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A digital Sunday evening…

September 11, 2011 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

It’s Sunday night and for various reasons I’ve been offline for about 48 hours and I’m pretty tired. So what am I doing?

The Xbox is currently playing Forza Motorsport 3 for itself as the AI goes through the tedium of endless races to get the final game achievement and clear the way for Forza Motorsport 4 – important considering the amount of coverage I’ll be doing on OnlineRaceDriver.
My phone is currently uploading 100+ images from today to Flickr after our trip to Woburn Safari Park, which I’ll then need to group edit and tag.
And I’m on the laptop, having cleared out any notification emails, scanned and marked as read any RSS items, and started sorting out what I need to finish this week for both client sites and my own. Assuming that’s ever finished, hopefully I’ll catch up with the F1 race from earlier with iPlayer.

What struck me is that I don’t think the fact I have 3 internet devices all chuntering away on a ‘relaxing’ Sunday night is at all strange. And while I might be slightly unusual in running my own online-based businesses and spending most of my leisure time online, I suspect we’re still nowhere near the peak demand in bandwith for uploading and curating personal content online. What was once the preserve of the geeks and over-sharers is not only increasingly normal for everyone, but faster internet access, mobile connectivity and general access throughout less-developed countries means we’re still figuring out what we can do, and crucially, how to do it more easily.

Checking out my stats on Flickr, it’s blindingly obvious that most of my uploads have all come since I started using a smartphone, which allows quick uploading to Flickr. Without that, everything would still be on my memory card or hard drive.

And it was only recently that I finally got around to using the group edit functions, and could suddenly make a lot more photos public and accessible with at least some attempt at titles and tags (My default upload is always private for various reasons).

And that’s adding up to 10′s of thousands of views on Flickr alone.

It made me think that so much of the web is still so difficult, and that we’re still miles away from the potential in universal easy access. And that will also enable us to more easily spend time offline or better utilise mobile connectivity. It’s time to make things easier for everyone…

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Filed Under: Digital Culture, technology Tagged With: dan thornton, digital tools, ease of access, ease of use, flickr, internet, uploading

Some calming inspiration…

March 14, 2011 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Things have been busier than ever over the past few weeks, which makes me hugely thankful as someone who is mainly freelancing. And as a result, I’ve been reminding myself of various ways to keep inspired and avoid getting stressed.

Besides reading, videogames, and actually getting outside with my family, there are still some things which work whilst staying in front of a PC screen. Some research may suggest videos or images of cute animals helps lower stress levels, and I’m not averse to the odd lolcat, but I think the best thing I’ve found is a couple of minutes looking at ‘Interesting photos from the last 7 days‘ on Flickr.

It’s incredibly simple – a page of 9 photos which Flickr users found interesting. And the Reload button finds 9 more. And so on until infinity, or the next week presumably roles around.

But beyond the fact that most pages feature 9 amazing images on a huge variety of subjects, it’s also a calming and inspiring sign of how much amazing content is being uploaded onto the internet every second, minute, hour and day. Rather than feeling like the information overload of RSS and Twitter, the chatter of Facebook, or the audio-visual hullabaloo of Youtube, it’s just 9 simple images. No more, no less.

In some ways, it makes me question how complicated we actually need our information filters to be.

And on another level, it just helps me relax for a few moments – and it never takes long before I’m ready to get back to it!

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Filed Under: Inspiration Tagged With: 7 days, calming, flickr, images, inspiration, interesting, photography, photos

Visual representations of your latest Tweets with Portwiture

March 31, 2009 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Portwiture is an interesting mash-up by Tyler Sticka, which grabs photos from Flickr which match the content of your most recent Twitter updates.

By inputting your Twitter username, a grid or slideshow is created, and you can select the number of photos, to grab photos by relevance, recency or how interesting they are.

And that’s it – as Tyler writes, it’s simply an experiment in mashing social services, using JavaScript framework jQuery and public APIs, some PHP and SlideShowPro. What is quite fun is that he’s suggested anyone who wants to discuss possible uses should do it on Twitter with the hashtag #whyportwit.

I ran my own Twitter account, and you can see the results.

Although there’s no easy embed option, an RSS feed is provided – it would be great if images could be linked to individual tweets – perhaps providing a business model if Tyler uploaded advertiser images, and then pulled them into the system alongside Flickr photos?

And if I could just embed it easily, it could become a really fun way to see Tweeple represented.

But it’s yet another example of the benefits of Open APIs and inventive people, which has fuelled Twitter so far.

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Filed Under: Tools, twitter Tagged With: badgergravling, flickr, portwiture, representation, twitter, tyler sticka, visualisation

Great marketing can be quick enough to beat the news

February 18, 2009 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

Now here’s an example of a great use of marketing to respond quickly and effectively to things as they happen.

I hadn’t heard anything about Virgin Trains trying to cut down on people kissing and hugging at the passenger drop-off point at Warrington Bank Quay station. Apparently a sign banning kissing was put up in a light-hearted manner to ease congestion and suggest people should go to the short-stay car park (and pay!) if they want to hug and kiss someone leaving on a trip.

Instead, the first things I saw were:

Mills and Boon respond to Virgin

It was apparently done by St Lukes, who handle advertising for Mills & Boon, and it’s timely, considering news about the sign only appeared two days ago.

It’s also relatively low cost – there’s a Facebook group, a Twitter account, and a Flickr group. And people are being encouraged to interact and upload images of themselves kissing etc.

It’s already had a bit of coverage via Brand Republic and The School of Life.

But most importantly, it’s effective because it was done quickly, enthusiastically, and allows people to get involved.

As a result, if it becomes a huge runaway success, then it’s great. But if it only achieves minor success, then nothing has been lost except a bit of time.

And it ties in brilliantly with Mills & Boon promoting romance, rather than books about romance.

I’d guess it didn’t take much negotiation around permission and planning, which is a benefit of having clear beliefs and trust.

And suddenly a brand which I’d associate with my grandmother now seems lighthearted and fun enough to check out the next time I want to buy a romantic present.

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