Time to Rewind and Move Forward

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I am really looking forward to 2013 and what we can end up doing with WordPress as the engine to the new sites.psu service that is set to really take off. Honestly we’ve had it running in very quiet production mode for months now, but there is a whole new look and feel, complete with personal profiles and an all PSU activity stream, on the horizon as well as new themes that will amaze people for both websites and simple things like blogs and ePortfolios. All in all I am thrilled with our choice to return to our original vision from well before we adopted Moveable Type. What we wanted was a system that worked for each and every person for as many uses as they could dream — and we now have to add to that the ability to publish and manage from any platform and device they want. I am pleased with the progress towards that vision and it has me really excited about the possibilities. So when I saw Jon Armstrong say the following about how docce.com was being overhauled to be powered by wp it inspired me to reflect and share.

Still, for dooce.com, WordPress is the ideal choice.

via Drupal to WordPress Migration: Prologue | BLURBOMAT.

In Bloomsburg

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment
At Steph' Subs by colecamp
At Steph’ Subs, a photo by colecamp on Flickr.

We spent the weekend with my parents and my sister’s family in Bloomsburg. A year after my Dad got sick and 18 months removed from the flood that destroyed so much I feel very lucky to be able do it. Sure it is stressful with everyone in the house, but it is a real blessing. We got to exchange gifts, spend an evening together in the rebuilt downstairs, laugh, eat a vaunted Steph’s Sub, cook another Christmas dinner, and just be together. Very lucky.

Back to Flickr

/ Cole Camplese / 7 Comments

Now that a big group of people I know have been energized by the resurgence of Flickr I am noticing something. Flickr was built well before the rise if the more “modern” social sites and lacks at least a few of the features that we’ve all come to expect. The one most glaring omission is the lack of a “like” button. Flickr asks us to not like a photo, but instead mark it as a favorite. I never really used that much, reserving it for truly favorite photos. It seemed like that was the case for a lot people. Now that we’ve bounced back to Flickr I am getting “favs” all the time. It seems to me that the feature sets of Instagram and Facebook has altered the way we use an older platform. It has made Flickr much more social and I like that.

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Instagram’s About Face

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

I had a feeling this would happen … and I would love to see the usage logs for the instagram app over the last few days. I can say from an anecdotal perspective that my personal instagram dashboard was very lean. For the time being I am going to continue to focus my photo sharing energy on flickr and the new iOS app they released. If the folks at flickr really wanted to win they’d release something that is universal and works just as perfectly on the iPad as it does on my iPhone.

The concerns we heard about from you the most focused on advertising, and what our changes might mean for you and your photos. There was confusion and real concern about what our possible advertising products could look like and how they would work.Because of the feedback we have heard from you, we are reverting this advertising section to the original version that has been in effect since we launched the service in October 2010.

via Instagram Blog.

Under Pressure

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Cause love’s such an old-fashioned word and love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night and love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves. This is our last dance. This is our last dance. This is ourselves … Under pressure … Under pressure. Pressure.

From the Instagram Blog … We are Listening

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

I see this kind of language quite a bit in contracts and licenses I look at before passing it along to our legal team here at the university … essentially a company wants you to grant them the right to display your content on their site to avoid a copyright violation claim. In this instance, I am not sure that is the case, but I doubt Instagram is trying to steal and sell your photos. I do think it is worth watching for a week or so as people react and Instagram does some more explaining. For now I am going to post photos to flickr again … at least until I can figure out what is going on. The fact that Kevin Systrom (Instagram co-founder) is posting a note trying to explain what is going on and what they really mean is encouraging; but it still gives me renewed pause as I wrap my head around what we exchange for a free service instead of money.

Advertising on Instagram … From the start, Instagram was created to become a business. Advertising is one of many ways that Instagram can become a self-sustaining business, but not the only one. Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.

via Thank you, and we’re listening – Instagram Blog.

See Ya, Instagram

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

See Ya Instagram by colecamp
See Ya Instagram, a photo by colecamp on Flickr.

I am bailing on Instagram … for now. Until I can better understand the terms and conditions of their new license agreement I’m just not going to use it. May be an overreaction, but only a week removed from saying I was done with flickr I’ve decided to stay. All of a sudden paying $25.00 to have some semblance of control seems like a great idea. When you add in the new flickr iOS app it is a no-brainer until I figure this out.