Flickr

S & M at school005
Originally uploaded by Africanfuturist.

If you want to see the future of the web go to www.flickr.com and browse around a bit. Flickr is a community based site where people can upload their photos, drawings, and scans. Doesn't sound like much as there are many sites that allow you to upload photos, but flickr does 3 other things that make all the difference. It allows you to see what other people are uploading, by default it allows you to share your own photos, and it lets you add metadata. So think of it as one part ofoto, one part friendster one part google.

Viewing other people's photos instantly puts you into a stream of images from around the world. So there is always something going on. Check back in 5 minutes and the site might have an entirely different vibe. You can join the stream or not by sharing your images.

But the real genius of flickr is that it uses metadata. Meta data is extra information that makes other data useful. Meta data in itunes is the name of the song, the name of the album, the year of the recording. Metadata on a photo is the camera info (date, exposure) as well as info that you put in (mexico family house). These bits of data are called tags, and one of the best things about flickr is that you can browse tags either by going to the main tag page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ or by putting in individual tags. Here's what happens if you put in a tag for jump. Don't know if it makes sense yet, but if not just hop over there and try it out. Give it some time, you'll like it.