Kim-23things

Tagging, tagging, tagging...

What can I say except that I love it. Sure, precision isn't always the best. When I try searching for "tiger" in Flickr for instance, I get images of: tigers, tiger butterflies, kids dressed up as tigers, Tiger Crow flowers, Tiger Cub Scouts, cats named tiger... You get the idea. But if you enter a specific search term, you can get pretty good results (Searching for "fishing cat" for instance yields much better results).

Why is tagging better than using folders for organization? Well it expedites searching and there is the whole concept of poly-hierarchy. Note that entries in this blog are tagged and the list of tags is listed on the right-hand side. Recently, when I gave a presentation on Web 2.0, I saved links to all of the sites I used as examples in my Keynote (Mac version of Powerpoint) to Del.icio.us. I tagged these sites by the name of the slides they appeared. Since we were in a computer lab, by providing everyone with a the url to my Del.icio.us site, they could quickly explore these sites for themselves. Below is a screenshot of my Del.icio.us site.


Photo Credits:
1. Tiger, 2. Untitled, 3. Dormindo igual um gatinho ...., 4. TigerLiliesBW.jpg, 5. Phoenix, 6. Tiger, 7. Sam's Halloween Costume, 8. Little Tiger & Mom, 9. eye of the tiger ..., 10. FOA: Drama 2, 11. After, 12. lonely tiger, 13. tiger, 14. Not available, 15. Not available, 16. Not available

Spell with Flickr
This mashup spells out your word(s) with Flickr photographs of letters and numbers. Once you get your message, you can also click on individual letters to obtain different images.

Ah, Flickr, Flickr, Flickr. Although it seems like I've been a member of Flickr forever, I checked my personal Flickr account and my welcome e-mail from them was sent April 2006.

The beautiful thing about Flickr is the social tagging function. We librarians (especially art librarians) know that access to visual information has always been challenging.

Flickr lets the users add their own descriptors or tags and essentially do the work! You can search your own photos or photos of everyone in the Flickr community. While the precision of the search may be compromised (Searching for a comic character named "Fray" leads to photos of a band called "The Fray," frayed edges, a town called Fray Bentos... You get the idea. "Fishing cat," however, produces pretty relevant results), the recall is pretty good.

As with all of these Web 2.0 applications, practically anyone can now publish material online; meaning, of course that you'll have blurry, ugly snapshots that seem rather worthless on Flickr. On the other hand, you can discover amazing talents. Haiku Garry (see above right) is one such photographer I've discovered. Two other of my favorite Flickr members include: LynnInSingapore and Vision Aerie (Check them out. Their work is amazing!).

I haven't even touched upon how Flickr has allowed me to keep in touch with friends who love to document their lives. I'd like to believe that sites like Flickr and Blogger have made keeping in touch with loved ones more easy. You no longer have to wait for that once a year holiday newsletter. Can these sites also result in people not socializing face to face as often? Sure. But really, how often can you afford to visit that friend living states, even countries away?