features as I’d like, but it has more than enough to keep me coming back.
Picasa - For red-eye removal only. Sad, huh? If it integrated with Flickr I’d be sooooo happy. But Flickr is Yahoo’s baby. So no-go.
Google Calendar offers what promises to be a responsive and intuitive calendar. Being just released to the general public last night, there are still the occasional hiccups. But I noticed small problems with the release of Gmail and the integration of Google Talk into Gmail too, and they were resolved fairly quickly. I won’t talk too much about the interface. I already used both “responsive” and “intuitive”, and I really don’t have anything to say about it beyond that.
The feature that I’m most interested in is the ability to share and display multiple calendars between users. You can see from the picture that I’m currently displaying four of “my” calendars in Google Calendar. In addition to my default calendar, there is Kate’s calendar (which I can see but not update) and two fully shared calendars that both of us can update. I’m hoping that I can continue to use the Internet to supplement my woefully inadequate memory and actually keep my busy (ha!) social life in order.
Google Calendar also allows users to add “public” calendars. Right now I’m using two of these. Knowing all the US holidays is a nice addition. And since I’m a big geek I added a public calendar that automatically shows new episodes of Lost. Say it with me: Big. Geek.
After a burst of posts over a three day span that had me thinking I would be posting more regularly, it’s now been over a week since that last post. I have a very good reason for this. You see, this post is being typed with one hand, as the other is currently being occupied by a sleeping baby.
Okay, so that’s not really the reason, but you would think that my temporary typing handicap would make me somewhat less long-winded. No such luck! The real reason that I’m updating is to talk a bit about newsreaders, which I discovered quite a while ago, but have selfishly kept to myself this whole time.
For me, the term “newsreader” is somewhat inaccurate, as I don’t really use them to read “news” at all. I use them to keep up with my circle of friends who have web sites, and read other blogs of interest to me (like Dooce and the Flickr blog). The benefit behind these things is that you don’t have to click on all of your various bookmarks to see who has updated recently. I know that some of you use Kevin’s list of links for precisely this purpose (that list is darn handy, Kev). A newsreader allows you to check those and any other site you may read that publishes a feed.
What is a “feed”, you ask? In laymans (my) terms: a feed is basically all the content of your site published to a file in a format that can be read by any number of programs. So my feed consists essentially of each title, post, date, time, etc. No links, no navigation, no pretty formatting. Those are all (or should be) secondary to the point of this (and every) site: the content you want to read. Sites that publish a feed allow you read all or a portion of their content (with a link to the full article) in a newsreader.
Until recently, I had been using Google Reader, which I like. I’m going to continue to keep an eye on it as they add features and turn it into a better tool. But after seeing that someone was viewing my site using a tool called Bloglines, I decided to give that a try. I’m a big fan. There’s any number of different newsreaders out there, and they make your surfing life a lot simpler. Give them a try sometime.
Oh, and for those of you who don’t currently publish a site feed, consider doing so. Because I’m lazy. And don’t you just want to encourage that?
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How do you read your blogs? Do you have a list of bookmarks that you check each time you’re in front of your computer? Do you use 
