Photojojo: Photojojo’s Favorite Flickr Add-ons and Mashups

Awesome article from Photojojo about Flickr tools. Some of these I’ve used personally in the past, but some (like SmartSetr) are welcome new additions that should save a lot of time and energy. Nice!

We loooove Flickr. We want to marry Flickr.

What’s funny about our infatuation, though, is that it involves quite a few other people.

No, no, not like that. We’re talking about the clever developers who have transformed Flickr into the dynamic and lovable photo site that it is. Their creamy vanilla tools and bavarian dark chocolate add-ons are the frosting on the Flickr (cup)cake.

While there are many, many Flickr mashups out there, we’ve scoured through hundreds to bring you our favorite useful and fun ones.

Without further ado…

Photojojo’s Fave Flickr Add-ons and Mashups

p.s. Did we miss one you like? Tell us about it!

(via Photojojo’s Favorite Flickr Add-ons and Mashups)

JIRA: Linking to local file under Firefox

Very helpful article from Atlassian…

Wiki markup allows you to links to files on the network / server with the format:

[file:///c:/temp/foo.txt]

This works fine under Internet Explorer, but Firefox and Mozilla block links to local files for security purposes. If you are happy with the risk of linking to local content, you can override the security policy and also enable linking in Firefox

The instructions for this can be found at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Links_to_local_pages_don’t_work and you may also want to check out the other network preferences.

Please note that you need to use full URL syntax for your link (from http://kb.mozillazine.org)

You also need to use proper URI syntax for local file references. It is not proper to enter an operating-system-specific path, such as c:\subdir\file.ext without converting it to a URI, which in this case would be file:///c:/subdir/file.ext. In general, a file path is converted to a URI by adding the scheme identifier file:, then three forward slashes (representing an empty authority or host segment), then the path with all backslashes converted to forward slashes.

(via confluence.atlassian.com)

ICK! Color Profile FAIL!

Update: Here’s the link to the Samsung 225BW driver and color profile:
Samsung 225BW Driver

ICK! Color Profile FAIL

I’ve been having ridiculous problems with the color profiles on my Samsung SyncMaster 225BW. I’m pretty sure that it’s not Samsung’s fault, since the monitor is by far the best I’ve ever had, but any color-profile aware application ends up looking like crap (see screenshot above, or this blog post).

Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to get the original CD/software for the monitor if you’ve lost it, but it seems that the best workaround for this is to remove the existing (faulty) color profile and replace it with a working color profile, such as one from Adobe:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/iccprofiles/icc_eula_win_end.html

To do this:

  1. Download the Adobe ICC Windows Color Profile from this link:
    http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/iccprofiles/icc_eula_win_end.html
  2. Unzip the archive and navigate to the folder “RGB Profiles”
  3. Right click on “AdobeRGB1998.icc” and choose “Install Profile”
  4. To ensure that the profile is enabled, right click on the desktop, choose “Properties”, click the “Settings” tab, then the “Advanced…” button.
  5. Once in the Advanced Properties, click the “Color Management” tab.
  6. Remove any existing profile by clicking remove, then click “Add…” and choose “AdobeRGB1998.icc” from the folder displayed and click “Add”
  7. Click “Set as Default”, OK, then OK again to close the window.
  8. Then restart Windows.

For reference, your color profile dialog should look like this:

2008-07-23_154156

Hope this helps!

Flickr: Firefox 3 is now Color Managed

This post to the Canon EF 28-135 IS group on Flickr is incredibly helpful:

noeltykay is a group administrator noeltykay Pro User says:

  1. Type about:config in Firefox 3’s address bar and press Return. The configuration settings will appear.
  2. In the Filter field, type gfx. The list of settings will shorten to show just those related to graphics, ie gfx.
  3. If the Value for gfx.color_management.enabled is False, double-click anywhere on that line to toggle the setting to True.
  4. Quit and relaunch Firefox 3 and you’re in business. You can confirm that colour management is working by viewing the photos on this page. If all four quadrants of the first photo are a seamless match, then colour management in your copy of Firefox is up and running.

(thread here: Color Management PSA: Firefox 3 is now Color Managed.)

Update: In case you missed it, here’s the color profile test page:
http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter

dPS: How to Win Friends and Influence People – A Guide to Commenting on Other People’s Photos

Great post about how to effectively comment on Flickr photos. (I’ll admit, I’m guilty of the two-word-comment myself, so this is good advice for me, personally.)

One of the ten things I hate about Flickr is people who don’t know how to comment on photos. In a recent post to my blog, I lamented the number of comments I receive on my photos which consist of only one or two words: “Frankly, I don’t care if you think my photo’s “Awesome!”, I care even less if you think it’s a “Cool photo”. I’ve put a lot of work into it, I’d genuinely like to know what you think of it and why. If you’re going to comment, why not take the extra 30 seconds, engage your brain, and say something insightful.”

In the lively discussion that followed, it occurred to me that these commenters may not just be lazy. Some said they don’t feel confident enough, or have enough knowledge to feel worthy of making a comment. Others said they have a hard time expressing their feelings. And some simply don’t know what to say. I want to help fix that.

Even though a discussion about Flickr prompted this guide, and the examples I use are all from Flickr, it applies equally well to any online photography or art community, where people comment on the works uploaded by others.

(continued at digital Photography School)

PhotoChallenge.org » July Challenge

I’ve been working on this myself lately. Very cool challenge, and very cool website. =)

So it’s been a month since we finished the April and May Challenges, back-to-back. I kinda felt bored with my photography in June. Not only did I not get much done, I didn’t get out and shoot very much.

Now, I know that I need to take a break from the monthly challenges, occasionally. Every other month is the best pattern. I get a month to rest and develop the next exciting challenge, then off we go! Shooting all month long then becomes exciting and fun. Seeing what you’re all doing only challenges me even more. So far we’ve shot daily challenges and weekly challenges. We’ve even done one in the middle. I’d say that I actually prefer the daily challenges. It gets me out and shooting on a regular basis. Making the effort every day isn’t really that hard. When we’ve shot weekly, I find that I procrastinate until the end of the week, and I come up with lower quality work.

So, we’re going to shoot daily, again. Don’t like it? Too bad! (he, he)

For July, I want you to go out there and shoot all the lighting fixtures that you can find. Shoot desk lamps and floor lamps. Shoot street lights and head lights. Shoot flood lamps and brake lights.

PhotoChallenge.org » July Challenge

WebUrbanist: Abandoned Cities, Places and Property

Great article from WebUrbanist about abandoned places and websites related to these abandonments…

amazing-abandonments

What is it about abandoned places, frozen in time, that makes them seem more real than any other representation of history we encounter? From individual structures to entire communities, abandonments large and small inspire the imagination and tell us things about the past in a visceral way. Capturing moments in time, deserted cities, towns, buildings and other abandoned property can be powerfully evocative. Many people break laws, trespass on private property and risk life and limb to explore and photograph abandoned places.

(continue reading at: Abandoned Cities, Places and Property | WebUrbanist)

The Simple Dollar: 100 Things to Do During a Money Free Weekend

This is excellent advice, and good fun, at that! About a year ago, I offered up the idea of the money-free weekend:

For the last few months, my wife and I have been doing something every other weekend or so that we call a “money free” weekend, in an effort to live more frugally. It’s actually quite fun – here’s how we do it. We are not allowed to spend any money on anything, no matter what. In other words, we can’t make a run to the store to buy food, we can’t spend money on any sort of entertainment, and so on. Since we often do our grocery shopping on Saturdays, on a “money free” weekend, we delay it to Monday or Tuesday. We can use our utilities, but no extra expenses on these utilities. No renting movies on cable, no text messages that aren’t already covered by our cell phone plan, and so on.

I followed this up with fifteen things to do during such a weekend, fifteen more things to do, and fifteen deeply fulfilling things to do during such a weekend. Since then, lots of people have sent me ideas for activities for money-free weekends, plus we’ve uncovered a bunch of our own. At the same time, many readers have asked for a master list of all of these ideas. So, here we go – one hundred fun ways to spend a money free weekend. The list below includes the first forty-five (with duplicates removed), plus about sixty new ones. Print this off and use it as a checklist or a thumbnail guide for your own money-free weekend. Please note that everyone’s interests are different – you probably won’t find everything on this list fun and neither will someone else, but the two lists won’t overlap (I can think of countless things other people find fun that I find utterly dreadful). Anyway, here goes! (continued at The Simple Dollar)

Flickr Blog: Woman gets struck by lightning.

Because you insisted, here’s the unedited screaming version. I also added video from a minute before the lightning struck so you can get an idea of how hard it was raining. From what i understand, it went through my left hand holding the camera, crossed my back and exited out of my right hand holding onto the metal railing. No entry or exit wounds, just a really good zap!

Seriously. Wow. Here’s the original post:

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/07/10/lightning-through-my-camera/

(Unfortunately, WordPress hasn’t caught on to Flickr’s video posting yet, so you’ll have to click the link to see the video. =P)

Juche Girl

If you know me, or have read my blog in the past, you’re probably familiar with my fascination with North Korea (DPRK) and everything related to it. So, when I found the “Juche Girl” blog (http://juchegirl.blogspot.com/) today, I was ecstatic. Here’s a sample post from her blog:

Pervert Bush

I cry very much today because of Bush. Today my brother show me video of Bush who fly inside Germany country with his plane and make vicious sex attack from behind on poor downtrodden woman victim of US imperialism and now I’m scared Bush will fly into our home tonight and rape my mother TT.TT I hate Bush!
I hate Bush. Bush is such liar and pervert. I hope his plane fall out of the sky and he dies with face folded. >_<

And another…

Evil Bush strike more but Dear Leader is best


Bush oppress the poor downtrodden people of the world for his own sick twisting pleasure. My brother who is very smart show me picture of Bush who pick up handicap people in wheelchair and toss them on the ground for laughing like maniac with the vampire Cheney. >.<
Dear Leader never do that. Dear Leader make the handicap walk and the blind see. Dear Leader is always full of loving care for the people.
Once Dear Leader went for giving guidance to handicap hospital with one room full of people who had lost an arm or leg in accidents of construction sites building the great powerfull prosperous country. Dear Leader distributed arms and legs to who needed arms and legs and when Dear Leader had finished distributing arms and legs all the people who had missing arms and legs did not miss one arm or leg no longer! Bush can’t do that but Dear Leader can.

Wow. Just wow. I love it.

For those of you who have no idea what this is all about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche

…And the blog itself can be found here:

http://juchegirl.blogspot.com/

Burlington Cold War City

I’ve always been fascinated by urban exploration and abandoned/decommissioned buildings and structures (as evidenced by my category Fascinations\Urban Spelunking), so this article definitely piqued my interest:

burlington_bunker_600

If you thought The Greenbrier bunker was impressive wait till you see what the UK kept hidden under a small town in the UK.

A 35 acre subterranean Cold War City that lies 1000 feet beneath Corsham. Built in the late 50s this massive city complex was designed by Government personnel in the event of a nuclear strike. A former Bath stone quarry the city, code named Burlington, was to be the site of the main Emergency Government War Headquarters – the hub of the Country’s alternative seat of power outside London.
Over a kilometre in length, and boasting over 60 miles of roads. Blast proof and completely self-sufficient the secret underground site could accommodate up to 6,000 people, in complete isolation from the outside world, for up to three months.
An underground lake and treatment plant could provide all the drinking water needed whilst 12 huge tanks could store the fuel required to keep the four massive generators, in the underground power station, running for up to three months. And unlike most urban cities, above ground, the air within the complex could also be kept at a constant humidity and heated to around 20 degrees. The city was also equipped with the second largest telephone exchange in Britain, a BBC studio from which the PM could address the nation and an internal Lamson Tube system that could relay messages, using compressed air, throughout the complex.
Below are some photos of the unused facilities. It was maintained in working order until the late 1980’s until it was cut back to a staff of 4 and then decommissioned in December 2005.

The article quoted above can be found here:

And more information from the BBC can be found here:

PostSecret: How It All Began

47

In January 2004, I started the “reluctant oracle” project. Every Sunday, I created an released a new work to be discovered. They were discovered by people serendipitously. The story found local, national and international media coverage.

The last message from “reluctant oracle” bore the message, “You will find your answers in the secrets of strangers.” The next Sunday the PostSecret began.

pc4

Cool story!
http://www.postsecretcommunity.com/news-faq/postsecret-story

Windows Photo Gallery: Beige Color Fix

This seems to be a pretty common problem in Windows Vista, related to invalid/corrupt color profiles – if you’re experiencing this issue, you’ll see a beige color bleeding through the image from the background where a white background should be. Here’s an example (thanks to matthewrowan.spaces.live.com!):

y1peejIUGYPM8zDoJaegMIgj9nEaEGrjRanJxPnScs5Sp86J0gPCSgjq4-F7gqit588xrwVgylDrYKa16ExRjk-rH7GnOfOvTwy

And, what it should look like:

y1peejIUGYPM8xXMUvoFe67RkGS6QClTfxgodJ5jY8KXI_1qvGbg__j3RMzUqSl2adkwpVBj27SDeswgKQAQqhgVDGBdIRqtaU6

Luckily, there is a fix (again, via matthewrowan.spaces.live.com):

After a little searching for how to change the background color, I found other people with this symptom describing it as an off color, yellow tint, orange or yellowish tinge, beige, cream colored background which, shows through the picture itself, distorts the colours, or bleeds through pictures. In most situations the problem went away in slide show mode. This was an annoying issue, making me avoid looking at pictures whatsoever in Windows Photo Gallery. This wasn’t that much of an issue because I do not use photos or pictures often on my development machine. But before I was going to install Vista on my other computer where I view photos constantly, I needed to ensure that I would not have this issue.

The solution can be found here:
Windows Vista Photo Gallery Yellow Tint Background Problem

(via Windows Photo Gallery background color bleeding through pictures)

dPS: 20 Photography Tips from Our Twitter Followers

Great list from digital Photography School’s blog:

Last week I asked some DPS readers who follow this blog via Twitter (our account is here) to share some of their photography tips with us.

The catch was that they had to do it in 140 characters or less (the limit that Twitter allows per message). Here’s a collection of 20 of their photography tips:

  1. “I would recommend any serious photographer a Tripod. It’s indispensable for any photography & most if your hands won’t stay still” – maniar
  2. “don’t spend your time looking at the lcd screen…you end up missing fantastic moments. The pictures will still be there later!” – burks
  3. “Shoot in RAW mode if your camera has it. Offers so many more opportunities for editing than shooting in JPEG” – PattyHankins
  4. “don’t just stand there. Instead of moving the camera, move yourself…” – XmasB
  5. “Always remove the lens cover.” – fireeducator
  6. “Get closer to the object.” – Celebtur
  7. “Expensive equipment don’t make great photos. Great photographers do.” – quicklunarcop
  8. “Fill the Frame” – ebradlee10
  9. “shoot the magic hours(!!); remember the exposure triangle; look for a new/unique angle on your subject. :-)” – laepelba
  10. “Keep taking photos, look at your photos, then take more photos. Learn from your mistakes and don’t be afraid to experiment.” – NeilCreek

(continued at digital Photography School)

WordPress.com: How do I get more views and traffic?

This is pretty self-serving, but could be useful to you if you’re a blogger as well:

How do I get more views and traffic?

If you feel like you’re not getting the amount of traffic to your blog that you’d like, there are a few things you can do to try bring a few more folks to your blog. Here’s a quick summary.

Bug your real-life friends

Almost everybody has 10-20 friends and family members they can coerce into reading their blog. Send them reminder emails when you update, talk to them about it when you meet in person, just generally encourage it as a new form of communication between you guys. Often having a really small audience of people you care about is better than having a million visitors and not knowing any of them.

Read and comment on other blogs

Use a search engine like Sphere to find the people who care about the same stuff you do. Then subscribe to their blog using a RSS reader like Bloglines and get to know them a bit. When you see an article that interests you click through to their site and leave a comment with your thoughts.

Link to other blogs

Just like you love getting links, so do other folks. (Remember, blogging is all about people.) When you link to another blogger or blog entry they’ll often find your blog through their stats, Technorati, or a pingback and come to see what you had to say. If you’re interesting, they may even subscribe to you and leave comments just like we suggested you do above.

(continued at http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/11/15/more-traffic/)

WordPress.com: How do I send out update pings?

This is really cool; I was trying to find a “fix” for the outdated instructions on Technorati.com to have my blog ping Technorati and found this article instead. Nice work, WordPress!

How do I send out update pings?

Many services like Technorati, Feedster, Icerocket, Google Blog Search, and many others want a “ping” from you to know you’ve updated so they can index your content. In most blog software and blogging services you have to manually go to different websites to send let them know you’ve updated, and we’ve had a few questions from people who want to know if they have to do the same on WordPress.com.

Nope! We handle it all for you. When you post we send a ping to Ping-O-Matic – http://pingomatic.com – which then distributes it out to 15+ different services, all automatically. We want things to be as easy as possible for our users, so it’s another thing you just don’t have to worry about. 🙂

http://faq.wordpress.com/2005/09/28/update-pings/

VirtualBox: Free Virtualization Software

800px-VirtualBox

I’ve been using VMware Player for quite some time, and it’s quite good, but recently, I stumbled upon another free virtualization tool which also allows you to create new VM images (VMware Player only plays back VMware images created with a purchased version, such as VMware Workstation, or through a website such as EasyVMX: http://www.easyvmx.com/)

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox):

VirtualBox is an x86 virtualization software package originally created by German software company Innotek and now being developed by Sun Microsystems as part of its Sun xVM virtualization platform. It is installed on an existing host operating system; within this application, additional operating systems, each known as a Guest OS, can be loaded and run, each with its own virtual environment. For example, Linux can be guest hosted on a single virtual machine running Microsoft Windows XP as the Host OS; or, XP and Windows Vista can run as guest OSes on a machine running OpenSolaris.

Supported host operating systems include Linux, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp, Windows, and Solaris, while supported guest operating systems include FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, OS/2 Warp, Windows and Solaris.[1]

According to a 2007 survey by DesktopLinux.com, VirtualBox is the third most popular software package for running Windows programs on Linux desktops.[2]

So far, so good, with the exception of a little glitch I experienced while installing FreeDOS. Ubuntu runs quite well, and quite fast, as far as I can tell.

A particularly cool element of VirtualBox is the “Seamless Desktop” mode, similar to what is found in Parallels or VMware Fusion on the Macintosh:

750px-Virtualbox15seamless

Considering the level of functionality given for free, which is quite similar to the functionality you’d have to pay for in VMware or Parallels, I’m tempted to stick with VirtualBox for the near future and put it through its paces.

If you’re curious about VirtualBox yourself, you can find a copy here:

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

and more directly, here:

Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6 Download

Update:

Here are some links to download pre-made VirtualBox images:

http://virtualbox.wordpress.com/

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=213555