Wylio Flickr App and Creative Commons searches - a mashup made in heaven!

Wylio makes Creative Commons image searches easy

While frolicking in the Flickr App Garden, I came across a very unassuming little app that does a pretty amazing job.

How about an app that searches free photo hosting sites such as Flickr and provides you with only Creative Commons attributed images that are free to use?  I'm thinking, yippee and hooray and words to that effect.

Well, Wylio does just that. There is a subscription to pay of about $US3 a month for a download of 125 images or a pro subscription for $10 for over 1000 images.  You can play for free, but that limits you to 5 images per month and there is advertising with the free subscription.  All very reasonable I'm feeling. 

Flickr no longer loves Wordpress & Blogger

This is really a note for my fellow classmates, but I'm disappointed to note that this week, Flickr wound back it's support for both Wordpress and Blogger, removing the blog share tools that have been so handy.

From now on, we will have to embed the Flickr images, rather than using a simple tool.  I'm thinking its going to be really hard for people who are just learning how to blog to work out the embed functions.  Apparently, Wordpress and Blogger make up such a tiny amount of Flickr traffic these days, they no longer consider it to be a viable partnership.  See this link for more info.  I think this may be a signal that blogging is on the way out in the traditional form and should we be looking at what is now more popular - Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram etc.?

Anyway, I'm feeling disappointed about the change.  It was always so easy before.  I shall probably explore Photobucket or Instagram a lot more closely now, to see how their sharing capabilities compare.

Lubuto Library Project

Children at First Lubuto Library, a photo by Lubuto Library Project on Flickr.

Flickr is a great tool for browsing photos to accompany a project or blog post, but I also find it incredibly fun to just browse and I learn a great deal about worthwhile projects or issues, such as this one, the Lubuto Library Project.

The Lubuto Library Project is a charitable organisation which aims to bring education and opportunities to African children who would otherwise have no access to schools or education, or are homeless.  They operate as reading rooms and provide educational programs and support for children who would otherwise fall through the cracks in society.  This is a perfect example of the library as a community service and hub for connecting people with support and services and most importantly, each other, which I believe is the library of the future.  We talk about technology and libraries being the way forward, but I sincerely believe that our future lies in community capacity building and the connection of community through partnerships and offering a place for people to come together, in a society which is becoming further disconnected.

Visit the Lubuto Libraries Project Website

Having fun on Flickr with my library display movie poster

 

Eye catching library displays are something I take very seriously and we are currently preparing a wall display to promote books that are being made into movies. I designed this poster as a centerpiece and it will be surrounded by movie posters and book cover posters.

This type of display is a lot of fun to do.

Via Flickr:

This is a jpg of a movie poster I designed as part of a display for Glenorchy LINC. The display is to promote books and authors whose titles have been made into movies recently.