Hot Dogging

On a less politicized note:

I recently found out about Flickr. And boy, is it freaking cool.

First off, take the idea of a blog. Well, ok, don't take the whole idea of a blog, just take elements from it. Now, instead of text, think of things only in terms of photographs. Remix as appropriate to accomodate the new medium, add in a few amazing tools and clever concepts, and voila - You have Flickr.

Photographs, my own and others, have always been fascinating to me. They evoke memories of a time and place in a way that nothing else can; not writing, not movies. I love looking at pictures others have taken almost as much as my own, because so much is encapsulated in each one: The subject itself, the position from which the picture is taken, and maybe more important than the other two, why the person who took it wanted to share it. Photographs are intimate in ways that most people recognize, and they which ones they choose to let others witness tells as much about the person as the substance of the photograph itself does.

Flickr makes it easy (oh god, I sound like the dot commie I am) to indulge this bit of voyeurism while making it easy to engage in a little bit off exhibitionism myself. It doesn't lend itself to dumping every single picture you have (well, unless you don't have a lot, but that's not me) online due to what I think are very fair upload limits, but instead encourages sharing the slices of your life, realized through photos, that you want others to see.

They have the elements you'd expect from any modern blogging application; groups for example, with semi-forums although the text is definitely kept to a minimum (my favorite -- A recipe group, the recipes done in photo sequences with little notes for ingredients. Art meets arty food.) Easy ways to update and manage your pictures (Check out their Organizr, possibly the most useful flash application ever written). Comments, of course, with various notification methods (RSS feeds for comments on your photos -- Hell yeah.)

They even toss in a couple of other neat little things. Check out their Popuar Tags page, with text size acting as an indicator of popularity. (The tags are RSS feeds too.) Their Notes functionality is addicting, as you'll see if you play with it. Shared group let you add and remove pictures from a common pool of images. Automatic blogging of images you upload to a blog you select.

And all of this through an interface so intuitive it's almost scary. To say I'm addicted is an understatement. Which is why I have my camera with my virtually everywhere I go now; it's rekindled a somewhat flagging interest in just keeping my PowerShot handy and snapping things I see around me in everyday life. And to me, that alone makes it worth the exorbitant fee Flickr charges for their service -- Zero. Free, while in beta, and maybe afterwards too.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go take some photographs.