too much typing—since 2003

4.20.2008

things that are good enough

I suppose that under the cancer-like rules of capitalism, things that stay the same and don't constantly grow and change are doomed to obliteration...but you know, sometimes things work perfectly fine and don't need changing. Not a major issue here yet, but...I've noticed that Flickr apparently is getting itchy about being associated with photos. Kinda odd, given its name, but...two examples: I have RSS feeds for the photostreams of several of my "contacts." At one point, the default label for these was "X's photos"...which has the advantage, if things align automatically in alphabetical order, of letting you know whose pictures you're about to look at even if the right margin of the reader window (I'm using Sage, a Firefox extension, and that's how it's laid out) cuts off the end of the phrase. Then Flickr changed it to "Photos from X," which has the disadvantage of cutting off the key part of the info: whose photos the link leads to. And now, Flickr's gotten even more vague: the ones I've updated or added most recently say merely "Uploads from X." "Uploads"? Am I interested in "uploads"? No: I want to see what photos people have taken lately. That's why I'm going to Flickr, dummies. Another indicator that Flickr's preparing to broaden its scope: its map feature used to say something like "Y photos taken here" for any given area of the map visible in the screen. Now it says "Y things here." "Things"? I'm not looking for "things," I'm curious where your photos were taken. Yeesh.

1 comment:

Janet ID said...

I think "things", "uploads" etc. are Flickr's attempt at inclusive nomenclature now that Flickr allows "pro" users to upload and share videos. Flickr has a 90-second per video time limit and requests that users only post videos they have created themselves. Videos may be sorted into sets, commented, tagged, etc. just like photos. I haven't tried it yet, and I hear your righteous anger over brand dilution, but I take this as a positive development & a boon for home-video creators who want to share in the context of their own image collections rather than the chaos of YouTube. Think of these videos, as Flickr suggests, as "long photos". Too bad about "things" though.