This time I have clicked "Blog this" within Flickr and connected my Blogger account with my Flickr account. Let's see if it works!
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Thing 8 - Picnik
I have played around a bit with editing my photo on Picnik. Possibly I should have uploaded some more colourful pictures to give me more editing options! I have cropped, sharpened, de-red-eyed and sepia-fied my snowman!
To include the image in this post, I had to click on "Share" in Flickr, then "Grab the link", then copy the URL for the photo. I then clicked on "Add image" in this post and pasted the URL into the box under "Add an image from the web" Hopefully this will have worked - I can't actually see the image in the post as I'm typing this!
Hmm, the image is also not in the preview of this post.. . I will publish and see what happens.
To include the image in this post, I had to click on "Share" in Flickr, then "Grab the link", then copy the URL for the photo. I then clicked on "Add image" in this post and pasted the URL into the box under "Add an image from the web" Hopefully this will have worked - I can't actually see the image in the post as I'm typing this!
Hmm, the image is also not in the preview of this post.. . I will publish and see what happens.
@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
I have changed my google login to reflect the new email address! Now I just need to make sure I can remember how to spell Bodlein - Bodlaien - Bodleain....
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Flickr
I have signed up for a flickr account. Although I use Yahoo for my emails, I've never used flickr before. I've only uploaded one photo so far - one that happened to be stored on the computer at work! I might have to bring some more in another day.
I notice quite a lot of people have had the same idea as me and have put their snowy Oxford pictures up!
I notice quite a lot of people have had the same idea as me and have put their snowy Oxford pictures up!
Using iGoogle
I have found some useful gadgets for my iGoogle start page! I am writing this post from the Blogger gadget on my iGoogle page - I also have a Google reader gadget. I'm going to try to get as much of the 23 things related stuff on this page as I can.
...and following some more blogs!
Jane has helpfully pointed out a very easy way to subscribe to feeds - I can just use the URL of the site I want to subscribe to. I was looking for the RSS feeds, but not all sites have them. So, I am following a couple of blogs that I like in my Google Reader: Shapely Prose and The F-Word. This does raise some of the issues I mentioned in my last post about blurring the personal and the professional - these are blogs I normally read in my spare time so I shall have to be disciplined about not reading them at work!
Following blogs
I've just realised that clicking "Follow" on other people's blogs adds them to my Google Reader subscriptions - for some reason I thought that would be something different.
I think I was a bit confused about what "following" meant in the Google world because I read an article recently complaining that Google have set up something called Buzz - which automatically creates a public profile including information about who you "follow" - which is determined by who you most often exchange emails with. The main issue is that it makes private information public without requiring the person to actually do anything - you can opt-out if you choose, but if you do nothing the default is that the information about who you email is made public in the form of a list of people you are "following". They have since changed this: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/189329/google_apologizes_for_buzz_privacy_issues.html
This does raise interesting issues about social networking generally, and the relationships between the different kinds of tools we use. There's been a blurring of personal and professional, public and private information, and a lot of it seems to happen because the software is available rather than because people actually want it. In particular having all of these tools owned by one company - so that Google has access to a whole range of information and can choose to combine different data sets - blurs everything even more, so that people have much less control over their information. Google's main intention seems to be to make everything as automated as possible - they are very good at predicting what you are looking for and finding it for you, so that you don't have to do much work. But removing the work also often involves removing the control and the choices, as with this "Buzz" feature which saves people the effort of choosing which information they want to be made publically available.
I think I was a bit confused about what "following" meant in the Google world because I read an article recently complaining that Google have set up something called Buzz - which automatically creates a public profile including information about who you "follow" - which is determined by who you most often exchange emails with. The main issue is that it makes private information public without requiring the person to actually do anything - you can opt-out if you choose, but if you do nothing the default is that the information about who you email is made public in the form of a list of people you are "following". They have since changed this: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/189329/google_apologizes_for_buzz_privacy_issues.html
This does raise interesting issues about social networking generally, and the relationships between the different kinds of tools we use. There's been a blurring of personal and professional, public and private information, and a lot of it seems to happen because the software is available rather than because people actually want it. In particular having all of these tools owned by one company - so that Google has access to a whole range of information and can choose to combine different data sets - blurs everything even more, so that people have much less control over their information. Google's main intention seems to be to make everything as automated as possible - they are very good at predicting what you are looking for and finding it for you, so that you don't have to do much work. But removing the work also often involves removing the control and the choices, as with this "Buzz" feature which saves people the effort of choosing which information they want to be made publically available.
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