Flickr finally comes through

Webshots is still too difficult for me. I can't find the options I want. But, Flickr has finally got my photos available, and everything there is working well.

Regarding Flickr

Well, after 5 weeks they finally approved my account. So, I figured NOW I can do that search of tags. My photos STILL don't show up in a search!!! I would contact them to ask what's going on, but apparently they have no interest in hearing from me unless it's to tell them, "please take my money!" I guess folks are right; Flickr Sucks big time!! I tried Webshots, but they don't have any way to change tags on photos once they are uploaded. Let me guess; I have to give them money to make changes!!! Are there any other photo sites? Any that actually do a decent job even when you arent' paying them??? It seems to me that finding my photos in a search or changing my tags are pretty basic features!!!!!

My Space, etc

I do not care for this site. It seems trashy, pushy, and kind of dirty. But, I did have fun making up a profile and pretending to be someone else. I hope we don't do much else with that site.

Social networking sites

At first I thought it was kind of silly for libraries to post to these sites. For as long as I can remember the young have been "creating" trends, and therefore culture (or something like that) and the old have been thinking the young to be silly. That makes it obvious that I am not only not one of the young anymore, but I'm going to have to stay on my toes not to turn into one of the old (I hope it's not already too late).
Most people think of patrons as being customers of the library. I would like to suggest that a patron is any citizen, and we need to be where the patrons are (within reason of course). There are patrons using these social sites quite regularly; that's where they are; we SHOULD be there for them. I don't know if I will use these sites after I've finished with 2.0, but just because it's not my scene doesn't mean the library shouldn't be there for people who dig it.

RSS Feeds

Well, this seems like it could be really useful. I've subscribed to quite a few. I'm still confused about how this will save me time. Even if I could've gotten the feed to all my favorite sites, I'd still have to check each feed. How is that better than checking the website itself? Plus, apparently if I've already checked it today I can no longer see the feed and have to go to the site anyway. I don't get it.

Mashups

After exploring all the links given for the exercise I've concluded that the trading cards are the only useful mashup so far. I thought the mosaics might be neat, but, as my Flickr account is still being reviewed my pictures don't show up on any of the searches, plus the Montager cheats; it shades the thumbnails to re-create the given photo. The spelling one just uses pictures of letters to spell words, so that was disappointing. But the trading cards make up for all of them, because I am using them for my foster dogs. This gives me small items to hand to potential adopters with a picture and a little info... Although, come to think of it, I didn't use photos from flickr, so does it really count as a mashup??