This weeks fun thing was Flickr. I did start playing with flickr about a month ago to try and get my lame photography a few more hits. Flickr is a fun little tool. I don't find it quite as convenient as using my own website to host Picassa slideshows of my work, but Picassa is more of a desktop application that, if you have your own webpage, will format the photos into a simple presentation for you.
So well first here is a picture I took at Assateague Island of a young boy playing in the surf:
So I post that, image is hosted by flickr. I liked this photo alot for some reason. I'm not particularly drawn to young boys or them playing in water, but theres a certain memory in it for me, of when I was that young and going to the ocean for the first time and how exciting and frightening it was.
Anyways, back on topic. I decided to play around with the "Color Fields Colr" 3rd party utility for flickr. This utility makes something very complex, very simple. You choose a color from the palette presented you and it then scans flickr for a photo where that color is the dominant element in the photo. A simple example is, you click green, and you get pictures of limes and grass.
This was quite interesting and could actually serve multiple purposes. It could help children to learn how to associate colors with certain things. Also help an artist get idea of color usage. This site though also stems to an idea I once had but lack the knowledge to follow through on it. I once thought of a search engine to where you would upload your photo of something and the search tool would locate what it could possibly be in the photo, details about it, and then add your photo to its database so others can reference it as well.
That might not be clear, so let me give an example. Suppose a person flying over Baltimore takes a photo of Fort McHenry from the air.
(well not exactly a satelite image but you know what I mean)
This guy gets home and goes "wow, I wonder what that is in my picture!?"
He would upload the image to (insert catchy, cliche search engine name here).com and the search results would first turn up Fort McHenry, Baltimore, War of 1812, National Anthem, Francis Scott Key, Fort McHenry Tunnel, I-95, Pentagon (The maybe but just wrong result), Starfish (random 5 legged creature that is the good intention result), Hot Babes of Fort McHenry (porn always has to turn up in a search result, its the American Way), and ilovehotdogs.com (the "oh my god, how is this even possible but I must click" search result).
Then this image would also be stored for reference by the engine, so then people will get multiple photos of fort mchenry, and its hot babes that are waiting for you!
Needless to say this technology probably is just starting to be made, if things like the color search is on the net and works fairly well, now its just getting something to recognize shapes and then unique features.
I don't know why I go off on these tangents, but its an idea, and thats what this thing is all about right?
And in other news, the iPhone I believe went on sale the other day. So much hype for a cellphone that can do other things you shouldn't do while driving. Toys like these, though awesome, are leading away from a techological innocence people had and turning more into ignorance. For a little bit of time, it was understandabe that people didn't realize driving and being on the phone could be dangerous. People know it now and still do dumb things even more.
My time on the Internet Help Desk really showed this. Pop-up ads, trojan horses, viruses, stealth dialers, and other "mal-ware" have been around since before I got my first computer with Internet capabilities connected in 1996. I learned quick at the age of 16 that sites with lots of pictures take a long time to load, pages with pop-ups are annoying and slow. Eventually you notice the computer is slower and realize those pages install things on your computer. So, you find them, clean them and avoid them in the future. This issue, when I was answering calls from 2004-2006, was the primary reason why people were talking to me. But, it wasn't different people, it was the same 1% of the customer base calling everyday to tell me WE installed this ugly stuff on their computer. I can forgive one or two calls, but after 5, you aren't innocent anymore, you are ignorant. The whole point of this program so far, seems to try and fight this and make us take responsibility for our own ignorance. Take for instance the case of the person driving a car over a spike strip. One time, its ok, you didn't see the sign to go the other way and blow out your tires. The mechanic gets a good laugh out of it, and so does the person. Say this pattern continues for 5 days. The mechanic, though making a great business off of tire sales to this special customer, is going to get angry and frustrated because he is tired of the fact that this person is not learning. There are two failures here; the patron is dumb and fails to learn, and the mechanic is failing to educate. At some point the mechanic needs to grab the customer by the shoulders, shake them violently, and tell them not to go out of the lot that way any more. This applies to us in that we must learn these things not for us (Imagine if that mechanic didn't know how to change a tire, you wouldn't ask him for help for other things, would you), but we must learn these things so we can educate those who don't know. This story does backhandedly say that theres a real potential that with some customers I was a bad technician, that I didn't properly educate the customer to get them to solve this issue on their own. This program isn't just to make us more tech savvy, but make us educators for those less savvy than us. There will always be someone with a question to which we don't know the answer, we must accept that, but ignorance on our part leads to closed mindedness, while the innocent approach will lead us to learning along with the customer and generally preparing us for the next.
More on this topic in later posts. Have a good one, be safe. Peace
Special Thanks to:
http://www.geocities.com/baltforts/
http://www.krazydad.com/colrpickr/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8763101@N02/ - my flickr site
http://sig.bounceme.net/sig -my personal website where I use Picassa to create slideshows
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FACT: The average office chair with wheels will travel 8 miles this year.
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