le blog de bloogue

I’m going to take a look at a couple of web tools in the Multimedia category: Posterous and Twitpic. I like these two sites as you can share photos quickly from your mobile phone.

Both sites are easy to use. My iPhone is capable of sending an email which is all it takes to post on either site. Posterous capacity is a little greater with being able to upload about any type of file such as photos, video, music, or a Word document while Twitpic posts just photos. Additionally, Posterous has an iPhone app.

As far as privacy goes, with Posterous, you can allow or disallow users to comment on your posts and/or password protect your posts. With Twitpic, you can keep your posts out of the public timeline and not allow others to tag your photos. I don’t have a lot of privacy concerns but it’s nice to have the options available should I later decide the need to hide certain posts from the public eye.

Twitpic and Posterous seems to be mostly used by individuals but is certainly not limited to only them. Businesses could utilize it to post coupons to their Twitter account or some other publicity or promotion. Me, I would just use it to post photos of things I find interesting enough to share with friends and family.

This week we’re exploring the use of photos on the Internet. We are to explore two web tools related to photos and then compare and contrast the tools. I tried a few of the suggested tools, but found them to be clunky and not really something I would use on a regular basis. I already use Flickr extensively which is a Yahoo! product and would like to compare to something similar such as Picasa which is a Google product. I’ve used Picasa very little throughout the last couple years but would like to know more about it.

Flickr and Picasa both have the same objective: to get your photos online to share with friends and family or the entire Internet if you wish. You can create albums, tag photos with words or geographic coordinates, order prints, add fellow users as friends or family, and several more options.

Several users on both sites use their product for personal and professional reasons. Photographers may use it to advertise their portfolio. Landscape designers may use it to show off examples of work they’ve done. A new family may use it to share photos of their newborn to the rest of their family and allow friends and family to order their own prints—whether they decide to order a 4×6 or even a poster.

My current use of Flickr is to post photos from vacations and everyday life including uploading photos from my iPhone. Many family members and friends like to drop in now and then to see what my family and I are up to. I also get contacted by people all over the world that may have questions about a photo I took on vacation to get more information about it as they’re planning on visiting the same place.

Should I choose to, I can set privacy levels high on everything I upload or on individual photos. I can set limitations on photos to only be viewable by friends, family, or to display to everyone.

If finances are tight, I’d go with Picasa. As a “free user” you’ll get 1GB of storage on Picasa and with Flickr, you can upload 2 videos and 100MB worth of photos uploaded each calendar month. Adding on extra storage will cost you. Picasa offers 20GB total for $5/year and have other annual plans for bigger sizes. With Flickr Pro, you’ll have unlimited storage for $25/year – and be able to upload up to 2GB/month, which would be a challenge for me.

I found both tools to be fairly comparable. I still prefer Flickr over Picasa. I believe they’re both very good tools but I just am used to the interface for Flickr and don’t find Picasa any easier to use as a whole.

http://picasaweb.google.com/bradley.johnston/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/trypnotic/

My assignment this week is to locate two Web 2.0 tools and report my findings. We are to choose from storage, collaboration, content, management, aggregation, and organization categories.

I crossed the storage category off my list as I already use Flickr.

Collaboration was crossed off the list as Brandy and I have already been playing around with Google Wave to plan our eastern Mediterranean trip coming up in June.

The next category up to bat was content. After perusing the list of suggested Web 2.0 tools provided and deciding that none of them looked familiar, I chose a site called called “fwix”. Fwix was described as providing the most relevant and trendy information and media in your local area. Among categories they listed included photos, videos, events, articles, reviews, and music.

One of the first things I did was sign up for the free service after noticing that Minneapolis/St Paul was in fact a city that I could select. I was happy to see that it would connect with my Facebook account and allow me to skip over the registration process.

After signing up, I was presented with content immediately. Several recent stories, top stories, sports, weather, and business to name a few. I’m able to modify the content by selecting “Home” at the top of the page and choosing from several of suggested topics or general categories. I can also change my location, say if I were to travel often or want to keep in touch with your hometown.

I can see this tool to be of much use both professionally and personally. Professionally, I could add topics that had to do with the airlines. Personally, I could add categories that talk about my local interests such as restaurant reviews.

As most of you may or may not know, I’m enrolled at North Hennepin Community College and taking a course in Web Tools. One of our assignments is to create an ePortfolio and share our experiences about it. The following are questions our instructor asked us to answer on our blog:

• Which E Portfolio did you choose? How easy was it to use?
I chose eFolioMinnesota. It wasn’t as user friendly as I expected but after reading some of the help sections, things became more clear.
• What might you use an online portfolio for? Do you think you could use it professionally or personally?
An ePortfolio can be used both for professional and personal reasons. Perhaps you want to keep your family updated on the birth of a new child or the progress of a hobby of yours. Professionally, you could post your resume or a research paper that you created.
• What do you want your E Portfolio to say about you?
I plan to create a profile that has a professional tone to it. Something that highlights my career and educational history along with my achievements and skill set. While many people use Twitter, Facebook, or their own blog to create a web presence, it’s likely to be a bad idea to share that with potential employers — depending on the content you produce.

Feel free to see my progress:
http://bradjohnston.v2efoliomn.mnscu.edu/

To be continued …