Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
I’ve been an amateur shutterbug for years.
Photo Drop is a slick little Dashboard widget — actually, one of the first that was slick and potentially useful enough for me to download and toss in to my Dashboard, which isn’t exactly the most-used OS X feature on my system. It’s a nice, simple one-trick pony: drag a photo to Photo Drop, set a few quick options for the final look (size, effects, etc.), and you’re done. Plus, it’s free. Not bad!
I’m exploring ImageKind, which gives Flickr members (and others) a convenient way to sell prints of their artwork. It looks interesting so far, though I’ve just spent a few minutes poking around while I’m in between classes.
I’ve set a few photos available to sell — take a look, see what you think. If there’s any particular shots of mine that you’d like to be able to buy (or that you just think should be in there), let me know and I’ll get them added.
We’ll see how this goes….
On the one hand, I really like the new collections organization structure that Flickr just added. It’s not perfect, but it’s nice to have more control over organizing my photos.
However, the interface is getting…well, cluttered is about the nicest way to put it. By the time I’m looking at one of my sets, I’ve got no less than five different sets of toolbar/breadcrumb buttons above the pictures!
Line 2 (constant): The main navigation menu bar, where every option (save ‘Home’ and the search field) is a drop-down menu with more options.
Line 3 (appears when navigating within collections): The ‘breadcrumb’ trail leading from the user’s main page to the individual set.
Line 4 (appears when viewing your own set, not visible for other people): Set-level editing options. 3/5 of the items are dropdown menus.
Line 5 (constant): Set-level view options, available to everyone looking at the set.
It’s getting to the point where it’s UI overload — which is doubly grating on a site that’s normally incredibly well-designed and remarkably intuitive to navigate through. By the time all five toolbars appear, not only does it push the photos (which, I believe, are supposed to be the focus of the site) pretty far down the page, but I’m starting to lose track of which options are hidden in which set of menus or links!
Additionally, while the breadcrumb navigation (Line 3) is a necessary addition now that Collections allow you to organize your sets and collections up to five levels deep, it feels kind of abandoned — just shoehorned in somewhere — and quite possibly easily missed. Since that breadcrumb line is the only indication that a set is part of a collection and might have other, related sets ‘nearby,’ it seems that it should be better and more obviously integrated into the overall design. Perhaps somewhere around the set title and Line 5? Over the title, or either under or integrated with Line 5?
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what the best solution might be. This just strikes me as an area where there’s a lot of room for improvement.
(Said in your best Crocodile Dundee voice) “You call that a zoom lens? Now, that’s a zoom lens!”
According to DPReview, there’s “no news on price, availability or weight yet.” Weight. Heh.
(via Carpe Icthus)
I’ve submitted two photos to JPG Magazine for possible inclusion in their next issue, one each for their themes of Entropy and Breakthrough. If you’re a JPG member, click through and toss a vote my way!
Okay…
Um…
Well, the fancy little Javascript boxes are fighting with the CSS in my WordPress theme. This post is just going to look goofy, at best.
That’s also why I’ve got a bunch of silly extra lines put in here to open space up.
Whee!
If you can’t even see the fancy little Javascript boxes (which might be the case on LiveJournal), try just clicking here and here…
Consider this firmly on my wishlist come Christmastime: not only has Apple just upgraded Aperture to version 1.5, but Frasier Spiers has announced the first beta of an Aperture version of his excellent FlickrExport plugin (I consider the iPhoto version of FlickrExport an unconditional must-have for iPhoto/Flickr integration, along with Ken Ferry’s Keyword Assistant).
Even better, the educational pricing for Aperture is just $150 — half off the standard retail of $299.
It’s not a critical need, but it’s definitely a wishlist item. So pretty…
There’s plenty of toys floating around the ‘net that integrate with Flickr in various ways, but this morning I just found a really nice way to create a very slick gallery style presentation: Photofront. A few clicks create a simple Flash-based photo presentation that can either be hosted on the Photofront site or embedded into your own site as I’ve done. Nicely done!
“There’s No Business Like Show Business” by Merman, Ethel from the album Songs and Music from the Diamond Collection (2002, 2:32).
Just a few months after getting my D70s, Nikon’s wrapped up their 20-day teaser campaign by introducing the Nikon D80. Overall, it looks really good — the only thing I see that doesn’t really excite me is that the D80 uses SD rather than Compact Flash (which was one of the reasons I chose the CF-based D70s rather than the SD-based D50), but it makes sense given SD’s dominance of the small camera market.
Brief specs on the D80 (vs D70s):
Looks really, really nice. Given the switch to SD, when it comes time for me to upgrade in a few years I’ll likely be looking at the D200 (or whatever the current camera at that point in Nikon’s lineup is at the time) so I can stick with the CF cards I have now, but the D80 will definitely be fun to play with when it shows up at work. Theoretically, the D80 should be available for sale in September…we’ll see how quickly Nikon can actually get these on to the shelves (the D200, announced in Nov. 2005, has just started showing up regularly on store shelves).
More detailed looks at the D80 are at DP Review, Rob Galbraith DPI and Let’s Go Digital.
Also announced were the AF-S DX 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED (the kit lens for the D80) and the AF-S VR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED.
“MANYMEN ARE ZOMBIES” by Jadmix from the album jadmix@gmail.com (5:15).
“Are these real?” I asked myself as I scrolled down the row of pictures on the webpage.
Prairie started giggling. “That’s the kind of thing most guys would say while they’re looking at porn.”
I laughed. “I am!”
“I know,” she said. “That’s what makes it so funny!”
“Temptation” by New Order from the album Trainspotting (1983, 7:00).
One of the newer (newest?) additions to FD’s Flickr Toys is this cute lil’ banner image. Your choice of recent images, recent ‘interesting’ images, random images, or random ‘interesting’ images from your photostream. Slick and easy to set up — here’s the generator.
As may be obvious by the photos shown in the banner, I’ve been working on playing catch up with my photos off and on over the past few days. Fourth of July photos are coming soon (gee, what, two weeks late?)….
“Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1: Prelude #17 in A-flat” by Gulda, Friedrich from the album Bach for Book Lovers (1997, 1:38).
