Slashdot Mirror
Photoblog Revolution
An anonymous reader writes "How about doing a story based on photoblogs? They're quickly becoming the next cool thing in the blog world. A photo a day - a visual diary. It would just be interesting, especially since you're interested in blogs and art. The links included are some of the more popular ones from database photoblogs.org."
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The *next* cool thing? Hiptop users have been photo/moblogging for years and there are several sites available just for hiptop users to blog to. I just recently bought a hiptop and even more recently received a camera for it. While I'm not necessarily into "blogging" I do enjoy posting random pictures of where I am for people to see. I sometimes post to one of the hiptop moblogging sites but I generally take pictures for my personal site.
;-)
My "mobile gallery" is powered by Gallery and a simple bash script to import my photos from email attachments. I normally don't put captions on the pictures but sometimes I do. They are just usually there for me to remember something specific about the day or place I was. It's nice not to have to be carrying around my full sized digital camera and waiting till I get home to upload photos for friends/family/slashdotters to see.
My mobile pics are here and the entire photo album changelog is here if you're interested. If your cell phone (or hiptop) has a camera and you'd like to use procmail and Gallery to host your own mobile pics the quick and dirty script to do so is here. There are some requirements (munpack and galleryadd which are both linked to in the document listed above and obviously procmail).
YMMV on what you need to install and whether you like how my photos are sorted
I love how every pet project becomes the "next cool thing"...?
With each breath in, a flower somewhere opens; with each breath out, a flower withers away. In between lies beauty.
It all begins with this? And now everybody wants his/her life found by others?
These photoblogs with no text are especially good because they don't impose a subjective opinion on a subject, and readers are free to interprete those photos.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
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Photoblogging, cell-phone blogging, "moblogging." Any word you call it, it's already been covered on Slashdot:
m l?tid=95 m l?tid=149 m l?tid=137
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/01/08/2034213.sht
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/02/23/2047233.sht
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/04/30/1619209.sht
The subject of photoblogging reminds me quite a bit of "lomography," which has apparently taken off among certain circles. It gets its name from a Russian camera called the Lomo which is a consumer "point and shoot" camera with some unusual properties as far as quality goes.
Anything and Everything is a good place to start checking out lomography.
"Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon!" -- Montgomery Scott, ST:III
The story is that it's no big surprise that graphics-intensive Web sites can't survive a good Slashdotting.
PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
Ok, why does everyone always have to do the same thing? Why are these "the next big thing?" The next big what?
Seriously though, it is like everyone is just waiting for someone else to tell them what to do in life. Hey buddy you should start a "photoblog," because everyone else is.
By the way, the term "blog" is so irritating. Is anyone else annoyed when they hear this term used? When I hear it I cringe just like when I used to hear "the information super-highway."
Must be, since I've never heard of it....
Gee, that link isn't clickable. What? Didn't want hundreds of thousands of people getting to your server? Here, let me help.
of the picture-a-day kind a nice way to get you to go out and shoot a ton of pictures. I don't think there is a better way of actually learning to take half-decent pictures. I've run mine for just over two months now and it is not as easy as it seems.
My photolog
For there to be a "next" cool thing, there would have to have been a "first" cool thing.
Since there has never been anything "cool" about your online diaries, I'm confused as to what this means.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I know that most of us would rather host our own websites, but for the majority out there, they use Blogger or some other free site. The only problem I've found with them is that you can't upload pictures, which is where the whole photo-blog idea fits in. I say, use TinyPic just like tinyURL.com for whenever I need to add a photo to a blog entry. (like this one from a camera phone). Basically, you can upload a normal file-sized picture, and they'll host it.
If you blog it...
I love photography, and looking at photographs. But any urge I have to do so is usually far better served by looking at random images on PBase rather than following any particular photo blog.
Really, who travels anywhere interesting every day? The photos end up being kind of random but also kind of boring. I think probably what would be a lot more interesting would be a meta-photo-blog, that sorted through all the drek from photo blogs around the world and posted some of the most intersting stuff each day. I imagine there are already a few hundred such sites since there are no new ideas on the internet, I'd love to know of them if so. A google search didn't really get anything.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People just like pictures
But the novelty soon wears off. When was the last time you jumped at the chance to see someone's holiday photos?
The real good news is, Roland Piquepaille will be forced to follow the new blogging trend to stay cool, and therefore whoever hosts his lame blog now (Primidi, it seems) will make him pay dearly for the bandwidth at the first sign of self-redirected Slashdot traffic, therefore negating the advertising revenues he derives from the activity.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Blogging isn't new. Photoblogging isn't new either. What is new is a site called Multiply which is a convergence of digital content publishing and management, and the "six degrees of separation" of sites like Orkut and Friendster (heck you can even import your Orkut contacts if you want).
;-)
How many of you maintain a blog that nobody reads? As someone most cleverly put it, most blogs are "the sound of one hand clapping." But because of the integration of social networking, the people that will read your blog on Multiply are your roommate's sister, your friend's cousin, and your buddy's brother -- people like that. Of course there are tools to control access as well, so if you want to publish something just for your contacts (or even a subset of that), you can do that too.
Similarly if you are a photographer, the photo printing sites like Shutterfly and oFoto almost go out of their way to make it painful to share your photos on-line (you see, they only make money if you print them, and if you share them on-line you might not need to). With Multiply on the other hand sharing your photos is as simple as a few clicks. When I uploaded pics of my halloween party, for instance, over 200 of my friends (and their friends) read it within a day of me posting. Now *that* is cool.
Finally, if you're a lurker, there's no better place... you get to see what's going on with everyone in your network, and get to see things you never would have otherwise. One of my friends has a cousin stationed in Iraq who posted pictures of Sadam's palace -- unbelievable! And I never would have seen them if it wasn't for the connection on Multiply. That's only one example out of dozens and dozens.
Try it out... you won't be disappointed.
MASSIVE DISCLAIMER: I'm one of the founders of Multiply. That doesn't mean I think it's any less cool though!
Check out my Multiply site for an example of what you can do.
I think we have a goatse in training
There is only one way to photoblog these days, and that way is flickr.com.
Flickr is sooo far ahead of any other photo/mobile blog out there, that it is just not funny.
Try it, you'll love it.
gadgetophile.com
The problem with photoblogs is the same problem with regular blogs - lack of focus. Precisely because it is so easy to web-publish, there are far too many people posting without giving any thought to producing a thematically-consistent portfolio of work. This shouldn't limit your creativity:
- A photo-a-day blog can be very compelling (I'm thinking of the album made by Harvey Keitel's character in Smoke).
- Build your blog around something offbeat like things your dog brought home or food that looks like Elvis - whatever turns your crank
- Take pictures of doors, sidewalks, homeless people or whatever it takes to produce a thematic arc
- Go out and blitz a city with 500 pics in one day, and show us your best 10 (or better yet, 5)
Your equipment doesn't even matter - use your crappy phone cam, but use it well. The ability to edit your body of work, not just your pictures, is what will separate your portfolio from the rest of the drek that's out there.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
An intelligent blog is the Synchronicity of Indeterminacy. The blogger combines a randomly selected image with an original one-minute short story inspired by the photo. Amusing and surreal juxtapositions result.
The next cool thing in the blog world is pretty damn far from the next cool thing in general.
Blogs suck, and I can say that with authority since I have one. At least I don't delude myself into thinking anyone wants to look at it. Hell, I don't even want to.
Look at this guy's site: johnstonefitness.com.
He was overweight, pale and ill (as I am right now). He had balls to change himself and recorded progress every month, you literally can watch him leaning, bulking... Pretty cool.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
I have actually found an interesting thematic photoblog, it is a girl who got a digital camera for her 29th birthday and decided to take a picture of herself each day for the next year until she turns 30.
,br>She ads in some commentary and I have found it quite good at times, blah at others.
http://www.watchmeturn30.com/
You wouldn't think that would be a problem what with cameras doing that for you nowadays.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/