Derek K. Miller - Penmachine words music comment - Vancouver, Canada

The new video sharing features of the formerly photo-only site Flickr are different: the designers obviously thought a lot about how to implement video without just cloning how YouTube and everyone else does it.

The key thing is that videos uploaded to Flickr must be less than a minute and a half long, and no bigger than 150 MB. That's a limitation, but also a gift. It forces you to think about what to upload, and if you have a longer video, to edit it down to its essence.

My first video upload there is a good example. I had to take a video of my band that was already only a few minutes long and make it even shorter. I had to cut out non-licensed music and any other extraneous bits. In the end it's only one minute, but it still gets the point of our act across, even without any singing at all.

I think the time limit will generate some creativity in the Flickr community, as well as avoiding those interminable videos that take forever to get to the point. Even if a video is bad, you'll only have to waste 90 seconds on it. We'll see what happens within the well-imagined constraints.

Labels: band, design, flickr, geekery, music, neurotics, video

Check out this beautiful set of pictures of city lights from Doc Searls. He took them while flying on a commercial jet up the U.S. East Coast:

It's a shame that we waste so much energy radiating light out into space, but it's pretty.

Labels: airport, art, canon, docsearls, environment, flickr, photography

For no particular reason, I recently created a Flickr photo group called Your Geekiest Photo, and added mine, from 1985:

If you have a dark, dark nerdy picture in your past and don't mind revealing it to the world, I'd appreciate if you joined the group and added it. If you're not already a member of Flickr, you can sign up for free.

Labels: flickr, geekery, linkbait, photography

Vancouver artist Basco5 is once again designing the fabulous poster for the upcoming fourth annual Northern Voice blogging and social media conference here in town. (Last year the organizers were kind enough to give me one of Basco5's big 2007 posters, which now hangs in our bedroom.)

This year, Basco5 and the NV crew would like your input to help design the poster, so head on over to Flickr and leave a comment if you have ideas or suggestions.

I already like this year's tiki text/"squishy volcano" look.

Labels: art, conferences, design, flickr, northernvoice

Our handsome pal Kris "kk+" Krug just did an interview on CBC Radio's On the Coast with lots of cool tips on how to take better holiday photos.

He knows how to take the pictures, so his advice is worth following. You don't need the big monster camera like his, by the way.

I'm also fond of the holiday eating tips ("If something comes with gravy, use it. That’s the whole point of gravy.") passed along by Arieanna, who also got an insanely huge Christmas tree this year.

Finally, don't forget the Mythbusters Christmas Rube Goldberg Machine:

It has Diet Coke and Mentos, as well as a holiday beef roast propelled right out of an oven. Thanks to my daughters for finding that one.

Labels: cbc, flickr, food, holiday, kriskrug, mythbusters, photography, radio, television

As of this morning, everybody favourite photo website, Flickr, has just teamed up with Picnik to let you edit your photos inside Flickr. That's big news.

This is an especially important development (ahem) for the growing number of devices, from Wi-Fi enabled cameras and memory cards to mobile phones and beyond, that can send photos directly to Flickr without a computer intermediary. Until now in those cases, you could only use what limited retouching and editing capabilities were built into your device—if any—before your photos went online.

Now you can use an elegant and very Flickriffic interface to make lots of changes to your pictures (modify exposure and colours, remove red-eye, crop, etc.) from anywhere with any web browser, after you've posted them. Free.

Very slick. Picnik also offers Picnik Premium for $25 a year (the same cost as a Flickr Pro account), if you want more effects and editing capabilities. The free and premium services also work with other photo sites, by the way—today just adds an Edit Photo button right within Flickr.

Labels: design, flickr, photography, web