Flickr is not open source software — it is owned by a huge corporation with the standard profit motives. And one that has had a tough last year and perhaps a questionable future. But it is also a very useful and flexible tool that organizations are growing to depend on — and build quite a bit of intellectual value in.
The Library of Congress started a project at Flickr, uploading images from its photo collection. And they have been joined on Flickr commons by the Brookly Museum, the Powerhouse Museum, the Bibliotheque de Toulouse and recently the New York Public library. In addition to having all the Flickr features to access the images, viewers can also make notes and post comments on an image. For an example take a look at this gruesome trick photo of a severed head. You can see notes on the image itself as well as a long list of comments from viewers. I don’t know that any of these add any real informational value to the image itself, but it is pretty interesting to see the record of people’s reactions.
These days people have a lot of themselves in digital form. Backup for a home computer is not too tough these days with cheap external harddrives and easy web services (not that most people do it!) But what about those photos on your camera phone? Your iPod? Or stuff out on the world wide web somewhere? I have a lot of stuff in my Flickr account. There are local backups buried around the house somewhere, but those don’t represent the collections and comments on the site. And with Yahoo’s current up and down troubles it does strike me what a drag it would be if that all just disappeared one day — but how do I back it up? I actually pay for the pro account, so I guess I have some type of service expectation, but if it came down to needing it I don’t expect it is really worth much.
Lots of people contribute to Wikipedia, creating a lot of useful articles. Lots of people post photos on Flickr or movies on Youtube. It seems like everyone is using these hot new tools to create all sorts of user-generated content. So why aren’t these social media/web 2.0 things more prevalent in the office? Maybe in your office everyone contributes to some central wiki, but my experience is the opposite. Oh sure, when the idea comes up everyone thinks it is a good idea. So the tech guy gets it up and running, announces it to the crowd, and nothing happens — what is up?
Creative Commons works. One of my photos from World Laughter day was recently selected to be used in an article in Yes magazine. Under its creative commons license they just need to ask permission and give attribution — which they did. And sent me a free magazine to boot. If it helps make people a little happier I am happy to help out!
J.K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Publishing, has started an academic offshoot with books available online for free viewing and printing, and for purchase in the traditional bound, mailed version. Their first title is by Lawrence Lessig, Remix (although not quite available yet.) As a founding member of Creative Commons, Lessig may have had more than a little influence on Bloombury’s thinking, but all the better. It will be interesting to see how this develops.
Randall Rode's online home for thoughts, notes, and experiments with a wide range of technology topics. Visit the about page for info on my recent projects and professional background. I welcome your comments!
New articles are normally posted on Mondays and Wednesdays. Subscribe to the RSS feed or the email update to keep current on the latest posts.
Past listings from 2004 to the present
Need a home (or better home) for your website? I highly recommend HostRocket -- they are the best!
