Flickr is Excellent.

I recently restarted using online photo sharing website, Flickr. This time around, instead of just occasionally using the site to casually share a few pics, I've been exploring more of what Flickr has to offer with a view to using the site much more seriously. And I must say I'm pretty impressed.

One of Flickr's great advantages is that it is very easy to use, even if you are not a computer guru. Uploading and organizing your images is very simple and intuitive. You can store your images in "Sets" or "Collections" and you can even have "Collections" of "Sets".  Your front page features your "Photostream" which displays your most recent uploads, and, depending on the layout you choose, your sets or collections as well.

Flickr makes it easy to share photos via email and via Twitter and Facebook. For many blogging platforms, you can also send your Flickr images direct to your blog if you wish. Or you can embed a slideshow into your blog posts or web pages, as I've done below.

Flickr also allows you a lot of control over who sees your images and what license you want to apply to them. There are a variety of ways of controlling who sees what, ranging from full public access to completely private.  And, if you want to keep your images private, but would still like to share them with certain people, you can create Guest Passes that achieve just that.

Flickr doubles as a powerful and lively image orientated social network that allows you to participate as much or as little as you please. You can join or create Groups that focus on a great many different subjects as well as "Favorite" and comment on images and create Galleries featuring the work of other users.

Flickr offers a free account that should be more than adequate for a lot of users. And, if you want more storage and other extras you can upgrade to a Pro account for a nominal yearly fee.

Check out Flickr

Please don't Play Music at Me Without Asking!

There seems to be quite a lot of website creators who think it is cool to have music automatically play when you visit their site. Personally, I find that irritating. I often listen to music while I'm browsing, so having another unexpected music track suddenly assault my eardrums on top of what I'm already listening to can be quite jarring.

If you must have music play automatically on your website, at the very least provide a prominent "off" switch so that your visitors can choose to listen or not to listen according to their preference.

Frankly, if I visit a site that plays music without me requesting it to do so, I'm app to hit the "back" button and never return.

Google Moderator

I've recently been experimenting with one of Google's less well known tools, Google Moderator.  Google Moderator allows you to easily create an online discussion page were you can ask for and receive feedback from other web users about just about any subject you like.  The site's help files explain:

What does Google Moderator do?

• Google Moderator allows you to create a series about anything that you are interested in discussing and open it up for people to submit questions, ideas, or suggestions. These are called submissions. 
• Anyone can come to the site and submit a question, idea, or vote, and anyone can vote. Google Moderator shows you a question in the box with the blue background. This is called the Featured Question.
• A topic is a way to break up your series into smaller, more manageable topics of discussion. You can have one topic, or multiple topics. For example, if you create a series of 'Book clubs' for your organization, topics could be 'Fiction,' 'Non-fiction,' or 'Auto-biographies.'

You can create your series right on the Google Moderator website. There is also an option to embed Moderator in an IFRAME on your own website if you wish.

Explore Google Moderator Here

Clavier+

Some software applications become such a normal part of your daily computing routine that you almost forget they are there. For me, once such software is Clavier+. This little freeware program lets you create and configure universal keyboard shortcuts that will work in just about any program you are using on your computer.

I mainly use Clavier+ for quickly adding snippets of text to various documents such as email, Word files, HTML documents, Evernote notes and more. To set up a shortcut, you input your desired text into the software's simple interface, choose a key combination and save your settings. Then, whenever you key your chosen combination, the text will appear magically in the document you are working on. If, like me, you often have a need to enter the same snippets of text over and over again, this can be a real time saver.

You can also create shortcuts to open specific programs, files or websites.

The software can be configured to start with Windows which means it is always available.

Visit the Clavier+ website

Exploring iPad

Well, my much anticipated new toy is here at last and, of course, I'm in geek heaven - at least until the next cool gadget comes out! Right now, I'm still exploring the device and installing essential apps like Evernote for iPad. It's certainly well worth the wait. It's just the right size for both portability and ease of use. For example, tying to blog from an iPhone is a little fiddly, but blogging from an iPad (as I'm doing now)is easy and fun and I can do it from my lounge room or where ever else I may be!