Today as I walked from one village to another I looked up the hill and I saw a cloud arch framing a nearby village and I had to take a picture. The framing of the image was rather unique. It is below. Is it kitsch? There is a good chance. It was unique, so I captured it.
The Cloud Arch
I liked looking up at the sky today because it was different from usual.
It’s interesting, isn’t it? Flick is a website that I have been part of since 1996 and I have been so distracted by Facebook, Instagram and other social networks that I have forgotten about it. Several times I expected the website to wither and disappear but it hasn’t. It is still around and it still has an active community. What’s more, this is so many magnitudes better than Instagram. for a start it has tagging, groups, albums and everything else.
The Issue For a while Facebook was the network to keep in contact with university friends after we all graduated and then it was the network to keep in contact with colleagues. Eventually it became the network where people shared news without engaging with others. It has become a network where you scroll through dozens of irrelevant posts in the hope of finding something personal, and failing.
Instagram used to be the network where we could share images with friends and see what they were sharing.
Today was a warm day. With a group of people we went to Leysin for a hike. Here are some pictures from the event. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157628177774925”]
Today I went exploring the French Jura in the hope of capturing some of the Autumnal colours. I drove an hour into the Jura and arrived at this place. They say that it’s a one hour walk but it took me less than that to cover. There is information along the path for children to learn about features of Gorges and how they’re formed. What I found more interesting was a sign for the Tram Jurasienne railway line.
A short helicopter flight to a mountain refuge in Aosta, on the Italian side of the Mt Blanc. Good fun, walk to the glacier and back. I also tested my Iphone 4 phone.
[flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157624937122156”]
One Hundred Million is the number of photographs geotagged on flickr. That’s an impressive number. There’s an article about the news here but I want to explore the fun side of things. Whenever I take photographs with my mobile phone they’re geo tagged so where ever I am in the world I can pinpoint within five to twenty meters where it’s been taken. As a result if I go for a walk every day for a year I can take pictures of the different seasons and how the landscape changes, from snow to spring to summer and more.
Flickr had a mobile website that worked well because it was developed for all mobile devices. As a result I was getting into the habit of taking pictures, amending the title and adding comments whilst on the move. Recently though, the mobile developers at Flickr decided to do what every narrow minded developer of mobile websites likes to do. Develop something for the iphone and ipod touch. This is theoreticaly a great idea but in practice it’s a nightmare for anyone using a normal phone.
I’m active on more social networks than I have time to go through in a day and that’s where Socialthing comes in. It allows me to follow news from facebook, twitter, pownce, tumblr, flickr, vimeo and livejournal. What I like about this site is how easy it is to see everything that goes on. Whereas friendfeed is nothing more than a few lines of text this version of a social feed aggregator is the visual aspect.
Today I’ve been playing with Photophlow, a photo sharing and chat website that allows you to easily discuss and share pictures with friends within the interface as well as on tumblr and twitter. Among the features that I find interesting are the ability to create personal rooms and invite flicks friends in. once this is done you can look at their personal photographs, favourite pictures and more. It’s a great way for photo buffs to share photographs without having to give hyperlinks all the time.