Playing with Pics (MToaS 37)

First, true confession: I'm the one who brings a camera along to a birthday party, leaves it in the car, and then, when the party is over, as I'm heaving my tired self into the driver's seat (purse, keys, water bottle, over shirt and ball cap spilling out of my hands) spontaneously shouts out "dammit!" when I see the camera case on the floor by the back seat.

In other words, I don't have many pics that I would want to upload onto Flickr, on the off chance that someone might actually look.

My sister Sherri is a brilliant photographer. She's sent us pics of her sons (I have the cutest nephews known to aunti-kind), panoramas of the high plains where she lives, close-ups of flowers and bees... all gorgeous shots. She's really an artist. Me, not so much. I'm more pragmatic than gifted when it comes to photos.

That said, it was fun to mosey around these picture sites. My Animoto experiment is below (the nicest thing about it might have been the ease with which it uploaded into Blogger). I did make a photo collage using Collagr (and some garden pics I uploaded last year for 23 Things). But, you know, it just really wasn't that interesting.

I did use Tiltshift to make the top pic of my cat Rosie a tad more interesting. I also used roflbot to create the captions. (I tried to use CaptionBubble but it wouldn't work for me. I'm wondering if there is a Mac vs. PC issue?)

So, all cool stuff. But I can't help wondering about the limitations.

We had a staff meeting today and learned that there are very stringent copyright rules for the Summer Reading Program graphics, wording, etc. So can we use these tools with any of them? I'd guess no.

We also have new branch pages for the GRRL web site (great new site) but I'm not sure whether we'll be able to add pictures or java script to our pages.

My lovely Gabi is a teacher, and I share many of these tools with her. But she's discovered that she can't use many of them for teaching because she can't access them from school. The school district has set such stringent limits on types of websites that can be accessed from school computers ~ including teacher's computers ~ that many of these great tools are little more than fun/cool/pretty things to think about.

That said, I do see lots of opportunities here. Just got to muddle a little more about how to actually put them to use.

Thing 5 -- so fun!

Okay, banish the paranoid grinch to the basement for the day. Flickr's Big Huge Labs has some ridiculously entertaining toys. I can definitely see using the Warholizer again, and can think of several things to do with these toys. I can even think of one or two that might have something to do with the library...

In April we're planning a teen program on scrapbook journaling. I will definitely be talking to the teens about Flickr and the Big Huge Labs as options for them to play with their scrapbook photos. And, I'm sure they'll yawn and say something like, "yeah, but we know about all these other sites that are even more cool than those..."

I expect to always be at the bottom of this learning curve. But it's fun all the same.

Oh, and the story behind the "toesies:" I took the original picture in the summer of 2006 at a 15-year reunion of Peace Corps Togo and Benin volunteers. The toesies in question belong to myself, my partner, and one of our best friends who lives in Davis, California (and who we therefore rarely ever see). Jenny had treated my partner and I to our first-ever pedicure (not my last). And, if you knew my partner you would understand why that is just such a fabulously silly and entertaining thing!

Thing 4 - happy pics

Okay, easy enough to upload pictures onto Flickr. It makes me happy to think that if someone is looking to relocate to Royalton they might use Flickr and find that we have this bright, cheery library. (Of course, they might also see the library for Royalton, Vermont, but that's interesting, too.) I can see myself putting more pictures up to showcase library programs, FOL activities, etc.

However, I'm not sure how much I'd use Flickr for my personal photos. It just seems odd and strange to put my pictures out there in the public realm. My partner and I had dinner with a couple of friends on Friday, and we were talking about the generation gap around "public" and "private" information. We are all 40ish to 50ish, and we are all perplexed at how much personal information -- in the form of photos, profile interests, and more -- the avid Flickr'er's, Facebook'ers and MySpace'ers are willing to put on their pages. Put our pictures on the web... pictures of us, of our loved ones? You've got to be kidding! Is it safe? Is it secure? Is it appropriately modest social behavior?

So in that context, no thank you. However, to showcase the great little library that this small community is so proud of... well that's something I can get behind.

Also on Friday I had the opportunity to spend the day going back and forth between exploring the exhibits at the St. Paul Science Museum and spending time in the atrium reading over pages and pages of articles about Library 2.o, Web 2.0, etc. It was glorious. So nice to take a day to not just learn about some of this stuff but also to have time to actually think about it (and then go play with animation technology or look at dinosaur fossils).

One thing I found very interesting was an article about Beacon, a pesky little advertising program used by Facebook that keeps track of users' visits to certain web sites and then uses that information to target the first user's friends with very specific ads. One example: a little ad went out to a user's friends, and it said something like "Michelle gave Top Gun four stars" and linked to Blockbuster so that the friends could purchase the DVD.

The good news, according to the article, is that Beacon created quite the kerfuffle when it was released, and Facebook has made it easier to opt out.

The bad news, to my mind at least, is that advertising agencies and others are using their best and brightest minds to figure out how to plum the depths of a user's tags and preferences to keep track of the "virtual person" in order to sell the real person their stuff.

I guess that's the big irony/conundrum. There are some things about this Web 2.0 technology that are so transparent. It feels like a community of glass houses. At the same time, it is all so virtual, and the goals and tactics of the minds behind the technology can be obscured. Who is reading what I write (besides my friendly CMLE coach)? What technology is out there to figure out whether what I write is worth paying attention to? (I, for one, have doubts.)

Perhaps this is what is meant by the "radical trust" that kept coming up in the articles I read. I think I can give that trust to the person/family looking for information on the Royalton Public Library. And I'm happy to encourage and engage with her/him/them. I'll put happy pictures up on the web.

But would someone please tell me what's on the mind of the man behind the curtain?