Thing # 5 Flickr

OK, now here is a thing that truly overwhelms me. Put all your digital photos on the web and let up to 20 million of your closest friends have access.

I can see some applications for my school right now. We have a photography class after school. If everyone uploads their pictures each week to one group in Flickr, then all can access, comment, share, without having to worry about whether they are on the same laptop as last week.

The tag function could quickly get out of hand. This starts to sound like marc records, where you can attach up to 50 tags to each photo, supposedly helping you categorize and organize. One gentleman (who definitely needs help) uploads a picture of every tie he wears to work, tagged by which day he wore it so he won't repeat too often.

I remember some years ago when the little woman and I set out to take pictures of every courthouse (254 active ones) in Texas. For some reason we did not keep a journal as we traveled, so the longer it took the little lady to organize the photos at home into a scrapbook, the less we remembered about the photos. Most are still in shoe boxes. Maybe this is a strong argument for taking a laptop on vacation with you.

But this vast ability to upload every picture taken in the world, and in some groups, share it with absolutely everybody, just makes my head swim. I will still need organizational skills and a sense of balance, color, and arrangement in order to use this "vacuum cleaner" of a storage device.

Now, when they make a digital camera with a voice module where you can add tags as you take the picture, count me in. Click. "picture of Austin County Courthouse, notice the bell in disrepair." Maybe that would help.

Before I join a library group and share pictures, I would have to answer concerns about posting pictures of my students on the net. My library looks so antiseptic without the kids. Of course, you probably are already pointing out that there is a child on my main page. Yeah, go figure.