Monday, October 31, 2005

flickrcast - Episode 2

we slaved over a hot mixing board to bring you... Episode 2!

if we've been extremely lucky, the audio quality should be much better for this episode. we recorded our separate sides of the google talk conversation then mixed them together. hopefully jason got the syncing right... (i did, but i forgot to do some of the stereo separation and didn't notice until i'd already spent a half hour on editing and didn't feel like redoing all that. so bryan's voice is in the center this time rather than slightly over to the right. i'm still learning, kids! i also left in some parts that should have been edited but stayed because they amused me. they're not quite worksafe so listen from the safety of your headphones.)
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links for this episode:

* theme music this time around was the rather obvious choice - birdw0rks' The Flickr Song.
* as reported previously, the big news of the week was flickr's introduction of printing services.
* here's where you can get books, dvds, and stamps printed.
* please support awfulsara's Awful Print Drive.
* here you can preview some of the photos she has for sale.
* listener feedback was from user zabethanne.
* the much-maligned deleteme group.
* ...and the corresponding group for everything that was voted "saveme."
* a more lighthearted group - bryan's pick this week is Don't Take My Picture!
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download Episode 2 here, or subscribe to our feed.

12 comments:

Thomas Hawk said...

Hey guys. GREAT podcast. Brilliant! I blogged it and have added it to my permanent flickr links on my blog:

http://thomashawk.com/2005/11/flickrcast.html

In your last show you mentioned deleteme. Please note that many of us have been banned from deleteme and that as much as they claim to be a somewhat snarky place that the admins there are somewhat arbitrary in terms of choosing to ban people. Although I was one of their top photographers with photos in their supposed "safe," I for one have been permanently banned from the group.

A number of us set up a group called deleteme uncensored, where you can play the same game without arbitrary moody admins. We are almost

I posted on this in my flickr stream here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/45187279/

We stand at almost 400 members now. Feel free to stop by and it would be great if you could give us a plug in your podcast.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/deletemeuncensored/

Thanks again for putting out such a great podcast. I've subscribed and will listen to them all.

Best,

Thomas Hawk
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/

flickrcast said...

thanks thomas. it's nice to have a little more insight into the objections to deleteme, and we will certainly mention deleteme uncensored in our next episode.

as far as why you were banned from deleteme, i'm not intimately familiar with their rules but don't they specify a certain level of regular activity? i thought i saw something about making 15 comments per day...

-- Jason

Thomas Hawk said...

Jason, the thing was that I was commenting on OVER 15 photos every day and I was offering the most lengthy and insightful comments in the group.

The admins there (particularly BK and VodkaMax) have this inflated view of themselves. I was one of their most active members. I'm not sure why I was banned as my last act there was simply to vote on a friends excellent photo.

My friend Mr. Chalk had a run in with them a while back and their admin BK was actualy kicked out of Flickr at one point for making a death threat towards Mr. Chalk.

Chalk of course has his own long and sordid history with flickr but that's beside the point.

The drama in delteme is really in the threads. At one point they actually changed my posts to say things that I had never said. This is abusive on the part of administrators and was in part what spanned the insurgency where Superchou, myself and a number of others chose to leave and start our own tribe. Deleteme uncensored.

By the way BK, who is really a Frenchman named Vinny, has also made some horribly anti American statements. Including calling Americans "a waste of aminoacids."

http://www.flickr.com/groups/deletemeuncensored/discuss/109699/

As crazy as it sounds you could probably devote a whole episode to the drama that has gone on underneath the skin of deleteme.

You have not even begun to scratch the surface of delteme.

Aren't the subcultures of flickr fun?

Keep up the good work my friend. Your podcast is the only one on Flickr at the moment. Let's promote it and give it a big push and get it up where it belongs. I just gave you guys a vote over at podcast alley and will rally the troops at deleteme uncensored as well.

flickrcast said...

yeah, if there's a bunch of drama floating around i'll stick to my policy of ignoring them. as with the harsh criticism, that's just not something i want my flickr experience to be.

--Jason

Thomas Hawk said...

A couple of ideas for the show.

1. Interview some of the top photographers on Flickr.

2. Get an interview with some of the Flickr staff, Stewart, Caterina, Heather, etc.

3. Analyze and disect interestingness.

4. Get a technorati subscription to flickr, "stewart butterfield" "caterina fake" etc. and track any news and blog posts out on flickr each week. A few weeks back there was a big debate in the blogosphere on whether or not Flickr users were getting a fair deal on Flickr. Anil Dash started it all and Caterina responded. Here's a link to story that I wrote on it: http://thomashawk.com/2005/10/flickr-caterina-fake-anil-dash-wealth.html

Then there was the whole drama with Nick Starr getting kicked off Flickr and his subsequent reinstatement by Stewart, etc. http://thomashawk.com/2005/10/nick-starrs-flickrlicious-banned-from.html

There is so much great stuff for you guys to cover.

Looking foward to your upcoming shows.

In regards to your users question on how to get over a thousand views on your photos.

1. Take super interesting photos.
2. Have Flickr rank your photos as interesting.

It's as simple as that.

flickrcast said...

there's a bit of a logistics problem with doing the interviews since we're not in the same room together when we're recording. we're actually separated by something like 30 miles. we'd have to do any interviews over skype, and sound quality would suffer for everyone but me since i'd be doing the recording. aside from that, i don't think either of us are capable interviewers.

i have to take issue with your suggestion that people try to get more votes by playing to interestingness. interestingness, in the short time it's been around, has developed a certain signature style owing to the fact that to make it there in the first place, images have to jump out at you from the size of a thumbnail. that seems to have led to mostly oversaturated colors and simple, one-subject compositions. i don't want to sound like i'm appealing to authority, but to illustrate my point i have a hard time believing the works of cartier-bresson or [my personal favorite] sam abell would ever show up in something like interestingness. it's not a place for subtlety; it's a place for bashing the viewer over the head.

in short, people got over 1000 views before interestingness, and they can still do it without playing to the house style.

Thomas Hawk said...

hmmm.. interesting comment on interestingness. I can certainly see a certain addiction to color and saturation on interestingness but I still generally find something of substance there from time to time.

Another good group for finding interesting photos is fa>=5%. http://www.flickr.com/groups/favs/

Here photos must have at least 5 favs and a minimum 5% fav ratio in order to post. Not perfect, but again another place to find interesting photos.

I wouldn't suggest playing interstingness by the way. At present I don't believe it can be played. With the original algorithm there were ways to play it, not anymore -- in my opinion.

Interviews via Skype are great. I did an interview on the Media Center show with Ian Dixon who is over in the UK recently and it came out fine.

You guys should experiment with interviews a bit. I bet you could get a lot of the top photographers to talk to you and it would make for some interesting shows. Interviewing is easy. Just ask a lot of questions and let them talk mostly. People would be interested in Rebekka and Ivan and Solea and the like. Or even if you didn't pick the popular people but just some plain great photographers and even if only for a quick 10 minute bio and chat it would add to the show. Think about it.

Speaking of cartier-bresson. One of the all time great Mr. Chalk pranks was when he'd submit great photographic works from the great photographers of all time into deleteme as his own work only to have them deleted out. It just goes to show you.

flickrcast said...

I wouldn't mind interviews in the future, however we want the flickrcast to mature a little longer before we attempt doing so. I agree that many of the top photographers would be tickled and would love the extra recognition.

My only issue with interewing is the audio quality problem. If the person being interviewed is on, or has access to a 768 kbps upload or higher, then the audio quality would be more than acceptable, it seems however that most people are using cheaper broadband such as a low-end DSL package with a max of 256-300 kbps upload.

Thanks for your comments, and suggestions!

--Bryan

Anonymous said...

I just listened to episode #2 and I'm downloading #1 right now. Love it...Love it...

One beef though. You guys talked about the new printing features etc but neither one of you had used it yet. Not trying to be a wet blanket but that does not make much sense. When sign up for a podcast I want expertice or insite on the topic in question. Anyway, keep it up.

matt

Anonymous said...

Ahh....spelling errors. Sorry..

flickrcast said...

we weren't reviewing the service. we were mentioning it as news and giving our impressions based on what we'd seen of it so far.

--jason

Unknown said...

Guys ... a feature I'd like to see is the ability to select photos via tags but excluding another tag.

for example
tag1 and tag2 but not tag3

Excellent podcast I've blogged it and added a link from my blog at www.konnecke.com