Thing 9: Sharing photos

I loved using Mosaic Maker.  I thought it was really cool and easy to use.  Also, an account is not required.  I was able to make the mosaic above by pasting URLs from my Flickr account into the appropriate blanks on the Mosaic Maker website.  Then I created the mosaic without establishing an account with Mosaic Maker, and I was able to save the resulting image.  I liked this one so much that I used it with some of my favorite pictures of my kids, mainly just close-ups of their beautiful little faces, and I made a mosaic for each kid.  Then I printed them out and made Valentine’s Day cards for all the grandmas and surrogate grandmas.  They’ll eat it up!  I can foresee using this little application quite a bit in my personal life, and I can also see how it could be useful in a library setting to jazz up your webpage with event photos, to create posters for publicity, or to make a scrapbook of your events.

I also made a Flickr badge, which you can see in the column on the left.  That was super-simple to do using my existing Flickr account and the photos already there.

I haven’t had time yet to try the slideshows or the databases, but I intend to take a look at both, so you’ll probably see another Thing 9 post later.  So far, Mosaic Maker has been my absolute favorite new thing in this endeavor (followed by Google Reader and ToonDoo).

Thing 6: Flickr Mashups

Thing 6, Flickr Mashups, was a fun thing, and I’m looking forward to Thing 7, too.  I tried out some of the different options, and I admit that I didn’t much use for some of them (like the Flickr Color Pickr, for example) in my life.  I can see where it might be of value to artists, but I can’t see myself ever needing it for anything.  It was pretty neat, though. 

I used Splashr, and at the bottom of the blog, you will see my results.  I removed my slideshow of photographs from the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, and I added those same photos in a Splashr product at the bottom of the blog.  Scroll down and click on the small, white button in the center of the photos.  Click on the small letter “i” in a circle at the bottom right to make the photo labels not display, and then click on a photo to see a larger view.  If you click on the button between the two arrows at the bottom right, the photos will act like a slideshow, automatically moving from one photo to the next. 

I also enjoyed Spell with Flickr, and underneath the Broadmoor photos you can see my results.  I thought Spell with Flickr was really fun, and I can see myself using that sometime for crafty-type things.

As for using these things in my library, I could see using them for posters and other marketing tools, and some of the tools might be nice ways to display photographs from library events if we had a library blog. 

I have mixed feelings about online photo sharing.  The convenience of being able to post photos online and give a URL to everyone you want to see them is nice, and for many things is fine.   I do, however, feel like you should have someone’s consent before posting a photograph of them on any public site, and I’m sure some people do that, but I’m also sure that not everyone does. It's a lot of work to get consent from everyone at an event, and I really doubt that most people do that, but maybe I'm wrong.

Thing 5: Flickr, part 2

I have finally figured out how to add a slideshow of every photo in my Flickr account.  (Fortunately there aren’t many.)  To get this far, I read Blogger helps, I read Flickr helps, and I consulted with my co-worker who, after much trial and error, had managed to get her Photobucket slideshow in her blog sidebar using the slideshow gadget.  Unfortunately, the same process that worked for Photobucket did not work for Flickr.  I then resorted to “Googling” my issue.  I found that there are others like me out there who are having or have had the same problem, and I found a solution that enabled me to post the slideshow of every one of my Flickr images: 

Look at the last portion of your Flickr URL.  What you see there is your Username.  If you select the User button in the slideshow gadget instead of the Keyword button and then enter this Username that appears at the end of your Flickr URL, you too can post a slideshow that consists of every photo in your Flickr account.  If you only want your slideshow to consist of a certain set of photos, you’re on your own because I haven’t been able to figure out how to do that yet.

But wait...I had one more idea of something to try, and it worked!!!  If you select one of your sets in Flickr, copy the portion of the URL starting with your username and going to the end of the URL.  Paste this into the Username box on the slideshow gadget, and you will see, much to your delight, a slideshow consisting of only the photos in that set.  I can finally let this rest now that I’ve figured it out.  The slideshow gadget has not defeated me!

Much thanks to this blog post which got me going on the right track.

Thing 5: Flickr

West Branch,
originally uploaded by Librarian1.5.

Hopefully you will see a photo that I took of the West Branch Library. If you don't, I have failed Thing 5 and will have to try again later. If you do, Yippee!

Part 2:  Yippee!  The picture is there, so I'm not a complete failure, although I was not able to figure out how to add a slideshow from Flickr using Blogger's slideshow gadget.  I could figure out how to add it by using HTML code from Flickr, but that made the slideshow much larger than I wanted it to be.  I have a co-worker who was able to add a slideshow from Photobucket, so maybe she will be able to shed some light on this process for me.

I thought this Thing was kind of hard.  That may be at least partially due to my tendency to jump in and try to do things and then go back and read the directions only if I can't figure it out on my own.  I did create a Flickr account, upload some photos, tag them, and sort them into sets without too much trouble.  The confusion came when it was time to link my blog to my Flickr account so that I could add a picture to the blog.  After going back and reading the instructions, help screens, and FAQs, I was able to figure out everything except the slideshow thing, but I'm not giving up on that yet.  Keep watching, I'll figure it out eventually.