The I.T. Life

One of my my favorite features of flickr (that I just discovered) is blog. You can post pictures to your own blog through flickr. So if you have a cool photo, or see a cool photo, you can post it on your blog, with a little story and such, all through flickr. It makes a very nice post. So, a heads up here, any photos in the catagory flickr, if you havent guessed it yet… come from flickr. I know that was a big shock. Im gonna go try to find something interesting thing to do… Or just kidnap fergy and take him to DQ for a sunday.

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Originally uploaded by hannjeff_87

I love traveling, road trips, vacations, whatever, I just love to see the world. Of course, I love to photograph my trips. As many people like me, you end up with thousands of photos, and you often forget where the sweet jebus you took them. I mean, the east coast has a bagilion beaches, and its hard to tell them from each other. One of the nice things flickr does is let you place the photo on a map. This is all good and dandy… but somewhat time consuming. A) it takes a while to upload all your pics, write titles, descriptions, add tags, and then place them on a map. and B) go through old photos and figure out where you took them. So, here is a sweet solution Geotagging! You bring a gps along on your trip, and record a trip log. Basically, you end up with a text file, with exact quarantine’s, and time stamps. A big lost that when read with the right software allows you to view a path on a map of where you went. Now, there is some software that takes this list, and a group of photos, and then matches the time stamps. It will check to see when photo a was taken, where were you, than adds these quard’s to the photo details. Now, when you upload to flickr, it adds it to the map automatically. I suppose you dont save a step, because you have to match the files and picures, but if you have 200 photos from a trip, you only have to do this once, and not add 200 photos to a map. Plus, its so fun to link technology that has no similar designs.

So, life is about connections. Your next job is about who you know, and your problem can be solved by someone that knows the answer. This is obvious, its life, and its networking. So what happens when you make that life digital? You take all your pictures, and put them on flickr, you start a blog, you get on facebook, and even linkedin. Well, nothing. Your facebook friends don’t know about your professional contacts, and your photos. And none of these people know about your blog. Well, here is how “connections” help. The beauty of all this web 2.0 bull shit, is it works well with each other. For example, most people that know me, check my facebook page whenever it is updated, and thats it. They never bother with my blog, or my flickr page. Even people in flickr don’t know about my flickr’ page. So, I started trying to bridge these ideas. I found, in flickr, there are groups, you can join photo pools, for others to see, and comment on your pictures, and you can also categorize your photos, so you (and others) can see similar pics. At this point, they are still only knowledgeable about you on flickr, thats it. Well, flickr lets you link to your blog. So now, they can see your blog, because they see your pictures. This is only the beginning, now, I have facebook, linkedin, flickr, my blog, and they still are very separate beings. Flickr can post to my blog, and thats it. So, step 2, facebook, the biggest beast of them all. I have a app on facebook for flickr, and my blog. Now, when people go to my facebook profile, they see my blog posts, and my flickr pictures… and my blog posts about my flickr pictures (level 2 complete, level 1 of inifinit loop, complete). Alright, facebook and flickr are connect, and same with my blog, these 3 entities are all connected. So, I also had to add linkedin to my facebook page. Now, my life is a horrible mess of a circle, and hopefully, more people will read my blog, and see my pictures. The big goal of this is for a) me to make more professional contacts, or b) have my photography noticed, and possibly turn a profit. Of course, c) more people reading my blog, and maybe a comment or 2 would certainly lighten my day. I’m not going to bombard you with all my links, I believe they are all in my blogroll anyways. So, go find me! and maybe, find a new friend too!

I usually have quite a few side projects, and this year will be no different, except I plan to finish them all! (l0l). I am designing a new portfolio (should be done this week) that will allow you to update your home page, resume, etc, even the top level css all through a admin page. It will also allow you to manage mutiple portfolios through the same database and admin page (this will allow for very small secondary portfolios). This was well overdue but now I finally have some good reasons to do it. The second version will allow much easier editing of pages, without the need for html, but that will be later this year. After this I am going to finish my bookmark database site that is currently DOA, this will allow you to quickly login and bookmark a site for quick access anywhere, and also quick search through to find a site. This will also be seeing a version 2 later this year with features like bookmark exporting, and tag searching. Finally I will be starting this weekend a web + software application to organize all your cd / dvd / book’s. It will probably start with a very simple text list and a admin section for adding and removing, shortly after it will be linked into several external databases to get cover art, extra details etc. This will start with a database and .net app, and move into a web service, and website. Either way, I need to get to my real job now, designing pages for comedy central. Byes!

So, im alwayse looking for good sites that have lessions, examples, etc. I found a good one. The site is Ajax Projects and has tons of ajax stuff. Gives you ajax for tons of different languages, including .net. There is even ajax games and lots of other stuff. If you want to get into ajax, even learn what it is about, than check this site out.