Flickr Fun and Technology (parts 5-7)

I'm glad we get to write about our experiences with Flickr. I've had a Flickr account for a few years, but don't use it often at all since I've discovered how much more seamlessly Blogger works with Picasa (same company, it should).

Originally, I had used Flickr to display some of my chocolates when I was promoting my wee chocolate business. My favorite Flickr collection is the one of how I make my chocolate turtles with the groovy shells (shown below).



That photo was invited to join the Flickr Animal-Shaped Food group. It was kind of the group to ask, so I accepted and added my turtles on the move to that group.

After adding a few more tags to my chocolate photos, I tried out some of the photo manipulators out on the Web that pull from Flickr (Mappr, Flickr Color Pickr, and Montagr). I'm always awed by the programming skills of people. I'm also grateful to those who provide their wares free of charge for the amusement of the general public. Out of the three, I enjoyed Color Pickr the most because it selected some beautiful and vibrant photos.

At the Learning 2.0 blog, I learned about the Trading Card Maker. There I made a trading card from a photo I have posted in a private area in Picasa. This is the outcome:



The one thing I don't like about the technology is that it took me five tries to embed that image into my blogger entry. It also took me a while to figure out how to get to the actual jpg link from within Flickr. Guess I'm just so used to Picasa now that I've forgotten how to work from Flickr.

As far as technology as a concept goes, I'm all for it. Sitting here at my home office, I'm using an ergo keyboard with a touch pad instead of a mouse; a laptop on a pedestal instead of a desktop; a speaker phone with so many features I can't even name them all; my cel phone in case my husband has to reach me (the cel phone isn't actually a cel at all it's a Palm Centro -- a PDA); a brand spankin' new color printer to my left and a b/w laser printer to my right; an external hard drive next to the laser printer for backing up my data; and a handful of cables to connect the Centro to my computer and my camera to my computer to upload/download data and photos.

We also have Ethernet cables running throughout the house so John and I can jump online anywhere (even the deck) without being bumped off the wireless network. That was particularly helpful when I had foot surgery last year and had to work from my bed.

While sometimes technology is especially frustrating (like the ecompanion going down all day on Monday, and since then they've been making incremental changes to it that have been crashing it periodically), I'm still a big fan.