I really like this: a search on a key word (e.g. “Shetland” in the example below) brings up a results page with a gallery of images which can be displayed with increasing levels of detail (small, medium, detail, slideshow) and, to the right, related groups, photographers, tag clusters and places. Clicking on “Lerwick” in the right-hand column takes you to another screen with a detail image over an image carousel: you can either scroll the large image or browse the carousel.

It’s not just the layout and UI design I like about this, it’s the way that various constituent parts of Flickr (individual photographers, photos and groups) are all drawn together and consequently draw you in.

As an aside, I also notice that my photo of the Breckon is now being used as the icon for the Shetland group which is quite nice.

Posted via email from What’s this for?

The only problem I’m having with it is setting a title frame. I uploaded it to YouTube which will do this automatically for you but the quality’s not too good. I tried adding one myself in Flash but failed miserably, showing unfortunately my rather limited grasp of Flash. If anyone can give me any pointers on this I’d be grateful to hear more.

I’ve also uploaded it to Flickr which was quite exciting, as it’s the first time I’ve used the video upload functionality. Again, I’m stuck with a rather dull black screen for a title which isn’t exactly inviting but at least it will display some basic authoring details.

Anyway, here it is: my Animoto video slide show of my Lofotens photos. I’ve used a track I like off the last Explosions in the Sky album (”It’s Natural to be Afraid” from All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone) as the background music. I’m probably not meant to do this so am happy to remove it if required.

I’ve just uploaded the remaining decent photos from my trip to Norway to Flickr.

The photo shown here was taken on our last day on Lofoten, doing a short walk from Ytresand to Mulstøa and back. A beautiful day and a beautiful view.

I took loads of photos in Lofoten as you can imagine. It was just stunning.

The first batch are on Flickr. More to come.

The photo shown here is of the Fotobrygga, Skrova. An amazing little place which offers courses for photographers as well as accomodation. As I was there for the walking rather than photography I didn’t get as much of a chance as I would have liked to check out the gallery and chat to the owners about what goes on there, but maybe one day I’ll head back.

So, instead of writing anything sensible this month (I wish I could update this blog more often than that but, let’s be realistic), here’s a list of the things I think are exceptionally cool web- and technology-wise; and maybe not so cool. Yes, the easiest kind of blog post: the brain dump.

Moo.com is the obvious hands-down winner for me in the cool stakes. Why? It’s brilliant, that’s why. You can make stuff out of your digital photos. Not a new idea in itself — we’ve been able to put photos of our pets on to shapeless t-shirts that shrink to gnome-size on the first cold wash or those blurry holiday snaps on to mouse mats for some time now. Where Moo is different is the stuff that you display your meisterwerken on is in itself cool beyond reproach. I’ve just got some minicards made up — small business cards that have your photos on one side and text on the other. The text is limited to five lines so you can’t write essays, so even the most designed-challenged will get something decent. Image-wise you can select stock images or import your own from Flickr or other sites. Brilliant, and that the next year’s worth of birthday presents sorted then.

I’m not normally given to salivating over gadgets. Although I’ve got my fair share of them (phone, camera, MP3), I’ve certainly never really been given over to getting excited about things that cost too much and will be superceded two minutes after you’ve bought them. I’ve steered clear of the whole iPod thing and my Rio Karma is still going strong three years in (unlike Rio by the looks of things). It plays music in more formats than is strictly necessary — I have actually got a couple of albums in FLAC format, honest — and I’ve only just getting to the point where I’ve filled up my 20Gb.

Just two seconds looking at the new iPod Touch however and I was reaching for my Amazon wish-list. I know it’s wrong, but I want one. It’s an MP3 and video player, you can surf the web on wifi, and that interface (self re-orientating, touch-sensitive screen) made we want to do a wee. But, returning to reality for a second do I really need one? Well, yes, of course I do, but I did find some negative reviews of it. One obvious thing is that it only has 16Gb capacity (Flash memory, no hard drive), it has no Flash (as in Adobe) support and you’re tied to Safari to browse (it could be a lot worse, let’s face it). It also appears to have added evil functionality, namely the ability to find out what’s playing in Starbucks as you’re ordering your corporate whore double evil-spresso and the ability to download whatever musical criminality you’re being subjected to via iTunes to your player. Starbucks and iTunes? That’s just way too much wrong for my liking. But, even that is not somehow not putting me off.

But, what I’d prefer really is a nice alternative in the same way my Rio Karma was to iPod ubiquity. I’d take the interface and the screen but swap Safari for Firefox, bump up the storage space, add a hard drive and naturally add the ability to play all my .ogg files. I guess it should probably run on Linux too, but I’m not that geeky. Similarly, no need to bother with the ability to use Songbird to download the music playing in your local free-trade organic co-operative workers’ collective cafe (as that will probably be shit too). A pipe dream? Maybe…but a step in the right direction: Mozilla recently announced that Firefox is going mobile (properly this time). Of course, I’m not sure I can wait that long…

Lastly, I love RSS and I love Google Reader. Although it’s got nothing on Netvibes design-wise, Google Reader’s functionality wins out (although it won’t do feeds that require authentication, so for instance, I can’t get my Gmail in Reader, whereas I could in Netvibes). But, RSS is still a “pull” technology. I’ve got to go to to Reader, sort through the stories (over 1000 unread at the moment) and then decide which ones to read. As I’m so desperately busy, well, lazy, I’d like to be able to get email alerts on specified search terms from my feeds to help me decide what I need to read. Google Reader doesn’t let you do this, and Google Alerts doesn’t seem to let you either, unless I’m missing something, which as always is very possible. I’m thinking of writing a Zope/Plone-based solution to do this which would be fun and educational, but I can’t believe there is isn’t an obvious way to do this in the available products– please let me know if you know of one.

I’ve also noticed that Flickr seems to be making use of microformats. If you look at a photo which has geo data added to it via the Flickr Organizer and you’ve got a microformats plugin in your browser, you’ll notice you’ll be able to look up the location on Google Maps (or similar depending on which plugin you’re using). This is good news. Microformats are very lightweight and easy to implement, but obviousy the big players are going to need to buy in to them for them to really start to have any impact. Nice one Flickr, and hopefully a right move in the direction of greater interoperability between Web2.0 applications.