Friday fun — image editing online, new browsers & more

Flock aims to take searching and browsing on the ‘net social. I dunno, sometimes I’m not interested in being social — I just need to find something quickly.

IE8 is now in beta and sounds like it will be rolled out with new versions of Windows and sounds like they will continue to move down the standards compliancy road.

Firefox 3 is beta, too and has been hyped as nexgen searching (whatever that may mean).

Google suggest is kind of cool but kind of annoying (sometimes I just want to find things and I don’t want to be bothered.) Of course, at some point, it will just give up with trying to help you, too.

Seven online image editing tools in case google’s picassa is just not enough.

Searching Internet Archive by CC Licensing

Because I can never remember where these is located on the webpage (FAQs, actually)
I’m snipping this out for myself with the search links, of course (i.e., just click the link to execute the search in IA). The IA has great stuff for digital collagists, movie makers, & other arty folks.
I used stuff from the Prelinger Collection to make my movie about cataloging and also for my digital collage on communication.

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Can I search by Creative Commons License?

Yes, you can. But it’s a little complicated.

Here’s how to break it down. See the license types at creative commons. When you want to find all of the items that have a certain license, you’ll plug their abbreviation for it into this search query:

/metadata/licenseurl:http*abbreviation/*

So if you’re looking for Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd), you’d put this in the search box: /metadata/licenseurl:http*by-nc-nd/* And you’d get about 33,000 items back.

If you want to use this in combination with other queries, like “I want by-nc-nd items about dogs” you’d do this: /metadata/licenseurl:http*by-nc-nd/* AND dog And you’d get 195 items. The AND tells the search engine all the items returned should have that license AND they should contain the word dog. AND has to be in all caps.

Just to make it easier, here are the basic searches:

Public Domain

Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd)

Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa)

Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc)

Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd)

Attribution Share Alike (by-sa)

Attribution (by)

textpattern, wordpress, & redesign

I’m re-doing one of my domains with textpattern or wordpress. I considered drupal, but to be honest, I want something with a little stronger 3rd party support. There are several features & functionalities missing in drupal which I need. For a site from scratch or one with content generated from within drupal, all is well. For those working with 3rd party apps already, well, it may or may not work (or even be available).

Drupal templating is also notoriously tough to work with, although with the new css zen template, it is easier to give it a look which is not straight out of the box. Drupal sites are generally u-g-l-y, but very functional!

Anyhow, I decided to try something new. I need:

• a blog - one with categories, subcategories, tagging, css templating, rss, upload images + the ability to import a rather large MT export file
• image gallery - preferably one that can import from coppermine or gallery with category support, metadata, rss, crossposting of images (assign images to more than 1 category)
• easy support for 3rd party scripting from flickr, youtube, blogger, other rss, etc.
• a way to generate 5 or 6 mostly static pages
• ability to template and design with css; slightly different templates for various sections
• valid coding would be nice, but I know there are sometimes compromises

On this domain, I have been using expression engine (ee) for years for a blog software. However, I am now ready to dump ee, due to its cost and licensing restrictions. Actually, I started out with greymatter (opensource) then migrated to MT (movable type) and then migrated to ee. So, some of my data has already been through 3 migrations.

I know wordpress can do this. Textpattern seems to be an option too. So, an interesting experiment.

Image gallery: coppermine vs gallery vs 4images vs. ?

I’ve been using coppermine image gallery software (coppermine-gallery.net/) for a hosted gallery for a while, but now I wonder if there is something better out there. My runner-up at the time was gallery, gallery.menalto.com/ but now it seems like there are a lot more choices out there. Before I start spending significant time testing any of these alternatives to coppermine (and yes, I already use flickr; looking for something I can host), I thought I would query a few different lists and the web. So, here goes (and I promise I will post my findings….)

For those of you who use image gallery software, what would you recommend (or absolutely NOT recommend)?

My Wishlist:

+Prefer mysql+php with css templating
+Standalone gallery software not as part of a package (such as a drupal module, although the ability to incorporate in drupal might be an advantage)
+Categories, metadata, batch uploading, ability to link/crosspost single image in multiple categories
+Relatively easy to install (not interested in writing something from scratch, too busy), documentation online, etc.
+RSS feeds for images or categories would be lovely

Ideas? suggestions? any advice?

Yahoo photos is closing

Well, I guess it’s no surprise to me. Flickr is superior…

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We will officially close Yahoo! Photos on Thursday, September 20, 2007, at 9 p.m. PDT. Until then, we are offering you the opportunity to move to another photo sharing service (Flickr, KODAK Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish, or Photobucket). We’re making the transfer real simple, and with a couple clicks we’ll automatically move your photos to Flickr or wherever you want them. You can also download your original-resolution photos back to your computer, or buy an archive CD from our featured partner (for users of the New Yahoo! Photos only). All you need to do is tell us what to do with your photos before we close, after which any photos remaining on Yahoo! Photos will be deleted and no longer accessible.….

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flickr fun

flickr fans,
Here is a fun little tool.
http://dumpr.net/