This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one of the transitions for the new year. I've started it This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004
5:38 PM Sunday, October 22, 2006
[The "old days," which means a year ago.]
On January 26, 2005, I joined Flickr and posted a photo, a picture of a car passing under a sculptural-looking Northern California freeway ramp. Since then I've posted 607 more photos, some of them photocollages from Jonathan's Coffeeblog. In the brief time from then to now (21 months) Flickr has evolved and charged. First, it was a place to show photos to old friends and new ones (Flickr buddies), using some of the cool new technology that Flickr offered:
tags
, tag clouds, view counts, and some interesting, mysterious way of ranking photos which Flickr calls Interesting. I met lots of Flickr buddies, exchange comments with them, got invited to groups and invited them to mine, and recruited new Coffeeblog readers. Flickr was a great place to show scans of my monoprint art as well as my Photoshop stuff.
Then Flickr got bought out by Yahoo, and it slowly changed. Some of the more edgy stuff got pushed to the side or over the edge. Lately I've been asked to become a Flickr buddy by people who have literally thousands of buddies: are they trying to break a record? Someone even invited me to a group whose goal was to invite everybody. Yes, Flickr is still fun, but I find I'm not posting or commenting as much as I did in the "old days," which means a year ago.
Meanwhile, at a Laughing Squid party, I met some folks who were creating a new photography site, called Zooomr. (That's three O's, not two.) Zooomr appears to want to be the next big thing in photography sites, and it does indeed have some cool features, one of which is portals. Whereas Flickr lets you label parts of your photos with little notes, Zooomr gives you special notes that link to another of your pictures. Check out the portal in this note. And although Flickr allows you to
geotag
, Zooomr makes it a centerpiece of their features. With on click on a photo you can see a map where you took the photo and other photos taken nearby. Very cool, unless you're in the FBI's Witness Protection Program. Still, many people, including most of my relatives (even those who've joined Flickr), prefer other photo websites, with many fewer features, and a hard sell for their prints (Flickr sells prints too), such as York, Shutterfly and Kodak. Go figure.
More Links: Shutterfly Zooomr Flickr
More Images: Flickr's Blog
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