Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

What Advice Would You Give to Retina Australia To Avoid Jumping into Social Media err blindly?

Photo by Feast of Fools

It's been over a month since my trip to Australia where I presented and facilitated workshops at the ConnectingUp Conference.  While the tim-tams are long gone, the fantastic people I connected with are still with me - if only virtually.

Yesterday, I got an email from Anne Housego from Retina Australia give me an update and asked for some advice.  Retina Australia is an organization which supports people with blinding retinal eye diseases, as well as raising funds for research into this debilitating condition.  Anne notes in her email,

"Research is at the stage of human trials in stem cell treatment.  At this point funding becomes urgent. Our goals are now specific and exciting. I am secretary of Retina Australia (Qld) and on the board of directors of Retina Australia. Personally, my goal is to see myself out of a job in 5 years. How do I get others involved?"

She lists some strengths and opportunities:

• There are many thousands of people affected by this condition which is the leading cause of youth blindness
• There is a huge social cost of so many people becoming dependent on others for support
• There is definite and measurable progress being made
• Clearly defined goals in what we need to achieve in terms of fund raising
• National Congress coming up in Oct 2009 will focus attention on the current position of worldwide research
• We have recently set up a website www.retinaqld.org.au
• We have a skilled IT person to maintain and update the website
• We have a concept for a national photography competition in conjunction with the Congress – “if you knew you were loosing your sight, what is the  thing you would like to keep as a visual memory – child, partner, scene, place, event”

She asked for a starting point,  one or two things that she could start on to begin to bring their cause to the attention of more people.  She asks, "How can I get people to feel what it’s like to be touched by blindness, or to be a parent and watch your child loose their sight."

I pointed her to the WeAreMedia Module 1: Should Your Nonprofit Embrace Social Media or Not? and develop an initial plan - perhaps using the soon to be finished template in Module 2.  I, of course, loved the flickr competition idea and suggested that she consider a modest outcome and learning experiment.   Here's a few steps.

1.  Read the TechSoup article "How Nonprofits Can Get the Most Out of Flickr"

2.  Come up with a list of questions of what she needs to know or learn about to design a contest that will be successful.

3.  Read up on Flickr and look at different examples by nonprofits.

4.  Ask other folks from nonprofits who have used Flickr to run contests.  Clear guidelines are important - see this interview I did with folks from Nature Conservancy about their contest. 

• Creative Commons Swag Contest
• and I won!
• Freedom from Oil Flickr Photo Contest
• March of Dimes Contest (features community voting)
• Nature Conservancy Photo Contest
• Matching Grant for Each Photo Uploaded

 

5.  I'm hoping these flickr mavens will leave their best advice in the comments ..

Kath from the Learning Community has an interesting flickr project

Steve Bridger, Flickr for Good Evangelist

Michaela Hackner

What advice would you offer Retina Australia?

Is Video On Flickr A Good Thing? Not in my backyard or way cool reaction?

Photo by Leo 980

Flickr has announced a new feature - that you can post 90 second videos on flickr.  You can check out some of the videos in this group.  The FAQ is here.  What really fascinating is that there is a "No Video on Flickr Group" that has over 12, 000 members.

So, I wondered about the "Not in my Backyard Reaction!"

Here's my backyard shot with my camera phone and posted by email.   Having video on Flickr feels strange.  I'm not sure about.  The embed is sort of cool - it will automatically resize the video for you.

The good folks at See3 have a round up of coverage

 

What do you think?  Is video on Flickr a good thing?

Reflections from the TechSoup Flickr Online Event

A few days ago TechSoup and Flickr sponsored an online event discussion about the use of Flickr and photography in non profit organizations.  Michaela Hackner participated and had some great insights.  She blogged her reflections into one excellent post!  Enjoy!

More from the TechSoup blog.

A Flickr Best Practice from TechSoup Event

Today, I'm co-hosting an online event on TechSoup about Flickr with Heather Camp, Flickr Community Manager.   I love online discussions with a mix of experience.  I just learned something really important from colleague Michaela Hackner about uploading.

I think there is a benefit of uploading only 4-6 photos at a time because your followers only see the last 4 images you've posted anyway. Sharing a few photos at a time helps you be more thoughtful about captions, tags, and categorizing, and gives people a chance to catch up on your stream. When I was at the height of my Flickr obsession (and living overseas when I had a lot more time), I limited myself to posting no more than 4 images at a time for this reason.

This event will run today.  Ask questions, share your learning, and learn from others.  Click here participate.

TechSoup Online Event on 3/25: Images of Social Change: Online Photo Sharing for your Nonprofit

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

 

On Tuesday, March 25, 2008, I will be co-moderating with Flickr's Community Manager, Heather Champ, an online event over at TechSoup called Images of Social Change. (The Flickr photo sharing service has teamed up with TechSoup Stock to offer premium "pro" accounts to individuals within eligible organizations.  You can get more details about the program here.)

We will explore how to make the most of Flickr and other photo-sharing and editing webtools for your organization. The event will cover the benefits of creatively displaying your nonprofit organizations' work in images. We will share tips for organizing and managing your photos. In addition, we'll discuss case studies of innovative and creative ways nonprofits are using Flickr to further their missions.

Come take part in TechSoup's free, one-day online event, Tuesday Mar. 25, in the TechSoup Emerging Technologies Forum as we discuss issues such as:

• Benefits of using online photo sharing sites to build community and awareness for your cause
• Copyright and privacy guidelines for sharing photos
• How to easily upload and manage your photos
• Tips and tricks for most effectively taking photos and displaying images
• Favorite Flickr add-on applications to enhance your use of Flickr

Join us Tues. Mar. 25 in the TechSoup Emerging Technologies Forum   as we explore these topics and more.  Be sure to check out this recent introductory article I wrote over at TechSoup.

The Cute Dog Theory: Slides From Funders Network Briefing

| View | Upload your own

Last night when I was putting this talk togther, I got a last minute bolt of inspiration from Ethan Zuckerman's talk at E-Tech called the cute cat theory.  It's call the cute dog theory.   Notes and links on the wiki. 

Seeking Examples of Women's Reproductive Health Advocacy, Organizing, or Education Campaigns Using Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr

I'm prepping a talk for Funders Network Briefing and seeking any examples of Women's Reproductive Health advocacy, organizing, or education using Social Networks (Facebook), Flickr, and Twitter.

I got a few leads, but would like some more.   Even if you're using those tools as part of a larger campaign, I'd like to see those too.

So, drop a line in the comments.

How Nonprofits Can Get the Most Out of Flickr

Flickr Fan Art on a Typewrtr by CoCreator

True confessions.  I am a member of the Flickr Fan Art Group.  But you all probably knew I was a fan already.   

So, it was actually fun to write this TechSoup article "How Nonprofits Can Get The Most Out of Flickr."  It is ten tips for those who are new to Flickr to get the most out of it.   (My research notes and other links can be found here and here.)

In the article, I describe five nonprofit "starter" use profiles - easy ways to get started.

• Photo Bank: An international organization sends volunteer doctors to developing countries around the world to perform medical services. The physicians document the impact of their work through photos that they upload to the organization's private Flickr group. Not only does Flickr help the volunteers exchange photos and information, it also creates an image bank from which the organization can select photos for its Web site and blog.

• Photographic Documentation: An environmental organization that supports organic farmers had literally thousands of amazing photographs documenting the development of organic farming techniques over the last decade. Before using Flickr, no one had organized or categorized the photos, which were scattered on various hard drives in the office and on volunteers' computers. The organization uploaded the photos to Flickr and were able to enlist the help of volunteers and members to document the techniques.

• Internal Planning: A museum was mounting a special collaborative exhibition with institutions located in five cities around the world. As the group prepared the installation, they used Flickr to share photos with one another, allowing them to see what a "textured plaster" wall finish looked like before approving the contracting work; get a visual reference of the exhibition space when selecting picture frames; and see work completed to date. Flickr provided a way for the collaborators to easily upload and share photos publicly and privately.

• Presentations: An executive director wanted to use photos to make her points during a presentation, but disliked clip art and lacked the budget for stock photography. Using Flickr's Creative Commons licensing search feature, she was to find appropriate photos that she could use for free with attribution.

• Make Stuff: Volunteers and talented photographers for an animal shelter had taken beautiful photos of some the dogs and cats at their facility. The organization wanted to create special cards featuring the pets that they could use as thank-you notes. Uploading the photos into Flickr, they were able to order cards and other items.

There are, of course, many other nonprofit uses - but I wanted to get at some beginner use profiles.  So, if this is Flickr 101, what is Flickr 201?

And, if you are not on Flickr. TechSoup just launched a donation program.  Read more about it on the Flickr blog.

An Interview with Susan Citro and Evan Parker about Nature Conservancy's Flickr Group

The Nature Conservancy has used Flickr Group to host a photo contest on its Web site.   Here's an interview with Nature Conservancy staff members Evan Parker and  Susan Citro about how the organization is using Flickr.

Why did your decide to set up a group on Flickr?

We have long known that our members were passionate about photography, and one of their strongest ties to the organization was through the photography that we use on our web site and in our publications. Looking to tap into this, we launched a photo contest where the prize would be featuring the winning images along side the photography that they have told us they like so much.  (The grand prize for one category is being featured on the home page of Nature.org, and the winner of the other category is featured in the Conservancy's annual calendar.)

We started the group in the summer of 2006, and have 6,400 members and 64,000 images submitted as of this morning.  The group takes in about 80% of the images for our contest, with the rest coming via email.  We could have run the photo contest without Flickr, but we were interested in the Flickr community, but also to give our existing members another way to interact with us.  We have had really great success on both fronts.

What is your best advice on using groups?

Keep up with the discussions often, but not too often -- We have someone who looks at the postings everyday, but we try not to jump into the threads unless there is something only we (as the organization) could contribute.  Our community really is self-managing.  If someone has a question or says something out of line, the community rises up and handles the situation, and usually before have the chance to jump in.  We like to wait for the community to self-manage because it keeps our group authentic.

Keep them engaged.   Our flickr group started around a photo contest which runs about 4 months a year, but we try and feed smaller activities (such as submit a nature photo for mother's day, or submit your favorite marine photo) in the other 8 months of the year to keep the group active.  They aren't as robust, certainly, but it keeps our most active group members engaged.

What is the work flow to make it successful?

We use the discussions area and the group home page announcement space to keep the community up to date on the latest way to engage with the Conservancy.

Each time we ask for people to submit photos, we tell them how they are going to be used as part of the announcement.  We then only use photos that have the specific tag attached ("BestNature-TNC07" or "MothersDay-TNC07").  This allows us to assume that if they put the tag on their photo, that they have read the announcement well enough to know how it is going to be used.

For smaller contests (marine, mother's day) we just review the images through the Flickr site, but the larger contest have enough contributions (15,000 this past year) that we have to use an offline workflow (ie. Adobe Bridge) to route the images through all of our judges.

Any gotchas?

We've had great luck with Flickr, and love it as an engagement device.  The only gotcha that comes to mind is that it's not terribly easy to get large numbers of photos out of the system (such as downloading 15,000 images for offline review) so people should factor that into their workflow.

Seeking Stories, Examples, and Tips from Nonprofits About Using Flickr

Flickr Photo by Locator

I'm doing a panel at NTC with Susan Tenby and will be talking about Flickr and (and Twitter).  I'm working on article too.   So, I'm hoping that your nonprofit is using Flickr, could you leave me a comment and a URL?  I'm hoping to update this list.

Online Photo Sharing in Plain English

Another great video from Lee Lefever.

Flickr Has Stats!!

 

Via Jeremiah Owyang .. I found out about Flickr's new stats package.   It is only available to pro accounts and it is pretty basic.  More here.

My total view count is: 675,233   That's because I have a lot of photos - almost 8,000.  But some of my photos have made it into places with lots of traffic.    It is interesting to me that the photo of Laura Quinn has some many views.  In analyzing the data, it seems like if folks are looking for Laura Quinn of Idealware and google "Laura Quinn" my flickr photo comes up in the first few results.   

Flickr to Facebook Bookmarklet

A big hat tip goes out to Andrea Vascellari for this great find.     I've been looking for ways to easily cross post selected photos from Flickr to Facebook Photo Album.  I've tried a couple of applications, but don't like the design because they created yet another photo album.   

That this application lets you do is: Use a bookmarklet while browsing flickr to add your photo to your photo album in Facebook.  What I don't like about this application is that you can send anyone else's photo to your Facebook Album, but there isn't an automated link back to the person's photo in flickr for cc attribution.  In fact, you can easily post all rights reserved photos to your Facebook account. 

I don't like the fact that it doesn't automate the attribution.  I would do that manually because I like to give credit back,but I can imagine people just doing it quickly.   

Please integrate automated creative commons licensing attribution

 

Visit the application page and go to the external application and follow the instructions.

Adding a reminder about donating to the CC Annual Campaign .. still a ways to go.

The Flickr Hold A Sign Meme: Protesting Wendy's Frosty Attitude Towards Animals

I'm a sucker for black dogs that look like my old dog Sadie.  This photo is from the Humane Society's recent "Wendy That's Not Right" campaign.  This technique is the "hold a sign meme" where you ask your community to send photos to flickr of you (or your animal) holding a protest sign.  The flickr pool of photos is here.

I saw a campaign email (I'm on their list so I saw the email a fews ago, but I was too overwhelmed with email to do anything).  Today, I happened to see HSUS that staffer Carrie Lewis posted a note on her profile and it showed up on my friends feed on Facebook.  Hence repetition through different channels is probably a necessary as is tracking the results of different channels and interpretation.  (The text of the Facebook note is below in case you want to take action.)   Here's some points:

• This is a great example of multi-channel marketing with integrating social media along with other more "traditional" internet tools like email.   I'm assuming the messaging on Facebook is slightly different from that on other networks or via email.   The messaging on MySpace is a very different style.   How else is the message being distributed and how it is being tweaked for style and language for different channels?
• I love the Flickr Hold A Sign Meme - but so far haven't found a great application in Facebook that allows for easy cross posting.  Has anyone?  I wonder if the photos would also get spread on Facebook?
• Some of the photos are licensed with "all rights reserved" and it would make sense to promote the cc licensing so the photos could easily spread.
• I wonder how HSUS is cross-promoting or engaging with the dozen or so brand groups like the Wendy's Frosty Group on Facebook.
• I wonder what the ROI is of incorporating the social media strategies and how they are tracking this campaign.  I would love to see campaign map.

The Facebook Note

Tell Wendy's to have some compassion for animals! Let them know that we want them to stop using eggs (yes, they use them in their new breakfast menu) from caged hens which are crammed into spaces so small they can't even turn around.

It's so easy... use your digital camera or even your cell phone. You can create your photo message by doing one of the following:

1- taking a photo of yourself and adding text to it containing your message
2- having a friend take a photo of you holding up a sign with your message on it

It's been done both ways. To see the photos we've already received, check out our Flickr group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/wendysvswendys

Once you've got your picture, you can either upload it directly to the Flickr group above or send it to us at hsusphotos@gmail.com.

Please make sure to include your name and where your from on your message. And please only send photos... if you'd like to just send Wendy's a message, you can write to them.

Thank you for caring about ALL animals!
-Carie Lewis
The Humane Society of the United States

 

Search Crystal: My Life Laid Out in Photos On The Web

That's the shareable output from searchCrystal it's an ego search on the term "Beth Kanter."

Here's how the site defines it:

is a search visualization tool that enables you to compare, remix and share results from the best web, image, video, blog, tagging, news engines or RSS feeds. You can embed searchCrystal as a Widget on your site or blog to share personalized crystals with your friends. You can also use it to find out what is popular on Wikipedia or use the Search Analytics Toolbox in your browser. searchCrystal enables you to see the big picture, gain new insights and interact with search results in new ways. You can explore and filter 50 - 500 web pages, images, videos, blogs in a single display that guides you toward relevant information in a structured way. searchCrystal offers you a powerful competitive intelligence tool

I think this tool would be really useful for me because I am always searching for visual images for screencasts and presentations  I have to play with it some more, but I wonder if I hone the search so it only shows me Creative Commons licensed images and adds the attribution.

Flickr SlideShows - Here's One on Google Ad Words

Should not have looked at Twitter one last time ... Cogdog barks about a new flickr tool called SlideFlickr "that will help you create and embed Flickr slideshows in less than 10 seconds." So, I embedded a flickr set I created about GoogleAdWords.  Now, if you could add narration ...

24 hours of Flickr Day!

What happens around the world in one day? In a word – life. Here on Flickr, our members are sharing the world that they see: snapping daily moments, recording history, telling stories, capturing beauty.

To celebrate this global community, we invite you to join us in 24 Hours of Flickr, a day-long global photo project. On May 5 2007, grab your camera and whatever else you need, and chronicle your day in pictures.

More info here

How To Display Flickr Photos With A Tag

Click to Flickr Photos Tagged with 07ntc in A Slide Show Presentation

I got asked this question several times during various presentations/panels at I was on at the NTC, including the Flickr Affnity Group session on Wednesday.  The question, "How can I display photos in flickr on my web site?" 

I pointed folks to Splashr after telling the story of how I learned about it during my Beth5.0 Flickr Remix Photo Birthday Card Contest.   Alan Levine (cogdog blog) who submitted the winning entry left a comment in a post where I asked that same question.  He pointed me to his blog entry about it.

There are many flickr tools or rather toys that use the API to extract flickr photos and publish them elsewhere in different ways.   The above slide show was created with Splashr, billed simply as “a tool for presenting Flickr photos.”  It gives you a bunch of different templates with different styling.  What's nice,  it generates cut and paste code. 

If you don't have software programmer at your disposal, this is an easy way to accomplish the task - you don't have to touch code.  Of course, you can't precisely display the photos in a customized color scheme, size, or format  -- but then again you don't need to know how to code.   And, did I mention this little tool was free?

There's one limitation, of course, is that slide show is a big size, too big for most blog formats.  It would work okay on a web site though, but it isn't embedded.  And, to be fair, I didn't test all 30 templates (I'm little tired).

There is another way to create an embedded slide show, although it is a little more geeky and (I didn't write up the steps yet - so it may be hard to figure out if you're not a code geek type.)  You can use the flickr slide show option as shown here (Thanks Elliot)  That reminded me that I did a screencast on how to do a flickr slide show!  So, you'd just loose the step of translating powerpoint slides into jpegs and not include the user name in the code line.  I know that sounds like greek.

N-TEN Conference 2007 - Flickr Session!

N-TEN Conference 2007 - Flick Session!
Originally uploaded by christuttledotcom.

Just finished the flickr session.  I am having lots of computer/Internet access issues and am now able to find this photo via Chris - who was a able to post to flickr!  Most of the people in the room are folks who aren't participating in the NTEN Flickr Affinity Group and were new to flickr.   Lots of questions -- a question that seems to asked of every single social media tool:

• How do deal with the lack of control?   Giving up branding, not have the photos on our web site ..
• What happens if a photograph that we don't like is put in our flickr group?  How can we moderate or filter photos?
• Fear of being sued - what if we stream photos with a tag and it publishes a photo that is all rights reserved in flickr?
• How do we measure the results?  If want people to resue our photos, how do we measure?  What is the conversion rate from sharing photos in flickr to donations or advocacy?
• What type of activity or strategy can I set on flickr that isn't going to require to much of my time to maintain?
• The amount of time it takes to search and participate in the community on flickr - is it worth it?

There was one person in my small group was interested in getting started in flickr, he is the IT person in a small organization.    He said his major challenge now is to design something that doesn't a huge amount of time to maintain.   So, I'm thinking of what the first small steps to using flickr looks like for a nonprofit.

Yeha! Flickr Has Implemented Collections!

I've been waiting for this one!  Flickr has just added a feature called "collections."  It lets you aggregate your photo sets!   It is very easy to use.  I put a collection together of all my photos from and about Leng Sopharath.  My collection is here.  The official flickr blog post is here.

Thomas Hawk reports on the new feature here.  He notes:

It is great to see flickr innovating.  A while back Flickr received some pretty heated criticism for their upcoming deadline on Thursday requiring all Flickr users to convert their "old skool" Flickr email log on to a new Yahoo ID. Some users complained that Flickr was taking away something cool without giving anything in return. It seems timely that Flickr would launch this new feature two days before the above mentioned deadline takes effect.

Nonprofit and Flickr Resource List: Not listed, Add in the Comments

The Flickr for Nonprofits Affinity group will meet in Washington, DC on April 4 at 1:00 PM (check agenda) to share experiences, tips, and ideas about how Flickr can be used to support nonprofits and their programs.   It's great that NTEN let's anyone who is passionate about a topic set up an affinity group.  Given my interest in flickr that's why I set one up last fall.  I'm excited that a few of us can meet face-to-face!

Here's a few resources that might be of interest:

How to do you explain flickr to those who haven't heard of it?

Flickr is a web-based digital photo sharing application that uses tags to facilitate finding people and photos. It isn’t simply about putting your photos up on the web for the world to see. What if you could invite other people from the around the world to have discussions about those images? What if you and your colleagues could annotiate these photos with your own descrptions and observations? What if you could become part of an online community that contributes images of similar topics for you to consume? And, what if you could subscribe to an RSS feed so anytime a new picture was added about a topic you care about, were studying, or writing about - it would come automatically to you?

Why Museum Professionals Should Use Flickr from the Musem 2.0 Blog

A List of Examples

Fundraising Campaigns and Presentations

Camera Rwanda
Photo Stream
Post with an interview

Street Kids
Fundraising Campaign raised $8,000 from photo group

Sharing Foundation
Presentation annotated in a flickr photo set

Community-Powered Campaigns

Overview article from December NTEN newsletter

he Hold The Sign Meme: Examples of different campaigns on flickr

Starbucks Campaign
Photo Group on Flickr
Read Britt Bravo's excellent write up here

Indianapolis Museum of Art
Visitors sharing photos in a group

One.org Campaign Add Your One Face To Flickr Group

Full Stop Campaign - google maps and flickr mashup

Voter's s (flickr and other social media sites)

Contests

Creative Commons Swag Contest
and I won!

Freedom from Oil Flickr Photo Contest

March of Dimes Contest (features community voting)

Nature Conservancy Photo Contest

Source for Presentations, Documentation Methods

Example of Technical Support How To

Documenting Events and Conferences
Youth Service America Service Day
Blog post about it

How-To Resources

Basic Overview

CogDog Blog's Brilliant: What can you do with flickr?

Flickr 101: Techniques
Basic Guidelines for Tagging on flickr
Flickr for Beginners: Tips from LifeHacker

Flickr Official Documents
How to get the most out of flickr
FAQ

Getting Attention on Flickr

Tips from Thomas Hawk

Getting the Most out of Flickr from Toronto Podcamp - Bryan Person

Using Flickr Photos As Source Material

Screencast: Using Flickr As A Resource for Presentations

Ten Tips for Finding Great Photos on Flickr

Amy Gahran's Advice on Using Flickr Photos As Source Material

Do you think the photos in flickr are crap? Ha!

More Advanced Techniques

Top Ten Flickr Hacks

Flickr Tools
The Great Flickr Tool Collection
Plus all the fun ones that I have tagged with flickrplay

Backgrounders
Interview with Flickr Founder

Does your nonprofit have an example of using flickr and you're not listed here?  Leave a comment with a url!

My Flickr Score

It has been a long day of pondering inbetween rapid attention shifting tasks, dipping into email, pinging IMs, and browsing feeds.  My brain is tired.

After a cardio and yoga workout at the gym, spent a good part of the day obsessing about the design for an evaluation on mobile technology tools for health care outreach workers.  Next a final look at the final KM4DEV call for papers for June, 2007 Issue called "Stewarding Technologies for Collaboration, Community Building & Knowledge Sharing in Development" (I'm a guest editor along with Nancy White, Beverly Traynor, and Lucie Lamoureux - others to join.)  Then onto pondering for a project to collect leads for professional nonprofit conferences and trying to figure out what will be easier for respondents - email reply or wiki.

Wiki seems to be a theme for me today, starting off with an email from colleague asking me and several others about the best method to collect quick feedback for a draft of a survey.   Funny several other colleagues cc: in the email said wiki!   I agree in theory, but in practice I have to say it depends. 

Who is the audience? How large is the group? It depends on how "finished" the survey is, how long it is, and whether or people you want to solicit feedback from are in a wiki habit. Would you miss out on valuable feedback from some folks who are, as one colleague said to me, "I'm allergic to wikis."  Is a wiki really the best method for on-shot feedback or is it better for deeper collaboration over time?   I think providing multiple methods -- like email, blog comments, is good thing -- unless it is a very small group of collaborators.

Funny, the next email was from a commentor to a post I did on wiki adoption in organizations.  I had used the commentors flickr photo - "CC BY license" and he stopped to say thanks.  Needing a distraction, I checked out his flickr profile and noticed a Flickr Score and link to the Flickr Inspector.   Here's my profile

The interesting thing I discovered was that you can easily track your blogged flickr photos through the flickr inspector's integrated search.  So, here's another set of ego feeds you can add to your reader.  Why bother?  Good question.  Not sure except that you could see if your photos were not being attributed, connect with a kindred visual spirit, find an amusing way to take a mental break.

And the Flickr Inspector also gives you a meaningless score too ...cambodia4kidsorg's flickr score: 3427

 

How Best to Stream Tagged Flickr Photos on a Blog or Web Page?

This one is from Mike.  It is generated by www.deviousgelatin.com/montager using the flickr tag 'beth5.0'

The Beth5.0 Flickr Photo Remix Cards are all wonderful so I'm going to start blogging them!!  I love the creativity and I'm learning a lot about remix tools.  Today, the group membership reached 50 people, with 11 cards so far (not counting the ones I made).   Keep 'em coming - there is still time to participate. Here's the information.

I am wondering how to display them all.  I'm thinking of doing a slide share show.  The other option might be to see I can stream all the photos in the group and have them display in a post.  Maybe one of the flickr widget badgets?

Ideas welcome!

Two Cool Tools to Search Flickr for CC License

Searching through flickr to find photos that are interesting and by creative commons using the flickr search is sort of a pain.  Here's two tools that play with the flick API that let you add annotations.  The one mentioned by Stephen Downes has an online image editor.  Cogdogblog walks you through using it.

• FlickrStorm. Search on Flickr with some Magic

  Another way to search flickr for creative commons images

• Web FlickrCC via Stephen Downes

  Search for and edit photos on flickr that use creative commons licensing.

Amy Gahran's Advice for Finding Free To Use Flickr Photos

I did a screencast on this topic back in September, but I wish I had Amy Gahran's advice on the topic.   She tells you how to do the search, gives you an example, and shares some pitfalls to avoid.  I'm going to quote them here:

• Is the subject of the photo copyrighted? If the photo is of, say, a TV screen showing a newscast or a newspaper page showing a staff photo, then you still might be liable for copyright violation despite the terms of the CC license listed on Flickr or elsewhere.

• Does the Flickr user really have rights to the image? Unfortunately, many Flickr users post to their accounts images that they did not take and don't have permission to use. In that case, their CC license is invalid. If you're not sure, ask before using.

• Is the image genuine? Remember, any photo (even from allegedly reputable pro photojournalists) can be faked or altered. If you have doubts about authenticity, investigate before running the image.

• Protect yourself.  Save or print the screen where you found the photo that shows the CC license notation. (Furl is a great way to keep such evidence.) That way, if the photographer later tries to revoke the CC license, you can show it was in effect on the date you published the photo.

She also suggests:

Whenever you use a CC-licensed photo that you find on Flickr or elsewhere, it's a good idea to leave a comment or send a note to the photographer thanking them and giving the link to where you ran it. That's more than just being polite -- it also can prevent criticism that you're exploiting unsuspecting amateurs. In photography, as elsewhere, appearances count.

Although some say that the spirit of the "by" is to eliminate the both of asking permission because it is given via the license. See Amy's coverage of the Lisa William's pressthink piece about the first newspaper chain to use the creative licensing.   As was the buzz last night at the CC Birthday Party,  Larry Lessig has done so much to inspire this shift from a culture of protection to a culture of sharing.