About two weeks ago, when I was checking out my Flickr Stats, which I do everyday because I’m obsessed with the line graph, I happened to see that one of my pictures had 50 views that day. 50 might not sound like a lot for most other Flickr users, but for me 50 is a HUGE amount of views of one picture in a day. I went to see what site the views were coming from and it told me they were coming from the bbc.co.uk website.

Now I thought this we very weird, because the BBC is a big company and why on earth would I be getting clicks from there. I went a little deeper and found it on the BBC Internet Blog on a post about the BBC’s iPlayer for the Nintendo Wii. The odd thing was, my picture, which is of an S-Video port on my laptop, had nothing to do with the Wii. I read through the post and saw that the author was talking about watching shows from your computer on your TV. I thought it was a little weird that my picture got chosen but looking at other first page results from an S-Video search on Flickr, I can see why mine was picked over the others, I just don’t know why a more suitable picture wasn’t chosen.

Well today, the picture made it into my top 10 most viewed pictures on my Flickr photostream. I’m pretty happy my picture got used on the blog site and generated hundreds of views of that picture, but I don’t really care that much. Its nice to have you picture on some biggish website for everyone to see, as long as the picture isn’t crap or humiliating. This is a win for me

Ever since I purchased my Flickr Pro account, I have been using Flickr Uploadr to put my pictures up onto the site instead of using the uploading tool on the site. It is much easier to use because you could just drag and drop pictures from your computers into the application and then just hit the upload button in they will be on the site, easy and quickly. It is so much easier then selecting all the pictures you want to upload through the website.

Recently, they released Flickr Uploadr version 3 and I rushed to get it and play around. My first thoughs were that this beta release still had a few bugs in it. Selecting images and right clicking and choosing “Send To Flickr…” didn’t work as it did in the previous version. It didn’t work at all, the few times I tried to do it that way. The only way I could get my pictures into the new Flickr Uploadr was to open the app and add them in that way. I’m sure this will be fixed and working perfectly when the full release comes.

What this has over the last version is the ability to add metadata to the images so they upload with the image. This means that I don’t have to upload them and go back to the site later to add a title, description, tags and put them in sets and such. All this can be done easily in the application and works perfectly. I have had no issues with it. You can even set who sees the image and the image type as well as easily adding it to multiple sets, including ones that you can create right in the app. This is the biggest feature added to the Flickr Uploadr and is the only reason to use it instead of the older version.

There are some things, other than the bugs, that I would have liked to see added to this. They added the ability to add title and description and such in the app but it would have been nice to have the ability to add those once the picture has started uploading. For the time it would take me to add the information, the picture would have been uploaded by then, instead I have to wait to add the description and then upload the picture. It takes longer for me to do this but shorter than uploading and adding the description on the site later. It would be nice to see them be able to do that but I’m happy with the way it is now.

 Veronica Belmont recently wrote an article on her blog about how she doesn’t like Tumblr. The reason behind it was because of people aggregating their feeds into it. I don’t think that it is enough for you to not like a service because there is a lot more too it than that. I personally think that its the worst feature that Tumblr has but I get over it because very few of the people I follow do import their feeds into it.

But she does have very good points about people aggregating their feeds into sites like Tumblr. I think people shouldn’t do it, especially on Tumblr. Why you may ask, well it is because I don’t want to see your links and such on your tumblelog. If I want to see what you are twittering about, I will follow you on that and/or subscribe to your feed there. Same applies to your pictures, if I wanted to see your pictures, I would be following you on Flickr and seeing you pictures along with everyone elses pictures. This is also the case for all the other services that you are part of.

If I want to see various content, I want to see them together as a group. All my friends tweets, photos, blog post ect. on their own. I don’t want to see the content mixed up. I am fine with having everyone pictures together in a single feed for me to go through. The problem also is that if you do that, I am going to end u seeing your content twice. I don’t want to see it twice because it wastes time. In saying that, if you have something that everyone must see, for example, a very nice shot you took and uploaded to Flickr, that would be acceptable, I just don’t want your whole feed with all your pictures on your tumblelog, or any other service.

If you do that, people are going to get annoyed and frustrated and stop following you and unsubscribe from the feed, so in the long run, you lose. This is a greater loss if you actually use the service for what it was intended, the imported content clutters your actual content and you end up with a mess that few people are following because of it. In saying that, I am sure it is acceptable for you to have a place to import your feeds in one place to give to a contact, or contacts, that don’t follow you everywhere and would still like to see what you do online.

It would be good if there was a service that could deliver that and that only, aggregating content, not creating it. I am sure there are services that do that an I don’t think Tumblr is one of them, even though it is possible. I think it was a mistake to ever put that feature in to be honest. Anyway, I think it is unfair also for someone to dislike a service for something a feature on the site, one that the minority would use. Tumblr is a wonderful service and is definitely my favorite one of 2007. Please keep your feeds of my Tumblr

A couple of days ago, Digg rolled out its new profile page on Digg. There are heaps of differences and everything has changed in a way that you can get a little confused when you first use it but quickly find your way around. The main goal to this is to make the site more social and not just a bookmarking/news finding site. Now let me talk about the new profiles as well as give my opinion on them.

As soon as you enter a person profile page, the changes become apparent. First off, up the top we see the 3 newest favoured stories from the user followed about ten of the users most recent activity, including stories dugg, commented on, submitted and even new friends added and shouts. Under that is the last ten shouts you have received. Down the right hand side is a little about section which includes a space for your bio as well as links to your other internet services, photos, friends, and the usual statistics about your digging habits.

The new profile page is really nice looking and smooth. Having more than just the most recent stories you have dugg and one favourite is really what your profile page should have had from the start. It is also nice to see all the types of activity that a person has recently done on the site, it really shows that there is more to Digg than just digging the stories. Shouts are not a feature I think is that great. It is very similar to Pownce, I wonder why. This feature is a little unneeded in my opinion and if they really wanted to do this, they probably could have integrated it with their Pownce service instead of making it individual to Digg. I don’t use the feature because I don’t see any reason to, it doesn’t add anything and is really not worth using.

Being able to see a little About section about a user is good. It gives you a little background information on who the person is and a little bit about their life outside of Digg. Links to peoples Pownce, Facebook, Flickr, Blog or whatever else they have signed up to is nice. It may be a bit creepy if you have a stalker but otherwise it is a nice feature so you are able to follow your fellow Diggers around other services, not only Digg. They also have the ability to upload pictures to the site for other people to see. This is another useful feature which I think should have been cut. They could have found a way to integrate with a popular service, like Flickr, that everyone already uses instead of making a cheap one themselves. It is also great to be able to see a few of the users friends on this page too.

The profile statistics are really interesting. They have added on the page a space where you can see the most dugg topics the person has dugg in the past 30 days. This is cool because it allows you to see which section and which types of stories the user likes to digg and can help with finding new friends on digg with similar tastes to your digging. It still has the same stats from the old profile page with total stories dugg, commented, submitted, the percentage of your stories that make the front page, friends referred and the number of profile views (that number should start to rise with it being more social and profiles more appealing to look at.)

With the profile pages done up, they haven’t gotten rid of your history page, as well as your friends history page. They are still there but the big difference is that there are now useful filters. You can now filter down to the thing you are looking for, whether it is stories dugg, submitted or even comments and shouts. These filters are on both of these pages and make it much easier to filter through the content. You can always view all activity if that is what you prefer.

With these new features, I have been noticing more people adding friends, including people adding me. They have email notifications for activities you select which has allowed me to follow who is adding me as a friend. It seems now that it is so easy to do and follow people, it is becoming more social and randoms are adding randoms, just like of other social networking sites. I personally won’t be adding randoms because I plan on using the site for what it was primarily set for, news and articles. I am only friending my friends and the few people that digg similar stores as I would.

I think it is nice that they are taking a step into trying to make the site more social but I personally could do without it. I think that they should be concentrating on the news side of things and strengthen there instead of moving in a different are, one which is being done so much that they can really succeed or grow because of it. I am going to stick to doing what I do best, digging, and they should do that too!

Yesterday was International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Many websites partook in this event by either changing the site for the day or creating content. Here are some of the pirate shenanigans I saw yesterday.

Pirate torrent sites, such as The Pirate Bay and Digital Hive changed their logo for the day. The Pirate bay changed their logo to a pirate with text saying “Talk Like A Pirate Day” on it. Digital Hive changed theirs to a pirate and changed the name to Pirate Hive for the day.

Flickr put a pirate flag on their logo for the day. They also had an easter egg in the site, you could change the language to “Arr,” aka, pirate talk. This changed a lot of the text on the site to pirate terms, for example, the golden bars that normally say “new” on them said “gold” instead. They also change some of the words, such as “map” and “contacts” to “treasure map” and “crew.” There were also many “Arr’s” on the site.

Joy of Tech done a cool tech comic, “Rationalize Like a Pirate” Day. The comic consists of a boy watching a pirated movie and his mother behind his asking if he is watching a pirated movie and saying that it is not good. The boy then says that it is not bad, it is green because it is protecting the environment.

All of the sites that made changes have now reverted to their original look with not remains of this day with only screenshots people have taken as evidence of this days existence. Well at least we have a cool, funny comic to remind us of Talk Like A Pirate Day 2007!

Twenty days ago I got an email through Flickr saying four of my photos have been short-listed for inclusion in the third edition of Schmap Christchurch Guide, to be published early September 2007. I was pretty excited and honored that my pictures were considered to be included in a random online guide. I sat here for a while waiting for a verdict and to see if my pictures were or were not chosen.

Yesterday I got another email saying two of my pictures were chosen and included in the guide.

I am delighted to let you know that two of your submitted photos have been selected for inclusion in the newly released third edition of our Schmap Christchurch Guide.

I then went to the site to see my pictures included in the guide, with credit to me. You can see the pictures here under the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve. It is positioned at the right hand side of the page and you can click the arrows to see both pictures. Most of you guys will be like “So what? Its a stupid little online guide and doesn’t mean crap!” and you can be like that if you want but I don’t care, I’m honored to be in that guide!

I found out today, thanks to Peppery, that all Yahoo!Xtra Bubble users get free Flickr Pro. Of course I had to take up this offer so I quickly registered my families ISP email address to this service, and then made a sub-account for myself. This was a quick exercise and I soon had my own Xtra email address. Now was the time to get my free Pro account.

It wasn’t a problem transferring my Flickr account from my Yahoo address to my Xtra address to get my free Pro account. After I done it, I wonder what happens to that money I spent on my still valid Pro account. Does it just keep counting and expire when it is supposed to, sometime in June? If that is the case, can I get a refund or transfer my time left to someone else?

After a bit of research, it turns out that the Pro status I payed for get put on hold and will continue from where it left of either when I leave using my Xtra address or if the contract between Yahoo and my ISP ends. That gives me a lot of releif as I have not waisted $36 NZD on something that I end up getting free.

Thats all the excitement for ones day, parents getting me an iPod and ISP giving me Flickr Pro. http://flickr.com/photos/yum9me/