DeGroodt Digital Dash: Week 7 Images and Photos

First Camera Phone, a photo by Ribbit Voice on Flickr.

Remember those old photo albums that would sit on shelves or under coffee tables? Then we would lug the binders out for every family get together (or even those embarrassing baby pictures shown to our dates), relieving memories. It was so important to make sure that every photo was perfect…film was expensive.
 
Today, we all seem to have cameras at our disposal. Digital camera technology allows us to have our cameras integrated into our phones, our computers, and our pocket mobile devices. As technology keeps changing these devices are becoming cheaper which means they are more accessible, bridging the digital divide. Storage also isn’t as much of an issue which means that we can freely snap away. The results sometimes seem like photo overload.

We have also gone digital when it comes to sharing our photos. Many of us use Facebook, posting instantly from our mobile devices, to share with friends and families. Other websites like Flickr, which is one of the most know photo sharing sites, allow allotments of space for free (or pay an upgrade charge for additional space) to post our photos for everyone to see and maybe even share. Photos can be tagged with keywords to make searching easier. Other users can even comment on photos or even share them with others.

Flickr uses what is known as Creative Commons licensing to grant permissions for reuse of photos. Some users are just posting to visually share their work, but others are willing to let other users download and modify the images. Public Domain means that an image has no copyright then it is free to reuse the images without first getting permission from the greater or domain holder. (Caution: photos of artwork are not always public domain even if the artwork is public domain because the actual photos belong to the photographer or museum). So if you are thinking of using an image for a project, remember to first check the licensing restrictions and then give all proper attributions (i.e. credit the source). Why get permission first? Well, think about it, you wouldn’t want someone using a photo of your dog in a dog food ad without your permission.

There are also several tools out there that allow you to edit your photos. Apple fans already know about Instagram which allows you to subtly change the appearance of your photos with filters, but there are also more advanced programs you can purchase for your computer, like Photoshop, that allow you to go into much more detail with your editing. Don’t forget to check out the free resources like the ones available through Google or even GIMP which is a open-source image manipulation program that rivals Photoshop.

Whichever route your photos take you, just remember to have fun and happy clicking!

DeGroodt Digital Dash Week 6: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

Tag you’re it!

Well, not really, but you can tag the items you post on sites like Pinterest and Twitter to make it easier for others to search for them. This means that you are adding a special character called a hashtag to your keyword to make it searchable. For Example, typing in #chicken means that the when someone searches for the keyword “chicken”, your post will come up in the list of results. Some databases like Blogger have a tag field box where you would enter in all the words you would like to make searchable. When using a field box, you do not always need the hashtag. Sometimes the words need to either be written as one word no spaces like “chickenrecipe” or listed with commas separating the keywords “chicken recipe, fried chicken”.

When you are in Facebook you tag your friends in your posts by adding the “@” symbol before their name. This means that your post will also appear on your fiends’ timeline and they will receive a notification that you have “tagged” them. Twitter also has this feature when you want to “mention” a person. It will also send a notification.

Social Bookmarking uses this concept of tagging to help you organize your bookmarks. Sites like Delicious are very handy web 2.0 tools that allow you to save websites to lists or boards that you can access at a later date from any computer with Internet access. This comes in very handy when you have hundreds of sites bookmarked and you are looking only for the one that has a certain subject.

You can even tag items in the Brevard County Libraries’ DiscoverCard Catalog . Tagging an item in the card catalog makes it easier for others to search for an item. Examples of tags you might want to use would be series names, volume numbers, or even character names from the book. All tags are moderated before they are posted for others to see.

Here we have expanded the tag box for the book Civil War on Sunday by Mary Pope Osborne. If you were to search for any of those tags, this book would appear in your search results. You can also see at the bottom there is a button to “Add Tag”. This is what you would select if you wanted to submit your own tag to the list. One possible tag for this entry would be “Magic Treehouse” which would make this book appear in the list if the space was forgotten from “Tree House” in the series title.

Have you tried tagging before? What do you think about it?