For a long time, I resisted the lure of user-generated media. Consume it? Yes. Publish it? It felt like my life could be simpler without worrying about maintaining a photostream or any online family videos.
That changed this spring when Amy gave me a new digital camera to take to Florence for CHI 2008. I set up a free Flickr account, downloaded the upload tool, and have been a happy shutterbug ever since. Now, I’m even happier.
Flickr now enables photo slideshows to embed in web sites.
While there were already some ways to get auto-play of photos into websites, Flickr announced an upgrade to their photo service that allows a slick, customizable slideshow to be embedded in a website. Not only is the simplicity and flexibility appreciated, but the utility of my photos may increase I may be more inclined to embed a slideshow of selected photos instead of uploading a single photo through WordPress.
Just the pictures from my trip to Italy
This news comes at a time when I’m pushing the limits of the free account. Because I don’t subscribe to Flickr, I am limited in the bandwidth I can use each month on photo uploads (100 MB), the size of photos (small), the number of photo sets (3), and the number of active photos I can have in my gallery (200). At 187 pix, I’m now contemplating getting a Pro account top open up the throttle.
There is still room for improvement, as well. The photos lose all context without titles and captions. It would be nice to be able to fill a slideshow on the fly without requiring a new photoset, for instance if I wanted to compile a stream of all of the kids Halloween costumes over the years.
The addition of the embedded slideshow may have put me over the top … once student loans come in.