Recent posts in my Flickr Category
May 5, 2010
The digital general election - online design slideshow and video
During the course of the election campaign I've been making a gallery of screenshots of online news coverage, with a particular focus on the design of interactive tools and maps. I've put them together into a Flickr set, and made a short video compilation of them.
May 19, 2009
The Apprentice and the unintended consequences of social media
*** WARNING: Contains mild spoilers for last week's 'The Apprentice: Season 5 Episode 8' *** On Wednesday night I was pointed to Scoopler, a real-time search engine, by Phil Bradley's blog. Since The Apprentice had just finished on BBC One, I thought that would make a good test case. Sure enough, a search for The Apprentice turned up lots of tweets. It was an episode where the task was to re-brand the seaside resort of Margate, and one of the...
April 13, 2009
Web search at the BBC: Extras
Part of the reason for publishing my recent history of the BBC's web search service was because I had unzipped a load of old files on my PC, and discovered the original usability reports. As well as the articles on currybetdotnet, I've also made some material available elsewhere on the net. Presentation On SlideShare you can find a couple of examples of the typical sort of search related presentation I used to give within the BBC in 2003. "BBCi...
December 6, 2008
My kri-kri photo joins the ARKive
I was recently approached by the ARKive project for permission to use one of my Flickr photos. ARKive is run by British based charity Wildscreen, and the aim is to preserve a multi-media record of the planet's endangered species before they become extinct. Low resolution copies are available for free on the ARKive website, and high resolution copies are kept securely offline to preserve the collection. "Like the wildlife they depict, the images of these rare species are themselves endangered,...
August 21, 2008
Celebrate the Olympic handover to London on Flickr and YouTube
In just a few days time, at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, China will hand over the Olympic flag to London. I'm quite relieved it is just the flag actually, because I had this terrible mental image of them handing over the Olympic Flame, and then Boris having to keep it burning in his draw in City Hall for the next four years. He'll be receiving the flag though, from the Mayor of Beijing, in a handover ceremony...
August 7, 2008
Introducing Olympic Fansivu
As well as Olympic Chipwrapper, I've made an Olympic version of Fansivu - my one page aggregator of user-generated content around a sporting event theme. Olympic Fansivu picks up the latest chatter from Twitter about the Olympics using Tweetscan, and adds links to the latest blog posts appearing on Technorati about the Beijing Games. Photos are automatically pulled in from Flickr, and I've tried something different this time from my Euro2008 Fansivu. Rather than blending a couple of tags...
July 31, 2008
Interactivity and Flickr at the British Library 'Ramayana' exhibtion
Whilst we were in the UK recently I took the opportunity to go to the British Library exhibition on the Ramayana. I've seen some great exhibitions there over recent years, including 'Front Page' and 'Sacred', but I have to say I found this one a little disappointing. It probably wasn't helped by the fact that when I visited it, it was absolutely swarming with school-kids, and I could barely get to see even a fraction of the main displays. There...
May 13, 2008
Daily Mail 'fat dog' article takes the copyright biscuit
Now, remind me again, what is it that newspaper publishers are always saying about respecting copyright? I only ask because of this article on the Daily Mail site today about fat pets. As I scrolled down I recognised one of the dogs pictured. He is a local chum of ours from Chania harbour. In fact, I recognised the photograph - posted to Flickr by polietileno. The unnamed Daily Mail journalist who put the article together appears to have simply searched...
March 30, 2008
When is a stolen photo not a stolen photo?
Earlier this week I was just about to post an item to del.icio.us, when I came to a shuddering and furious halt. No, not because the post I was about to bookmark was giving away the python code to break the captcha of my favourite social bookmarking service, but because of the header image on the Blue Hat SEO blog. It was one of my pictures from my travels around Europe a couple of years back! Now, I was sure...
February 19, 2008
My Flickr photos from Torcello, Salzburg and Frangokastello on the web
Every now and again I like to write a little run-down of sites that have been using my Creative Commons Licensed photographs from Flickr. With all the moving around Europe I've done since I left the UK in 2005, it isn't much of a surprise to see that the three photographs I've recently been asked about are from three different countries. The About Archaeology site has used one of my shots of the exterior of the Santa Maria Assunta in...
February 6, 2008
Flickr users protest about Yahoo! takeover. Again.
The interweb's tubes have been buzzing that Flickr users are already in open revolt over Microsoft's offer to take-over Yahoo!, Flickr's parent company. Image by sebestyenistvan "A splinter faction of Flickr photo-sharing community members is threatening a symbolic 'mass suicide'" - Wired "I'm not cross and I'm not bitter - I'm just a little sad because I have a belief that things can be good/great without taking the obvious route". - grange85 "My fear is that over time they won't...
November 27, 2007
My photographs of Sedlic Ossuary gaining a wider audience
I was contacted a few weeks ago by some people asking if they could use my photographs of Sedlic Ossuary in a 'Sacred Destinations' travel guide for the area, and of course, I was delighted to agree. Sedlic is located in Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic, and was somewhere we visited quite early on in our tour of what is now known as "formerly Eastern Europe". The "attraction" of the church is that it is decorated with bones. "This...
October 22, 2007
I think I've Schmapped myself
I noticed this in the cartoon strip of one of the London free-sheets at the tail-end of last week, and wondered whether Schmap had actually paid for some product placement, or whether the whole thing was instead a bit of a co-incidence. I however, have not been paying for the product placement of my Creative Commons licenced Flickr photographs within their Schmap guides, which now seem to have grown to cover most of the major cities in Europe I've visited....
June 8, 2007
I love my Flickr photos being on We Love Crete
I love my new home in Crete. Anastasi & Apostoli love it too - so much so that these members of the Greek diaspora have made a site about it - "We Love Crete". They also obviously love my photography of Chania on Flickr. They've used two of my Creative Commons licensed pictures on the site on their page about Chania....
May 29, 2007
Testing the dinosaur of image copyright law
Scientists have discovered that apparently predatory dinosaurs could swim, in a story covered by Wired's Science blog last week. They used one of my Flickr photographs to illustrate it. The photograph was on Flickr with a Creative Commons License, and Wired have credited me, which is fine. Well, probably fine, unless you are the Natural History Museum. I suspect that they will feel that they ought to be getting the credit and the link-love for their animatronic dinosaur, rather then...
May 21, 2007
Last Rounds project featuring some of my photographs of Tube stations
I'm always pleased to see my public Flickr photos being re-used to help new websites, and a little while ago I was approached about using some of my pictures on the "Last Rounds" site. It is a website that concerns itself with public transport and the pursuit of beer. Seeing as that wraps up three of my chief areas of interest, how could I refuse? The Last Rounds project began in response to the new later licensing laws in England....
April 19, 2007
One of my Flickr photographs inspires a stinky Ficlet
I only discovered Ficlets via a comment on one of my Flickr photos saying it had been the inspiration for a short story. Robotech_Master wrote Territorial based on this picture of mine from Salzburg Zoo Ficlets allows you to post a prequel or sequel to somebody else's short story, so maybe I should write something adjoining the story based around the fact that the lion in Salzburg Zoo actually rejoices in the name "Stinki"?...
March 23, 2007
Flickr imprvment
I'm well behind the curve on this, as I see it was announced at the end of February, but yesterday I noticed a significant user interaction improvement on Flickr around adding photos to groups you don't currently belong to. The old way was a bit cumbersome. Someone would spot your photo of the lesser-spotted outer Mongolian tortoise-shell widget, and you'd get a Flickrmail saying: Hi, out of your 6,512 photographs, I notice that once, in the corner of one,...
March 9, 2007
My plastic bag photo is re-cycled by New Consumer
It is always nice to see some of my creative commons licensed photographs on Flickr getting recycled, and last week New Consumer were using one of my pictures of a plastic bag. It is a little ironic actually, as they are using it to illustrate Adam Vaughan's article about "High street pledges to slash plastic bags by 2008" The photo of the Tesco's bag is part of my Flickr series "Things Our Neighbours Have Thrown Into Our Garden". Thanks...
January 18, 2007
My photos in The World & I Online gallery
I was recently contacted by the World & I Online, asking whether they could feature some of the pictures from my recent travels in their world gallery. This is a subscription based resource for teachers providing images from around the globe for use within classes. They approached me although the Creative Commons license terms I applied to the photographs do not quite match their intended use, and in this case I was happy to waive the Sharealike requirement. I am...
January 5, 2007
"Church and blur" on Druid Street
I noticed that on Wednesday one of my Flickr photos - Church and blur - was reproduced on the rather enigmatic Druid Street site. It is a picture, I believe, of a French church taken when I was on a school trip there back in the 1980s. It was one of a whole wallet of photographs that my parents recently found, which were taken by me between the ages of 9 and 13. Funnily enough, having posted them on Flickr,...
December 21, 2006
Walthamstow Dog stadium on The Londonist, Visit London, and my Flickr stream
Last week the excellent Londonist site used another one of my Flickr pictures to illustrate a story about encouraging Visit London to make more of the attractions available to tourists outside of Zone 1. Apparently Walthamstow Stadium is one of only six attractions outside of Central London listed by Visit London....
November 20, 2006
More of my photographs included in Schmap's European travel guides
I mentioned the downloadable travel guides Schmap earlier this year, when they included some of my Flickr photographs of Zaragoza in their information on the city. Well, they've just issued a whole series of second editions of some of their European guides, and it looks like it is going to be pretty hard to use them without bumping into some of the Creative Commons licensed photographs of my recent travels through Europe. I don't think that a couple of the...
September 12, 2006
Emerging geolocation etiquette on Flickr
Like most geeky users of Flickr I started hyper-ventilating with excitement when they introduced their new geo-mapping feature, then was crushingly disappointed by the quality of the maps, then gradually settled down into thinking that the service is pretty OK. What interests me now is the kind of geotagging etiquette that will develop in the service, and how people make their decisions about where exactly to place their photos. Some things have been easy for me. The map coverage of...
September 5, 2006
"Schmap: Zaragoza Photo Inclusion"
I've been playing around with a downloadable travel guide application called Schmap over the last few days. Essentially it brings together a detailed city map, suggested walks, pictures of a city and reviews of the local night life and eateries, into one download which can be accessed offline. A lot of the content is sourced either from Wcities and Flickr. Using people's Creative Commons licensed photographs from Flickr gives the Schmap team access to free content, and also provides them...
May 30, 2006
Ineffective Flickr sex spam?
One of the risks with social networking sites is that they can be susceptible to both human and robot generated spam. I was on the receiving end of what I think was a rather odd attempt at sex spam on the Flickr site the other day. Last week I was added as a contact by someone I didn't know, who already had 109 other contacts. Almost exclusively all of them were Flickr members who specialised in erotic or softcore content...
October 14, 2005
John Peel Day on Flickr and the BBC Homepage
Yesterday was "John Peel Day", which shared top-billing on the BBC homepage with Margaret Thatcher's birthday on the homepage. The Radio One site has got heaps of content from around the day - and you can listen again to the John Peel show. One thing that really caught my eye was the prominence given to gathering together photos from events all around the country. If you've got photos of your the gigs you've been putting on, we'd love to see...
September 1, 2005
Yahoo! Using Flickr To Supplement News Coverage
Via the ever vigilant Zawodny Linklog I see that Yahoo! were using the Flickr tag for hurricanekatrina as a related link in their news coverage. In a great example of a reciprocal feedback loop, the screengrab of Yahoo! doing this was then posted to Flickr by natekoechley. In his description he wrote: As Flickr fans know, Flickr can be a fantastic source of current events coverage. User-generated content is powerful and relevant. This is the first time I remember seeing...
August 22, 2005
Things Our Neighbours Have Thrown Into Our Garden
Our house used to be pretty quiet when we first moved in. On one side was a young family with a polite chatty 3 year-old, and on the other side an old lady who only bothered us if she thought our drain was overflowing into her garden, or if she we thought we were cooking "that indian food" because she used oxygen and "that indian food" affected her breathing. When she died a year-and-a-half ago she was replaced by our...
July 11, 2005
Sarah Boxer Writes About The 7/7 Community On Flickr in The New York Times
There was a very odd article published by the New York Times in the Arts section over the weekend, where Sarah Boxer reviewed the London Bomb Blasts Flickr group - On the Web, Photos Strain to Connect 7/7 and 9/11*. It was bought to my attention as it name-checked my Flickr-self as one of the top posters. Her argument is that the group have collectively tried to put something together to echo the iconic images of New York on September...
Graffiti on Novy Most -> Wormfood
The ability of Flickr to keep people in touch with events around the world really came into its own last week during the terrorist attacks on London - several news outlets linked to, or borrowed pictures from, the London Bomb Blasts Pool. It isn't just big events though, it is also the small details. I noticed last night, via Meneldur leaving a comment on one of my photos, that Nový Most in Bratisalava has been repainted a dull uniform steel...
July 2, 2005
Live8 On Flickr
Just another reason why Flickr is awesome. Already there are over 1,000 photographs that have been uploaded with the tag Live8....
April 16, 2005
Orlowski on Flickr
"Is there a chiropractor in the house?" was the title of a post on the Flkr blog, which somehow survived the downtime. (While Flickr users couldn't get at their photographs, Flckr staff could keep blogging!) Yeah, right, because in an article slagging Flickr off for not having enough redundancy in the system, you think having a redundant separately hosted channel of communication to your users that can be updated easily via a simple content management system is a bad idea,...
March 22, 2005
Hot tags and Flickr spam
Flickr have added a new "Hot Tags" section to the main tags page, which displays tags that have been used frequently over both the last 24 hours and the last week. Let's hope it doesn't make it even more attractive to use Flickr as a new haven for spam....
March 4, 2005
Thanks Nick!
Who would have thought a photo-sharing application could be such fun... It all started back on the 22nd of February, when we got a late night sprinkling of snow in Walthamstow. Since my wife lived most of her life in South Africa snow is still something of an exciting and enchanted novelty for her. I'm surprised at this as I would have thought that it only took two winters to realise that in Southern England snow is always an unwelcome...
March 3, 2005
Tag fun at Flickr
I was wryly amused the other day when looking at all the public photos on Flickr tagged with my name. The related tags? Mark, John, beach, family, king, Christmas, portrait. And beer! But how did they know?...