More photos: From Gregarious Greeks to a Korean Combo and beyond...

I’ve had the good fortune to travel a lot over the last years (mostly for fun, not business, though that’s shifting) and also am blessed with many fun and photogenic friends.

With no further ado, here’s a sample of photos I’ve recently uploaded:

Talented Tjapukais



A sexy swing dancer



Watery wires



Korean combo



Gregarious Greeks



A fab flower


Here's the entire list of my photo sets on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thatadamguy/sets/

Enjoy, and comment away! :-D

[Photo] And when they land, they'll do so in an organized fashion

Selfishly raising money for cancer, one photo annotation at a time

I have an envelope on my desk from the American Cancer Society.  A very, very worthy organization, and one that I do indeed plan to support financially.  But—being the strange bird that I am—I’d like to do so creatively, selfishly, and, well, with your help :-D

No, I’m not going to ask you to send me money… at least not until I’m masochistically running some 42K fundraiser race or whatever where I have to raise [$x] and [x] is some relatively high number.  Instead, I’m going to ask you to do work for me.  Let me explain…

You see, I have thousands of photos.  Tens of thousands of photos.  Lots of them are pretty darn cool (if I say so myself) and many of them I’ve actually bothered to put online via Flickr or Fotki.

But—and here’s where you come in—lots of the photos are sadly unannotated.  Heck, except for the country of origin, I probably don’t even remember anything about the people, the sculptures, the castles, the lakes… anything at all, really, and that’s rather regrettable IMHO.

Why not, as my boss has so aptly done in the past, invoke teh lazyweb!  You, oh sundry and smart and good looking BLADAM readers from Amsterdam and Berlin and Cairns and every other letter of the alphabet… you probably can easily identify what goofy and beautiful people places and things I’ve taken photos of!

So here’s the deal:  If there’s enough of a response, I’m prepared to write a check for up to $500 to the American Cancer Society which—when matched by my generous employer—will become 1,000 donated smackeroos… based upon how many of my photos y’all annotate.  [x] cents per reasonable (and typically brief) annotation per photo. 

In the end, it’s win-win-win.

- I get to remember and learn more about the places I’ve visited.
- My photo pages may get better indexed and more frequently viewed… and they’ll be more interesting and informative for everyone, too!
- You get warm fuzzies and certainly recognition and thanks on my blog at a later date :-D.
- The American Cancer Society gets up to $1,000!  Plus more if I decide to do this on a yearly basis or others decide to responsibly copy-cat the idea.

*  *  *

I don’t yet have a timeline for this (though “by Thanksgiving this year” seems reasonable, no?).  First, I have to upload a bunch more of my photos from around the world!  Also, I’d love to hear (either privately or in the comments below):

1) Where you’re from and what you think about this idea.
2) Whether you’d personally enjoy participating by annotating my photos online.
3) Any particular restrictions or guidelines you think I should set / anything else to consider logistically or policywise.
4) Whether you’ve ever seen this sort of fundraising idea implemented :-D

Thanks in advance for your comments and, ultimately, your support!  Remember, speak out—I’m only going to do this if I get a sufficient number of volunteers!

*  *  *

Update just a few minutes after I posted this:
Here’s a very non-comprehensive list of where I’ve been and taken photos (I hope to make a more comprehensive list someday!)

In no particular order…

EUROPE:

• Austria:  Vienna, Ischgl
• Belgium:  Brussels, Antwerp
• Czech Republic:  Prague
• Denmark:  Copenhagen
• Estonia:  Tallin*
• Finland:  Helsinki*
• France:  Paris
• Germany:  Berlin, Mainz, Mannheim, Weinheim, Viernheim, Maulbronn, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Strausberg, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart
• Hungary:  Budapest
• Ireland:  Dublin, Glendalough
• Italy:  Venice, Rome
• Luxembourg:  Luxembourg
• Netherlands:  Amsterdam, Venray, Haarlem, Rotterdam
• Spain:  Barcelona
• Sweden:  Herrang, Stockholm
• Switzerland:  Geneva, Berne, Lucerne, Interlakken
• United Kingdom:  London

NORTH AMERICA:

• California: San Francisco, Daly City, Thousand Oaks, Los Angeles, San Diego, Marin, Santa Cruz, Oakland, Berkeley, Sacramento
• Colorado:  Denver*
• Hawaii:  Kauai
• Illinois:  Evanston, Chicago
• Maine:  Er, I forget where!
• Nevada:  Lake Tahoe, Las Vegas*
• New Hampshire:  Hebron, somewhere else
• New York:  New York City
• North Carolina:  Charlotte*
• Other:  D.C.
• Tennessee:  Knoxville, Gatlinburg
• Texas:  Austin,
• Virginia:  Newport News
• Washington:  Seattle
• Canada:  Vancouver

ASIA AND PACIFIC

• Australia: Sydney, Melbourne, Cairns
• Singapore: Singapore

LATIN AMERICA

• Costa Rica: San Jose, Montezuma

* I’ve visited here, but I don’t think I have pictures from this city.

Berlin boat tour photos and mini Canon SD700 camera review

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of taking a river cruise of sorts through Berlin... including both the former East and West parts.

I shot the photos with my new Canon SD700 camera (which I'm generally pleased but not thrilled with) and posted them on various services.

See my Berlin boat tour photos on...
- Flickr [ set | slideshow ] (strong community, many features, good privacy protection)
- Fotki [ set | slideshow not directly linkable ] (handy admin features, nice hierarchical options)
- Picasa Web Albums [ set | slideshow ] (smart pre-caching, great Picasa integration)

You may note a few funky/overly-general tags (e.g., "Places" and "Geography" and such). This is because I'm having problems debugging a hierarchical-categories-to-IPTC-script. If that doesn't mean anything to you, no worries; it's only a minor annoyance and doesn't affect the photos themselves :-D.

I did slight editing (brightness, contrast, cropping, etc.) using Corel's Paint Shop Pro X (trial version; I'm a paid user of version 8... and God what awful URLs!!!) and organized/tagged the photos using the incomparable and very affordable software called IMatch by Photools.

My thoughts on my new Canon SD700 camera:
- Startup time is wonderfully fast.
- Very easy to use.
- Feels comfortable, solid in my hands.
- Outdoor photos are consistently good, even in lower light.
- Zoom is great, even with movies.
- Movies can be taken even in quite low light!
- Battery life is amazing! I literally shot for hours a day always using the LCD, never once got a low battery warning!

But...
- The image stabilizer helps quite a bit, but still doesn't allow for very-low-light photos.
- Photos -- even at the highest quality setting -- aren't as sharp as I'd like. This is my biggest complaint.
- Battery/SD card door feels flimsy.
- The damn thing is pricey (as "low" as $449 at reputable places).
- I still envy the much thinner/lighter ultra-compacts that my friends have (even though they don't take near-as-nice photos).

* * *

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pics, and I'd love your feedback and shoutouts and such either here in my blog comments and/or in the comments in the galleries themselves. :-D

Pre-Europe-travel grab bag

WARNING:  Mishmash ahead.
Haven’t yet packed, which means this is the perfect time to procrastinate with a blog entry.  Or something like that.

I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a two-week work-related trip.  See details of that trip, plus enjoy some of my phone, camera, T-Mobile, and other musings below.

My upcoming travels for May 29 through June 11

• LONDON:  I’ll be attending the Search Engine Strategies conference in London, where Webmasters, marketers, advertisers, and others that care about making moolah on the Web will be hanging out.  You gonna be there, too?  Look for me and say hi!  :-D.  Oh, and just for the heck of it, feel free to check out my London 2001 photos and my London 2002 photos that I took during earlier (non-work-related) visits.
• BERLIN:  I’ve gotten gleefully roped into a Google pan-European sales conference.  Time for me to learn about new salesy stuff in the company, and I’m looking forward to sharing info about Search Quality and spam fighting with sales-type folks.  Alas, every minute is pretty much accounted for, though, so I won’t have much free time to explore.  I’ve visited Berlin in the past (fascinating city!), but will look forward to spending more time wandering around nooks and crannies during a future trip.
• DUBLIN:  Definitely looking forward to re-visiting Ireland!  I had a great time during an earlier visit… friendly folks, charming pubs… and now that the pubs are (at least in theory) smoke-free, I’m even happier!  I’ll be visiting Google’s European headquarters here, meeting up with some colleagues over laptops and possibly a pint or three.

Other random stuff

My losing streak continues, sadly.  In the last few months, I’ve had TWO cameras and TWO expensive phones stolen.  It’s almost enough to make me either become a luddite or hire a personal assistant to thwack me on the head when I’m being particularly absent-minded. 

Luckily, insurance will (at least in theory) be covering most of the cost of everything but one of the phones… and in an almost unbelievably example of “the kindness of strangers”... a colleague in the Atlanta Google office learned of my pathetic plight and IM’d me, “Hey, I don’t really use my Treo much, would you like it?”  I said, sure, I’d consider it… what did she think would be a fair price?  But no, she said, she was happy to just give it to me.  And Fed-ex it to me next-day, just in time for my trip.  Wow!

But alas, it didn’t quite make it here in time, and (understandably) none of my local friends just happened to have a spare tri-band phone to loan me.  So in desperation, I went to a T-Mobile store and, after learning they only had dual-band loaners, decided to just bite the bullet and buy a phone.  The salesman recommended a quad-band Motorola V188; it seemed pleasantly basic and small enough, and I figured $100—even with a required 1-year contract renewal—seemed fair.

Upon arriving back home, though, I noticed that Amazon is selling the same Motorola V188 with the same 1-year contract for… negative $145!  That’s right, after the $35 new account fee, you get $110 cash back.  So I basically got gypped out of $210!  I’m pretty pissed.  So I decided to call T-Mobile and I got—as usual—a delightfully friendly and helpful rep (this is part of the reason why I generally do love T-Mobile and didn’t mind renewing my contract).  Alas, she said that the Amazon promo is, as it states, only for new customers.  I expressed to her that I felt this was sort of a slap in the face for existing customers (especially those loyal ones way past their required contract term).  After much time on hold, she offered to give me 30 free text messages (a value of $3).  I thought this was pretty laughable, but at this stage in the game (leaving tomorrow), I just didn’t have the time to argue.  The uber-moral of the story:  if you’re looking to get a new phone, especially one more pricey than the entry-level one I bought today, you’re likely better off going through Amazon.com and just porting over your number.

Oh, and a few opening thoughts about this Motorola, compared to my Treo 650…
- It doesn’t cradle as nicely between my neck and shoulder.
- The speakerphone is decent.
- I don’t like the non-recessed volume buttons… worried about them getting pressed when in my pocket.
- There’s no “are you sure?” when writing a long SMS and accidentally hitting the cancel button.  Blegh.
- It feels okay in my pocket.  Really light.  But I’d probably be more comfortable having a long and thin phone in my pocket.
- It’s so weird to not have a qwerty keyboard for texting or Web surfing.  I already miss my Treo and can’t wait to get my replacement!

*  *  *

I also got a new camera today, the Canon SD700.  It is, admittedly, rather a splurge, but I don’t feel too guilty; I tend to spend money on the arts (music, theatre) and photography, and I guess everyone’s entitled to some guilty pleasures. :-D

Online, on the low-end (but still from trustable companies) it tends to go for about $470 (with no sales taxes due up-front). At retail stores near me, it's going for, well, retail: $499 (plus tax). Ouch. I found out that Frys (Tech Gadget Mecca for Geeks) in San Jose had it for $449, and while I'd normally never drive down to San Jose (about 90 miles round trip from my apartment) just to save $50... in this case, I already had plans to go to a BBQ at my friend Merry's house in Mountain View, so it all worked out. They also had a reasonably decent 2gb SD card for $49, which I also snagged.

Of course, the real cost of photography is in time. I still haven't gotten around to processing the 1,800 or so photos from my recent trip to Australia and Singapore; at about a conservative one minute per cropping/fixing/tagging/titling/describing, that's 30 hours out of my life just to post a bunch of photos. Even if I pick the top one-third to post, that's still 10 hours of photofussing just for this one trip. Ack! Seriously, because of this (I know, it's a little silly), I seriously considered whether I wanted the hassle of schlepping, protecting, using, and dealing with a camera + its byproducts. Nostalgia won out, though.

* * *

Anyway, I probably better get packing. I'll try to blog some stuff while I'm away, but it may be a few weeks 'til I'm bloggily back.

Wheeeee! (a spontaneous dance lift)

Anne-Marie lifts unidentified but happy dancer at the 2003 San Francisco Lindy Hop Exchange.

Artful food in restaurant near Strasbourg, France

Ice cream… a wonderful pleasure that’s typically appreciated from childhood and on through adulthood.  Soothing and relaxing, ice cream is even better IMHO when presented colorfully and artfully in a nice restaurant, along with good friends and a small heavy spoon.

Completely gratuitous photo of hot zombie babes with suckers

Why?  Why not!



And here's your challenge: offer captions or other comments that are clever, witty, and not gross or disrespectful, please :-). Thanks!

Badger badger badger (snake?)

Anyone have any idea what this animal is?  I saw him in a park in St. Louis, Missouri, and I’ve been wondering ever since.  And since his home sort of complements my new blog colors, I figured it was high time to feature him here. :-D

Slide (photo service) - slide away quickly :|

I tried out the Slide photo sharing service this afternoon. I understand it's a beta, but as we've seen from many other services... beta doesn't have to be unusable.

Here's why I didn't like Slide:

- It requires a download. Hey, my Grandpa isn't going to download and install something. In contrast, with Flickr, I can just point him to a Web page, and voila, he sees my photos.

- It didn't find any of my photos. Okay, they're in c:pics, but I've redefined that folder as the place where my pictures are and other apps have had no problems finding it.

- It's slow. Even on my Pentium 4 3.0ghz machine with 2 gigs of RAM.

- It's unintuitive. Some operations you do from the panel, some from the app settings page, some from the Web page. Blech.

- It doesn't even seem to work very well. I tried adding both an RSS and an Atom feed from Flickr and didn't get any photos shown at all.

- The UI is just lousy. Mouseovers, selections, it's all mished together making it too easy to select something when you're just moving the mouse and too difficult to close a Slide window.

* * *

I look forward to the day when someone (Flickr / Flickr-devs? :-) makes an Ajaxian app that allows one to easily add photos to groups, share them with different sets of friends, complete with a neat scroll-y thing across the top of their screen.

What the...?! -- entertaining and strange photos from yours truly :)

After a bit of somewhat heavy, angsty musings, I figure it's a fine time for some photographic frivolity :-)

Check out the 90 second slideshow of some weird, wacky, and wonderful photos I've taken and posted on Flickr.

Note that you can click on any photo during the slideshow to see a larger version and more details, and you can still pick up right where you left off.

Next Google acquisition: Flickr + Picasa 2.0 = Fotoogle

Okay, so I'm kidding about the Fotoogle name (yuck!), but -- mark my un-insider words -- Google is going to buy community photo service Flickr or perhaps Fotki early next year and integrate it tightly with the upcoming Picasa 2.0.

What problems would this solve?

1) Bridge the offline - online photo gap.
Right now, via Google's Picasa software and similar products, people can easily catalog, browse, and search for photos on their hard drive. But, one-at-a-time postings to blogger.com notwithstanding, there's no point-and-click-easy ways for folks to get their photo catalogs online.

2) Enrich the Google Images database with a plethora of (IPTC-based) metadata.
The vast majority of amateur photographers (and probably the bulk of professional photographers) have neither the know-how nor the availability of non-geek tools to add IPTC title, description, and category information to their photo files. This, then, makes it extremely hard for Google to return useful hits in its Image search, since it relies on fuzzy contextual clues like jpeg alt-text, general surrounding text, and so on. By making it rewarding and easy for people to enter metadata for their photos and have them uploaded to a site online, Google will reap a humungous windfall of annotated photo data... greatly improving its Image search database. And such annotations will also provide a monumentally stronger hook for effective AdWords advertising on the Image pages ;-).

Why Flickr?
- It's already well-respected and well-liked by bloggers, including at least one prominent Blogger.com team member.
- Open API!
- Small, smart, dedicated team behind the service.
- Flickr already uses AdWords :-)
- It's not evil; Flickr strongly considers member concerns and interests.
- Flickr uses tags, very similar in concept to Gmail's labels.
- Strong focus on community: groups, live chats, etc.
- It's based in Vancouver, not all that far from Google's new Washington office.
- Flickr's often-Flash-based UI is creative, useful, fun. And -- while lately inexplicably deemphasized -- their Flash-based chat is especially brilliant. Maybe something to integrate into Blogger or Google Groups? ("Chat live about this [blog | topic]!")

Why Fotki?
- Offers photo printing.
- Already reads and works with IPTC info.
- Seemingly strong backend in terms of computational power, storage, and bandwidth.
- Also focused on community: blogs, contests, even a personal Image server for sharing photos from one's hard drive.
- Based in New York City, relatively near Google's NY office.

Why not a 'major' player like Ofoto or Shutterfly?
- Too big. Google likes smaller, more nimble firms.
- They're focused on printing and commerce far more than photo sharing and discovery.
- They have minimal community aspects.

Why not a wildly popular site like fotolog?
- Rudimentary permissions structure.
- Focuses more on skin than art.
- Large non-English-speaking audience (which -- no xenophobia intended! -- merely presents an early hurdle in terms of documentation, community building, and so on).
- Very little community underpinnings.

* * *

So here are my bottom line guesses:
1) Picasa 2.0 will be out in beta by February 15, 2005.
2) Google will announce a partnership with or -- more likely -- an acquisition of Flickr simultaneous with Picasa 2.0, or alternately about 45 days later.
3) Soon after the Flickr deal, Yahoo will acquire or partner with Fotki.
4) Microsoft will be steadily working on making MSN Spaces photos integrated with its current software tools and MSN Search. I expect an announcement in this context around May 2005.

You read it here first ;-).

---

Related links:
Added 12/19/04 8:54pm
- Salon.com article on Flickr (free daypass or paid subscription required)
- Conversation on Flickr

---

Edited on 1/2/05 to add:
I'm honored that my prediction has been written up a bit in the blogosphere; however, I'd like to reiterate one word from this entry to make sure things are clear: "un-insider." My speculation is based upon my broad understanding of the areas of blogging, digital photography, Google's past acquisition behavior, etc. If you haven't already done so, you may wish to read my disclaimer.

Edited on 3/20/05 to add:
Well, well, well... so I was wrong about Google (it ended up being Yahoo!), but I was only 10 days off in my estimate. Not too shabby, eh? BTW, nice poker face, Jeremy ;-)

Bunch o' fat smelly slobs

You know, this used to be such a nice feathery neighborhood. But now it's populated by a bunch of fat, loud, belching slobs, hogging up all the sunny deck spots. And Doris wonders why I'm suggesting we fly further South for the Winter..."

 

Strange pants!

I don't know quite what to say about this! Your idea for captions?

Artist gets wrong fan

"No, no!" the dancer wails to the Genie, "That's not the kind of fan I meant!"

My apartment is bugged!

This huge crane fly -- one of several dozen that have mysteriously come to visit my apartment lately -- was particularly attracted to my shoulders. I don't know if he's a domesticated crane fly or if my shoulders somehow smelled like a crane fly of the opposite sex, but after a while it was no longer flattering or enjoyable to have a pet crane fly. I gently but firmly directed (okay, forced) him outside and politely asked him to not come back. "And while you're at it" I added, in my best possible bug voice, "Could you please ask your friends and family to socialize OUTSIDE my apartment? And maybe scare away a few pigeons at the same time? Thanks so much!"

An exasperated but well-meaning note to camera reviewers

[I posted this on a camera review forum a long time ago, and I hope you don't mind me republishing it here :-) - Adam]

I just finished reading [a particular review of a camera], and that was the last straw.

This criticism is not specific to [the reviewer], however, nor is it intended to reflect particularly upon [a "rival" reviewer].

Rather, I'm just fed up with these problems as I perceive them in general:

1) Focusing more space in a 'review' on the technical specs of a camera than anything else. Please. I've already seen the specs on the manufacturer's site. I know what the camera can do, or at least what it can supposedly do. Skip the official numbers and get right to the nitty-gritty, please. How does the camera feel in your hands? How intuitive is it? If I want just the facts, I can get that from a hundred sites other than yours. Instead, give me blunt and backed up OPINIONS based upon facts.

2) Swallowing and regurgitating marketing-speak. The cutesy acronyms and gee-whiz adjectives from the camera manufacturers made me roll my eyes the first time I read the fluff. I don't need to see this stuff repeated... especially uncritically!

3) Focusing more on laboratory tests (how many milliseconds is that shot to shot time?) than on actual real-life shooting examples, particularly under less-than-ideal shooting conditions. Let me cut to the chase: I'm gonna gag if I see another sample gallery filled with outdoor-blue-sunny-sky shots. I don't know about you, but IT'S NOT GORGEOUSLY SUNNY HERE EVERY DAY where I live, nor am I shooting every photo outdoors or inside with one smiling subject who is posing 4 feet from me perfectly motionless.

This last bit really gets my goat. I don't know about you, but here are some of the things I like to have a camera for:
- House/apartment parties where you want candid, not portrait shots
- Wedding receptions (at your table, zoomed in to the bride, etc.)
- Dances (ballroom, junior prom, whatever)
- Famous museums and churches
- Reunions or other get togethers with lots of indoor people shots

When was the last time you saw any picture like this attached to a photo review?

When I e-mailed one prominent reviewer, asking him to at least have ONE less-than-ideally-lit indoor person/people shot, he protested that he didn't have anyone handy. Hello?! Go to a bowling alley. A restaurant. A museum. I don't care. Heck, treat a neighbor or friend to a $4 latte at a local cafe and take his or her picture there.

And beyond this issue, I'd be so much happier to hear reviewers dropping the pretenses for a moment and lugging the camera with 'em to multiple spots throughout a 24 hour period, and reporting back what their challenges were. Be creative and be thorough. Take a picture through the car window (since many of us tourists take pics through train or plane or bus windows). Go to a playground and take pictures of your squirmy kids or (with a parents' permission in today's paranoid climate) of other kids. If you live near a body of water, capture a water skiier. Take a shot of a tall glass skyscraper. Take some closeup (macro) pics of flowers. I know, I know, your time is not unlimited, but I'd rather see real-life shots like this instead of the countless other pages of stats and charts you work so hard on.

In other words, take pictures like the rest of us do, dangit! I do admit it's nice to have some consistency of photos between your reviews, but could we start seeing more pictures that approximate real life -- or at least the sort of pictures more of us are taking in real life?

And then report back, too, on your experiences in taking these pictures. Like, "Well, I had a lot of trouble auto-focusing on the youngster on the slide. I initially thought it was due to the bright reflectiveness of the slide, but soon realized that in this camera's autofocusing was next to useless in almost all bright-sunlight conditions." THAT is useful information.

Instead of telling us there's 0.31415928 barrel distortion, take a PICTURE of a friend in a doorway. Let us SEE what this barrel distortion looks like.

To the reviewers out there who may be reading this, yes, I realize your "job" is largely thankless. Believe me, as a Webmaster AND a moderator of a popular forum on another site, I know firsthand how hard it can be to please all people.

But please, I beseech you: Step back. Think not like a photography scientist, but as someone who wants to grab pictures of their friends, of everyday life indoors and outdoors... someone who wants to shoot moving, changing, not-always sunny Life. Then imagine that someone is plunking down $500 on a camera + accessories based upon YOUR recommendation.

Thank you. THANK YOU! :-)

The beauty of capoeira

After attending a Best of Brazil evening here in San Francisco featuring the Brazillian art of Capoeira, I'm in a bit of a quandry. I don't want to sound like a marketing brochure, but I can't help but describe what I saw with a series of glowing adjectives: beautiful, flowing, passionate, strong, sensual, mesmerizing. I now have even more admiration for this talented capoeirista and photoblogger.

UPDATE: I've now posted lots and lots of photos from this Capoeira evening :-)

Learning from clich

Link to larger photo (340K)

"Take time to smell the flowers" is one of those phrases that perhaps make us roll our eyes. But, as with stereotypes, there are often nuggets of wisdom buried within the clich?s.

When recently visiting my parents in Southern California and exploring their newly remodeled backyard, I enjoyed lollying around with my tiny camera, exploring little nooks of leaves and flowers and rocks. Not just looking, but also smelling and touching, examining contours and textures.

"Right under our noses." "In our own backyards." So many of the sayings we blow off are perhaps the very ones we should be paying attention to now and again.

Flickr -- Yet another (but a cool!) social networking service

I've had the pleasure of playing with a relatively new online networking service called Flickr, and -- especially after reading Melanie's thoughtful review -- I thought I ought to chime in with a few thoughts of my own.

What is flickr?
It's a service, based largely on the flexible-and-powerful Flash, that lets people interact, meet, link, chat in real time, post on message forums, and share pictures with one another. It's free, it's fun, and it's pretty darn easy to get the hang of after just a few minutes. I recommend that you give it a try.

So what's to like about it?
- The use of Flash brings familiar drag-and-drop, a fine live chat interface, and real-time built-in instant messaging / presence features. Entertaining and functional!
- The staff members of Flickr frequently interact with everyone in chats, and they're both friendly and funny.
- The members of the service are also a delight to interact with... the complete opposite of cliquish.
- Unlike most other social networking services, Flickr lets you designate links as 'acquaintances,' 'friends,' and 'best friends'... which is both smart and helpful!

But it's not perfect.
- Frankly, I don't get the emphasis on photo-sharing. The interface in this area isn't robust and feature-rich enough to make it particularly worthwhile (you can't upload more than one photo at a time!), and you can't even upload a photo directly into a chat conversation; you must upload it to your "Shoebox," find it in your Shoebox, then drag and drop it into a chat room and hope it's still relevant and interesting by that time.
- The boards aren't very active yet, unlike with orkut, which -- hugely popular even after just a week or two -- had some pretty active boards even early on.
- Some of the language on the site and in the default invite text could use some major tidying up.

If I were in charge...
I would have ditched the whole photo idea (at least to start), and instead extended many more features into the message forums and chats. Real time alerts when someone mentions a 'watched' keyword on the boards or in a chat. Rich-text editing in the forums. Better search and categorization of forums. And so on.

---

With all that said, I think Flickr is pretty cool, and I have no doubt it will continue to be a welcoming, friendly, and fun place for a long time.