Flickr pro account — is it worth it?

Just in case you didn’t know, Flickr now allows video upload for “pro” accounts.
At this point, running time is limited to 90 seconds. Hopefully, if they want to be a full media site, they will up the time limit, because 90 seconds, well, that is not very long. To be honest, I’m losing my love of flickr quickly anyhow. “Pro” does not really mean pro - it just means that you pay to have more storage a few richer features (video, more collections, stats, etc.)

I’m thinking maybe I will keep my flickr account but downgrade it to the free account, and then switch over to smugmug or something else, where I can actually sell photos. I’d also love a place to host both my videos and photos, a flickr + youtube place. Yeah, I have my domain to do that, but I’d like to use a social networking site for that stuff, too.

flickr tos (what not to do):
http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne

and what comes with the flickr pro account:
http://www.flickr.com/upgrade/

Downloading a video from youtube

From the google blog:

Until now, you could only get FLV files from your browser’s cache or using one of the many websites that let you download YouTube videos. In fact, to download the MP4 files, you need to use the same URL like for FLV files and append “&fmt=18″:

http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=ID&t=SIGNATURE&fmt=18

ID is the video’s identification value, SIGNATURE is a value that prevents you from downloading the file just by knowing the ID.

More here:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/download-youtube-videos-as-mp4-files.html

Visualization (article)

An interesting article on visualization of ‘the net … Under socialnetworking, LastFM is mentioned a couple of times as is youtube, but fidgt is just way off of the map.

I remember seeing a LC project around 1998 or so (tied to American Memory? funny, I can’t remember!) which visually mapped parts of the collections, so that you could see the relationships between items. I’m not sure what happened to that.

Anyhow, here is the article intro :

The Best Tools for Visualization

Visualization is a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data.

Article in entirety
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_best_tools_for_visualization.php

Library humor - a library tour

new things for ‘08… crystal ball gazing with opensource, social networking, digital identity, and more.

I was poking around trying to find a better video editor, when I stumbled across an opensource project called, Jahshaka. Jahshaka is positioning itself as being a fullbodied product that can compete with such software as finalcut pro (wow!). Not sure about that, because I could never (ever, ever) get the windows installer to work properly. Maybe if I had already switched to ubuntu ALREADY…

Anyhow, I started thinking about all of the new things out there that I probably don’t know about (and some that I do) and somehow I ended up crystal ball gazing (a very dangerous occupation).

It is really amazing how fullbodied some of the opensource products are (openoffice, wordpress, drupal, anyone?)  and perhaps, even more amazing, all of the online tools now available (thinkfree, etc.)

As for my thoughts on the near future on the ‘net: niche social networking, user centered aggregated content (perhaps, even some consolidation?), and digital identity.  Web3.0 and semantic web? Maybe.

I think niche social networking will become even more popular (social networking sites tailored to the needs of visual artists have popped up recently). Considering how easy it is to get lost in the crowd at facebook or myspace, I can see how appealing a specialized site is. Plus, the one size fits all just does not really… well, fit. Visual artists have been advocating/begging/petitioning myspace for years to create a visual arts portal, as myspace has for musicians. Why bother with that, when there are several sites specifically for visual artists?

However, having a specialized site means another profile and spot on the web to maintain. Social networking and content aggregators are surely to be even stronger in ‘08. How else to manage all of the personal content bits floating out on the web? All of the stuff you want to read? Google reader can help, Pageflakes might be even be more useful (a variety of content, not just feeds or clipped websites), but then there is the other stuff: all of the various profiles, with logins and passwords. Social networking aggregators such as spokeo, profilactic and others, can be handy. Digital identity tools are certainly helpful, for logging in OpenID (one login for multiple sites) and in distinguishing what is yours and perhaps, more importantly, what is NOT yours (and is in no way affiliated.) Consolidation is bound to happen and a little is a good thing — unless google ends up owning EVERYTHING….

Among sites being touted as ‘hot’ for ‘08: PowerSearch (a semantic search engine) , Pownce (social networking & more), etsy (an online store similar to ebay focused on handmade and originally produced products… most of the art community that I know, do not seem overly enamored with etsy, thus far), Dopplr.com (a travel & meetup site), twitter (really? I thought we were all tired of twitter by now), children’s social networking such as moshimonsters and webkinz (if you know a tween or preteen, just ask them about webkinz), seesmic (video diaries)…

..and of course, Google opensocial, if it ever makes headway. I also like some of the projects which allow users to make a positive contribution to a body of knowledge in some way, like the steve museum project, where users assign keywords/tag artwork,  identifying artists’ work, and more) and also recaptcha, which uses scanned images from books as captchas (a phrase or word typed in some sort of form, that the user must enter in a text box, which prevent spambots from automatically using the form).

..and then there is always wikipedia, citizendium, the new Google Knol, and those sorts of sites.

Other trends & technologies that have popped up in the onslaught of 2008 predictions posts/articles include:

Location based services (niche marketing of a sort), Mobile Social Networking (I don’t really see so much as a trend, just a means of access whether a pda,  iphone laptop, or psp or whatever… but freely available WIFI at most public buildings, that could definitely continue to change things), lots of chatter about Google taking on the cellphone/mobile industry with Android, Gaming, SecondLife/Virtual Worlds (OpenSL?), internet habits changing as the mobile industry & high demand downloads continue to increase, increase in usage of Linux and other opensource projects (evergreen, the opensource ILS?), and an increase in distrust in google (I love google products, but they are a corporation after all.)

Creating widgets and apps to work with much of this technology is usually (but not always, of course) fairly easy to do and can easily be done by someone with minimal coding experience. I see lots of places where libraries can be, if they want to be. I guess that is the question.

Facebook is so last year http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/24/facebook.socialnetworking

2008 Predictions http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2008_web_predictions.php

2008 Technology predictions               http://latestgeeknews.blogspot.com/2007/12/2008-technology-prediction.html

The Economists Prediction for 2008                            http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10410912

Top 10 Startups Worth Watching in 2008 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2007/12/YE_10_startups

30 Library Technology Predictions http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2007/12/30_library_tech.html

..and of course, a generous sprinkling of my thoughts.

practical & productive networking tools

A friend of mine who is a k-12 art teacher asked about getting started with social networking. She does a little blogging here and there, but she is knee deep in teaching at the moment, which limits her time online. I thought for a bit about how to respond to her question. Her question focuses more on personal professional networking, not so much focused on social networking with her students (some of her students would most likely be too young to network with her online and she already interacts with her students in person).

There are quite a few teachers, educators, librarians, and other professionals who are using facebook, linkedin or namyz to create professional web presences and networks. Some of them use those presences to connect to their users; others are more focused on a professional level. However, in the long run, how useful are those sites on a day to day basis in terms of networkng professionally and in getting real work done? Sure, they may (or may not) provide opportunities for outreach, opportunities for freelance or consulting work, collaboration opportunities, but are those sorts of sites (linkedin, facebook, etc.) really the best bang for the buck in terms of professional networking?

What web tools provide a means to increased productivity, better resources, and networking opportunities? Tools which are very easy to use and practical?

I came up with my own short list of tools, which are easy to use, engaging, and provide a means to streamline work in some way, while providing opportunities for discovery and networking.
These are all tried and true, very popular applications.

Google docs / Google pages
Google docs is a web based wordprocessor, spreadsheet product, and more recently presentation maker. Think, Word, Excel, Powerpoint — all in one easy to use place on the web. Documents can be shared by invitation (makes collaboration a breeze), emailed in the more popular formats, and also published out the web (as very simple web pages, but still!) . Once they have been published out on the web, there’s really not much of a limit in terms of what can be done with them. Googlepages is a free web page creator from guess who. Yes, Google now has their own free web editor/website design service. Not a lot of flexibility but a very easy way to get a website up QUICKLY. All that is required to use these services, is a google/gmail account, for which anyone can sign up. Certainly a useful tool in terms of project groups, working on documents from multiple computers, or creating web pages. Published pages via these Google services each have a unique URL/address, so they can be linked to, shared, blogged, etc. I use google docs a lot when I need to collaborate.

del.icio.us (bookmarking)
del.icio.us (or any other free centralized storage spot for internet bookmarks) makes organizing, and sharing bookmarks easy, as well as finding resources that are used by other professionals. For those who haven’t used del.icio.us, it is amazingly easy. Create a user login, install a button for your IE or firefox toolbar (very very easy to do). Once the button is installed, when a website is found that you would like to keep, you click on the del.icio.us button, and a menu pops up. You give it the title YOU want it to have, and then you can include a description, tags (keywords) and click save. Voila!

Anywhere in the world that you might be, if you have internet access, you probably have access to your del.icio.us page. Finding like-minded people (teachers, artists, whoever) and linking to their network, is probably one of the most valuable tools of del.icio.us. A great way to discover new and interesting resources! Anything online can be probably be linked to in del.icio.us. Google docs pages can be linked. Image files can be linked. Video files can be linked.. A del.icio.us page could easily be a bibliography, a lesson plan, a pathfinder, or even a class syllabus. I use del.icio.us to organize all of my presentation resources — everything! The powerpoint presentation, the links that are cited, and other supplemental info.

Youtube (video)
Youtube, google video (any other free video/videocasting site), etc. could be very useful in the educational and training realm. Youtube already hosts quite a bit in the way of tutorials, and it would be neat to include those in lesson plans. Youtube videos can be embedded into websites, presentations, and other documents. Another idea would be to take lesson plans and use video to either illustrate the lesson plan or supplement the plan (and then share it on youtube!). Students can also contribute content in either creating video responses, writing comments/reviews about videos, evaluating content, or even creating videos as the product of an assignment.