Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

I haven’t blogged a post specifically about FriendFeed recently, even though it is probably the number one place where I spend time on the web these days, and thought I’d take a moment to put together a quick list of 10 reasons why you should sign up for FriendFeed.

Many of you are already on FriendFeed, but I’m surprised that so many of my photography friends especially still have not signed up for the service yet. Why do I want you to sign up for FriendFeed? Because I want to make sure that I’m seeing all of your great photographs, blog posts, tweets, etc.

On with the list.

1. Because it’s easy to sign up for FriendFeed and even if you don’t use the service, signing up for it allows your work better exposure on one of the fastest growing communities on the web. Signing up for FriendFeed takes less than 5 minutes and very quickly you can link your Flickrstream, Zooomrstream, Facebook account, Twitter account, blog, etc. and have all of this information aggregated for your friends in one place.

Even if *you* don’t use FriendFeed, building a FriendFeed profile allows other people who do the ability to see your stuff. I used to go to Flickr/Zooomr etc. to see my friends/contacts/etc. photos. Now I browse them through FriendFeed. If you are not on FriendFeed, there is a good chance that I and lots of others are not seeing your work. Even if FriendFeed is not for you, sign up for it any way so that people can see your stuff.

2. Because by signing up for FriendFeed, your work will get better exposure across the internet. FriendFeed was built by a bunch of ex-Google guys — some of the very early Google guys. These guys know how Google works. They know how to make sure that FriendFeed content is indexed for search engines.

When you search for "Thomas Hawk" on the Googler what comes up? My blog, my flickr account and then my FriendFeed account. My FriendFeed account is indexed above my Zooomr account, my digg account, my Twitter account, my Facebook profile, Linked In, etc. It’s ahead of everything except my blog and Flickr. Same goes for individual posts that I have linked at FriendFeed. By having a FriendFeed account you make sure that your content is better indexed into search engines.

3. Because FriendFeed is a superior platform for monitoring your Flickr and Zooomr contact photos. When you watch your friends/contacts photos on FriendFeed instead of Flickr/Zooomr you see *all* of the photos that they upload, not just the last five. You can also create custom lists. You can, for instance, create a list of only your friends who are neon photographers, or graffiti photographs, or San Francisco photographers, or… well you get the idea. You can customize your friends/contacts into more categories letting you better watch their photography by your own custom photography channels.

What’s more, FriendFeed not only includes all of your contacts photos in their photostream, it also includes their faves as well. Over the past six months, some of the best photography I’ve seen has come from other photos that my friends are faving. Your friends have great taste. This is a better way to monitor both their photography and the photography that they love and like.

4. Because FriendFeed is going to be big and when you sign up for it 6 months from now or a year from now you might not be able to get the domain there you want.

Remember when gmail first came out (hint, some of the guys that built Gmail for Google are behind FriendFeed). And remember when everybody rushed there to get the best email address. I sure wish I would have. Because then I might have been able to get thomashawk(at)gmail.com. Instead, by the time I got around to signing up for gmail, thomashawk(at)gmail.com was already taken — so now I’ve got the pain in the ass gmail address of thomashawk22(at)gmail.com. I wish I had signed up for gmail earlier and secured my email address. Fortunately I signed up for both Twitter and FriendFeed early and was able to secure both http://twitter.com/thomashawk at Twitter and http://friendfeed.com/thomashawk at FriendFeed.

Even if you don’t want to use FriendFeed today, you might want to in the future and you’ll be happy you got your custom url. Since signing up for FriendFeed is free and easy, at a bare minimum you should try to secure the best domain name you can for yourself there here and now today.

5. Because if you like Twitter, you’ll love FriendFeed. With FriendFeed you can follow your Twitter Friends and even filter to only see your Twitter friends if you want. What’s more if your friends have a particular good tweet, it will get promoted to the top of your screen. If you are tired of seeing a Twitter you can hide it. Earlier this week FriendFeed even built a tool that will automatically import all of your Twitter friends directly into your FriendFeed account. Using the FriendFeed settings you can also have your FriendFeed posts automatically post back to your Twitter account.

Earlier last week when Apple announced that Steve Jobs was stepping down for medical leave, I was one of the first people on the internet to post this on Twitter. But guess what, I didn’t post it on Twitter at all. I posted it on FriendFeed and instantaneously it was posted to my Twitter account. Look at the time stamps on both posts, 1:37pm, the exact same.

6. Because FriendFeed is a *kick ass* search engine. Want to see a bunch of interesting articles about photography? Just search for "photography" on FriendFeed. What a great bunch of interesting stories and articles on photography. Try a search on anything else that you’re interested in. Apple, Microsoft, Obama, TiVo, whatever. Search is really good on FriendFeed today (remember it was built by ex-Google guys).

But search is going to get even better down the road at FriendFeed. Social Search is the future of search and being able to filter your search results by your friends/family as well as community consensus using "best of day" sort of features will make FriendFeed one of the best search engines on the internet. More and more I’m finding great stories to blog about using search on FriendFeed.

7. Because you can hide anything that you don’t want to see on the site. Have you ever been on a site and wished that you didn’t have to see a thread anymore. I know in some Flickr Groups there are threads that I wish I could hide. Especially threads that get bumped over and over and over again. If I don’t care about the latest debate, or the latest silly thread I have to just keep ignoring it. Not at FriendFeed. A simple hide will ensure that you never see that thread again. You can not only hide individual threads, you can hide threads by person, by source, etc.

A lot of people that are not used to FriendFeed tell me that they like it but that it’s too noisy or busy. That they see too much stuff that they don’t want to see. Learn to manage this by hiding content. Very quickly you’ll have a stream customized exactly to what you want to see.

8. Because FriendFeed lets you get rid of your RSS reader. Are you using an RSS reader? Is it clogged full of uninteresting content? At FriendFeed the most liked/commented/interesting stories get bumped to the top. If you follow a feed by someone who is not on FriendFeed yet? No problem. Just make an "imaginary" friend for them and you’ll see that stuff too.

Having your RSS feed filtered by human editors makes for a far more interesting experience. I abandoned my Google Reader account about 8 months ago and haven’t looked back since.

I think FriendFeed still needs to build a tool to let you import your OPML file directly into FriendFeed and match it up with existing accounts and imaginary friends to make this even better, but at least for me FriendFeed has completely replaced my RSS reader and I consistently get to read and consume better and more interesting content filtered by my social network.

9. Because the site is technically excellent, very rarely has downtime and loads very fast. There’s something about a fast loading consistent site that I love. I’ve clicked on FriendFeed pages tens of thousands of times and have rarely had any trouble at all. I find the site technically to be faster and more consistent than Flickr, or Twitter, or really any of the other sites where I spend a fair amount of time.

10. Because there is a *great* community of interesting people on FriendFeed. Community on any social network is important. And FriendFeed has one of the best communities around. I’m not going to name names, but there are so many interesting people doing interesting things on FriendFeed engaging in conversations every day. Jump right in and get to know them. They are a friendly and welcoming bunch… well, for the most part. They are funny, interesting, unique people. Sometimes conversations can get heated. Sometimes people say things that they shouldn’t have. But I find it always engaging. The developers behind the site are also very active in the community.

So there you go. I want to see your work on FriendFeed. If you sign up to FriendFeed, or if you’re already on FriendFeed and I’m not already following you, your photos, etc. there, please leave me a comment on this post with your FriendFeed link so that I can add you as a contact there. If you want to add me as a contact on FriendFeed you can do that here.

The video above is an interesting one. You can read more of the backstory at Discarted, but basically a group of photographers headed out on a photowalk in Downtown L.A. only to run afoul of six security guards:

From Discarted:

“As we began photographing the US Bank Tower at 633 W. 5th Street, managed by Maguire Properties, we were approached almost immediately by a United Protective Services (UPS) security guard, and soon there were six (6!). We were told they would call the police and we would be arrested, that no pictures were allowed from their “private sidewalk,” that they actually owned the sidewalk, and that we were idiots and jerks who should quit asking questions.

The kicker is that, when Angelo of Hollywood politely explained photographers’ rights to one of the UPS guards, he responded that that was just “differing points of view.” Yeah … except that one viewpoint is about the law, and one is not.”

During the altercation, as is usually the case, the Holy Name of “9/11″ was brought up yet again, as rationale for not allowing the photography. Seems like nothing ever changes. Be careful out there folks and remember, even under the new Obama administration, photography is still not a crime.

Thanks, David!

Update: an update on this incident from discarted here.

Today on the Flickr blog Flickr is announcing that the “second phase” of their partnership with Getty Images is launching and says that a new round of invitations to participate in the stock photography program are being sent out “en masse.” Flickr says that the new service will formally launch in March. Flickr has an updated FAQ on the program here.

An interesting side note to the new offering is that if you are selected for inclusion in this program you will need to change the license on any Creative Commons photos put up for sale to “all rights reserved,” on Flickr.

From the Flickr FAQ:

“There is a chance one of your Creative Commons-licensed photos may catch the eye of a perceptive Getty Images editor. You are welcome to upload these photos into the Flickr collection on Getty Images, but you are contractually obliged to reserve all rights to sale for your work sold via Getty Images. If you proceed with your submission, switching your license to All Rights Reserved (on Flickr) will happen automatically.

If you’re not cool with that, that’s totally cool. It just means that particular photo will need to stay out of the Flickr collection on Getty Images.”

As an advocate for the Creative Commons license personally I would have liked to have seen Getty/Flickr allow this license. There is no reason why a CC non commercial image cannot be sold and it would have been a good endorsement for this license if they could have figured out a way to work with it.

If you want to follow more of the Flickr Community’s reaction to this offering there are a few threads on Flickr that you can follow here and here. Note, you have to be logged into Flickr and allow yourself to see “adult” content in your settings in order to read the first thread.

Getty’s announcement on the new service is on their blog as well today where they say that “thousands” of invitations were sent out today. If you want to see what the invite looks like you can see this screenshot of it here.

Did you receive an invitations from Getty/Flickr today? If so or if not, what do you think of this new offering?

Related: Mike Arrington had an interesting blog post over at TechCrunch last week as well entitled, “The Photo Marketplace That Never Launched: Flickr Stock.”

Sony today announced a firmware update to their PS3 that adds significant photo functionality to the popular PS3 gaming console.

The system software update 2.60 becomes available tomorrow and now offers a new Photo Gallery application allowing users to better manage, sort and control the presentation of their photos on their PS3s. With the new upgrade users will now be able to sort their photos by color, age, and even facial expressions like smiling. In a video demo of the new technology Sony shows how parents might, for instance, pull together photos on their unit only of their children smiling and then run these photos as a slide show.

In addition to the Photo Gallery, firmware 2.60 provides guest access to PlayStation Store, enabling non-PlayStation Network members to browse the storefront’s downloadable content, including games, game trailers, and demos, along with more than 4,200 movies and TV shows. The firmware upgrade also upgrades the PS3 system’s video capability to support DivX 3.11 media files.

I wonder at what point in the future we might see Netflix Watch Now on the Sony PS3.

It is interesting to me to see gaming consoles more and more becoming home media boxes. Both Sony with their PS3 and Microsoft with their XBox360 seem to be increasingly going after both the gaming market as well as the home media market including things like music, photos and video.

One thing that both Microsoft and Sony still seem to be missing though is natural integration with the photo sharing site Flickr. Viewing your own photos on your XBox 360 or PS3 is a nice thing to be able to do, but being able to better display and share photos between friends and family through an online platform like Flickr would make an even more memorable experience. Imagine if, for instance, my parents could automatically subscribe on a PS3 or XBox360 to all of my photos tagged with my kids names on Flickr. Or imagine if you could pull up all of the most interesting photos of Barcelona Spain before going there on a trip. Integrating the photo experience with the vast archives of both personal and online photos ought to be what both Microsoft and Sony should be working on.

I’ve blogged a few times in the past about Microsoft’s interesting new PhotoSynth technology that allows the ability to stitch your photos together to create a multi layered almost 3D sort of view using multiple photographs.

In perhaps the most historically significant use of the technology yet, CNN today asked viewers to email in their photographs taken of Barack Obama being sworn in today as President. CNN then used the technology to create a mass collaborative composite PhotoSynth presentation of today’s event and the results are stunning.

If you want to check it out you can check it out here. The PhotoSynth by CNN works on both PCs and Macs. Once you land on the page, move your mouse around and click a bit to get the hang of it. You can zoom in and out of the PhotoSynth and look through the crowd for familiar faces. Using this technology you can see several famous celebrities in the crowd up close and personal. Steven Spielberg, Kate Capshaw, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Cusak and several other celebrities can be seen in the PhotoSynth.

Ok, so internet peer pressure can be a powerful thing — and after seeing dozens of my online pals write up their lists of 25 things about them that people may or may not know as part of the “25 things meme,” I’m giving into the peer pressure.

Better late than never.

1. I’m the oldest of eight children. 7 boys and one girl. When I was in kindergarten one of my siblings drowned and died in a swimming pool accident when he was one and a half — so now I have six brothers and one sister. I haven’t seen my oldest brother in years and he’s been part of a cult for over a decade now.

2. I rode my bicycle from Lincoln City Oregon to Rehobeth Beach Delaware when I was 15.

3. I was the editor-in-chief of my college newspaper. I graduated from Westmont College in Santa Barbara. After College in 1990 I moved to San Francisco.

4. The worst job I ever had was collecting carts for Gemco in Southern California when I was 16. I did the job for about 2 weeks while it rained constantly and finally quit but felt really nervous about quiting. I worked most of my high school and college days including several jobs telemarketing and interviewing and a job at Jack in the Box for a while.

5. I’ve voted in every Presidential election that I’ve legally been allowed to vote in. I voted for the following Presidential candidates: Dukakis, Perot, Dole, Bush, Bush, and Obama.

6. I started taking photographs when I was 7 or so. I got my first SLR camera when I was 15. The only formal training I’ve had in photography came for a class that I took at Glendale Community College when I was 15.

7. My favorite restaurant is Tommy’s Hamburgers (all over Southern California). My second favorite restaurant is Henry’s Hunan in San Francisco.

8. My right eye is far sighted and I never use it. Mostly I just see out of one eye, my left one.

9. My favorite kind of pie is cherry.

10. My favorite beer is Saporro.

11. When I was a kid I had a bb gun. I mostly just shot cans with it until my dad told me that I was allowed to shoot the birds that ate the fruit in our fruit tree. I shot a sparrow in the tree once and felt about as awful as I’ve felt. I never shot another living thing with that bb gun again.

12. I hate the sun and much prefer the rain and cooler weather.

13. My favorite author is Hunter S. Thompson. My favorite book is Catch 22.

14. My favorite film is Lost in Translation.

15. When I was five I used to get paid a nickel each week for bringing in the garbage cans. When I was eight or so my dad started paying me 25 cents per Hardy Boy book that I’d read. I read every single Hardy Boy book and early on became very interested in both earning money and reading.

16. My favorite color is green.

17. My favorite television series of all time is the Wire.

18. During the past 18 years I’ve worked in the financial markets. When I was in college I read the entire Los Angeles Times every single day, but every single day I’d throw out both the business and sports section without reading them.

19. I’m a proud father of four, 2 boys and 2 girls aged 4, 5, 6, and 8.

20. I’ve been married once and for 12 years to the same woman, mrsth. We went to Prague and Vienna for our Honeymoon.

21. I used to raise pet rabbits and sell them when I was a kid.

22. I first kissed a girl when I was 15 (Jody).

23. I shaved my head in high school once. I had longer hair in college.

24. The first time I ever got drunk it was by drinking a fifth of Bacardi that I’d smuggled up in a Mexican blanket from my high school Spanish Club’s field trip to Tijuana.

25. Someday I plan on walking across the United States with my camera and documenting both American portraits and the American landscape.

The wordle above compares the Inaugural Address presented earlier this morning by newly elected President Barack Obama (top) with President George Bush’s Farewell Speech (bottom).

No matter what your politics, we are very fortunate to live in a country where every 4 or 8 years a peaceful transfer of power takes place based on Democratic elections.

You can read President Barack Obama’s entire Inaugural Address here. You can read a transcript of President George Bush’s farewell speech here.

View large here.