Thing 6: bighugelabs

The next image generator to try out was BigHugeLabs.  I am glad this one was on the list as I'd written down its URL ages ago when it was featured in CILIP Update but hadn't got round to ever looking at it.  My first impression was that I longed for the simplicity I had dismissed for Letter James; the first page was a little bit overwhelming with the number of different products I could create.  Did I want Bead Art or a Lolcat generator? I only had time to try out a couple of things so I look forward to seeing other people's creations to see if some of the other products are worth exploring. 

I chose Mosaic maker, I really liked the fact that you could select photos either from Flickr or Facebook as this made it so much easier than uploading photos again.  You do need to have them pre-organised into either a photoset (Flickr) or an album (Facebook) though.  I chose one of my Facebook albums from a recent gig by my favourite band, Jimmy Eat World.  It was a bit restrictive in that once created you couldn't decide which pictures went where; the original picture that had been selected for the central one of the mosaic wasn't one of the best, so I had to go back into my Facebook album, swap the order of the pictures there, and then go back to bighugelabs to create the mosaic again, now with the picture I wanted as the central picture.

This would be a great tool to create photo montages of events that you could send to friends.  I can't really see any uses for work as yet so any ideas welcome!

Thing 4: more

I attended a screencasting workshop by Jisc Digital Media on Tuesday and one of the screencast examples was " Flickr as a source of free to use images" (see below).  I have also downloaded the Flickr app for my iPhone which is great as I can easily upload photos from my iPhone onto Flickr, it also gives me a lovely slideshow of my contacts' photos when I open it up. They are much better photographers than me......


Flickr as a Source of Free-to-Use Images from JISC Digital Media on Vimeo.

Thing 4: create a Flickr account and upload some photos

I have used Flickr before as a library of photos when I have needed an image for something, such as to enliven one of my blogs (as above).  They make it very easy to find images that are available to use under the Creative Commons License.  I tend to do an advanced search where you can refine your search to only find images within the CC License.  It's then easy to find from the chosen photo's page what the license allows you to do with the photo.  

I have never used it to upload any of my photos though as I store all my digital memories on Facebook, as do most of my friends, so we tend to share them that way.  I did quite recently consider using Flickr to store my photos when I ordered my last set of photos from Jessops online software and it said you could connect to your Flickr account to print directly.  Keeping my photos on Facebook though has become my habit (and no upload limit!) and will probably stick to that but I have, for this week's 23 things, uploaded a few choice pics.  See them on my Flickr stream.

I love technology and gadgets and am still often amazed by whizz-kid stuff.  Therefore I loved the fact that when you upload a photo it tells you what camera took it.  I had seen this on other people's photo streams and thought that it was real dedication to tag your photo with your camera make and model, and yet as soon as I uploaded my first one, there it was, my camera make and model (well at least I assume so- had no idea what the model was).  I also loved the geo-tagging, especially the automatic geo-tagging when uploding pictures from my iPhone.  I uploaded a photo that I took with my iPhone during a walk between two villages in my home county of Northamptonshire last Christmas.  Now bear in mind to get even a smidgen of phone signal in our village you have to hang out of the upstairs bathroom windown, let alone what you have to do to get a GPRS signal.  Yet when I uploaded this photo to Flickr it had pinpointed the exact location of this photo, a dot on a map, a marker on this remote walk-route which sees rarely more than sheep.  Wizardry, surely? 

The geo-tagging has to be the element I enjoyed most about Flickr.  I also found a couple of friends' photo streams and I connected to Eleri's photo stream and viewed her very artistic shots.  I added a widget to this blog too to showcase some of my Flickr pics.

So far this is the gadget I can see least use for work purposes.  Other than improving my blog posts with other people's arty shots I doubt I will use Flickr at work.  I guess on an institutional level it would be a good place to upload marketing/promotional shots and saving them here rather than on the intranet or similar.  I looked up University of Westminster and found someone had created an account under this name and had uploaded some nice shots of Harrow (including one of our very own self-service machine), see this stream here.  I know Loughborough University Library promote their Flick stream on their webpage which contains some nice shots of the Pilkington Library or the "upside down pyramid" as it is known.  They also have a photographic competition and a photographic tour of the library, some interesting ways of using Flickr. 

Summary of thing 4: I loved geo-tagging and find Flickr immensely useful in finding images that I can use under the CC license.  I like the idea of a library photographic competition, especially as we have some great photographers amongst the student body.  But as stated I think this is the least useful thing so far for me in day-to-day work life. 

Photo credit: Oundle School Chapel by Velodenz used under the creative commons license by-nc-nd