Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Sat, Jan 07, 2006 at 12:43:26AM -0500, matusiak wrote:
> So, at the intersection of posts from Michael Czeiszperger and Ruth  
> Suehle, why exactly are folks so drawn to flickr.com?

I don't know why folks in general are drawn to flickr, as opposed to
.mac hosting or kodak or whatever; I was drawn to flickr because it was
this site where all my friends were posting their pictures, and if you
don't have an account you can't get added to their contact lists and
therefore can't see stuff they've marked as "friends and family" only.

My co-author Eric works for flickr (actually, for Ludicorp, which was
the company that Stewart started to create a massively multiplayer game
called Game Neverending - which is why you'll occasionally see the
".gne" extension on URLs at flickr) and so I'd heard about it for quite
a while before I actually posted any pictures. But it's really easy now;
there are plugins for iPhoto and uploader tools; the ability to order by
sets and set access controls and add pictures to pools, like petshooter
and the Raleigh pool - which brings me to the most important aspect.

 feed://www.flickr.com/groups/_raleigh_/pool/feed/?format=rss_200

Not that I benefit from it much, as I don't post often, but if one is a
photographer looking for feedback, or to get noticed, there are
currently few better ways to do it than posting photos to flickr,
particularly in a popular pool. I'm not going to say that the feedback
is better than any you'd get from pros or educators, but at least it's
feedback.

My friends Tim and Heather have really taken advantage of flickr -

 Tim: http://flickr.com/photos/bigempty/
 Heather: http://flickr.com/photos/heather/

Heather and her husband Derek (who you may remember from the fray -
fray.com) started a magazine called "JPG" and use flickr as a pool:

 Derek: http://flickr.com/photos/fraying/
 JPG pool: http://flickr.com/groups/jpgmag/

My friend Srini just uses it to post scans of his notebooks:

 http://flickr.com/photos/53423572@N00/7024211/in/photostream/

Whereas Greg uses it to post endless reams of pictures of his kids:

 http://flickr.com/photos/gknauss/80827466/in/photostream/

Same with Michael:

 http://flickr.com/photos/msippey/70685875/

(You may not be able to see those, as they seem to be marked "friends
and family only").

Laura, Killer of Trees, uses it to post pictures of her cats, and the
occasional cauliflower:

 http://flickr.com/photos/lemay/66858676/in/photostream/

Whereas Rafe uses it to post pics of wine he's tried:

 http://flickr.com/photos/rafe/67286229/

And Courtney uses it to provide running commentary and promotion for
her furniture:

 http://flickr.com/photos/courtneys/71526111/in/photostream/

Jason uses it to post pics of things he loves:

 http://flickr.com/photos/jasoncalacanis/76029683/in/set-1595470/

I'm always surprised by what people use it for; here Glenn is posting
scans of old family photos:

 http://flickr.com/photos/glennf/80997779/

Joe posted pics of his eyes:

 http://flickr.com/photos/artlung/30636102/in/set-687549/

and a whole bunch of scans of old artwork:

 http://flickr.com/photos/artlung/sets/576239/

It's amazing to me to see the community grow up around flickr; not just
the "people I know" but the random people who I wouldn't have expected -
especially non English speakers. Here's a snippet from a post I sent
around to our internal mailing list some months ago:

Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 11:12:15 -0400
From: Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>
To: <redacted>
Subject: I wonder if the Flickr guys had any idea...

...how their technology would evolve as it hit non-US cultures.

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/sabba7i/34795888/in/pool-80311671@N00/

This is just one example of many I've seen; from a pool for people who
like to take closeup pictures of eyes. Note the names of the posters;
I think some of them anyway are Arabs living in Toronto - some use Arabic
for their Flickr names, others use high-bit ASCII to embellish theirs.
In others, you see something similar to the l337 sp34k used by script
kiddies, only using high-bit ascii/unicode (Russian "ya", backwards R,
used as an "R"; etc).

They write in a mixture of Arabic and English, often in the same
sentence. They use the emoticons more commonly associated with AOL
than with the Internet/Usenet (so, instead of :-) they might use ^_^,
but also use =) just as readily). They seem to be flirting mercilessly.

"Mashalla(h)" means "praise the lord" or "may God preserve you" or "what
Allah wishes", but as an exclamation of delight; sort of like "amen"
(which means "so be it" in Hebrew). I think the reference here is to a
poem that starts "through your eyes shines a light, mashallah,
mashallah".

Another example:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peachy/32627604/in/pool-eyeshots/

Anyway, there are plenty more. I thought it was interesting enough to
point out; especially interesting to me was that flickr seems to be
a very culture-neutral toolset even as its goofy friendliness is very
much a product of the US/Canada origins of its founders.

Japanese: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yumemigati/37357548/

Russian: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hn4e7o/15125537/
This is weird because HN4E7O is probably a transliterated name; "nidelo"?
Odd mix of both Russian/Cyrillic and English/Roman languages and scripts.

Brazilian Portuguese:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucia_simoes/16468304/in/pool-riodejaneiro/

More fun stuff:
"Visit the world: the travel guide pool"
http://www.flickr.com/groups/world/pool/

<snip>

Anyway.

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