Some of the most interesting things happening in my life over the past couple of weeks have been work related, presenting and evangelising Flickr to external partners (sadly nothing particularly interesting personally) so I thought I'd plug some pretty cool features on the photo sharing site (which those of you who know me well know I not only love Flickr but happen to work on it at Yahoo! as well).
Interestingness
Flickr takes a whole bunch of things into consideration when selecting photos for the interestingness photostream, for instance where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favourite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing (I copied that last bit straight from flickr.com, sorry). One feature within interestingness I particularly love is where you can browse using a calendar and see most interesting photos from a particular month like March 2009, wicked!
Contacts
Flickr has recently redesigned this page to make it easier to browse your contacts and to straight away see who your most active contacts are, you need to be logged in to see this feature, just head for 'Contacts List' in the nav bar. You can even sort so you see who out of your contacts has uploaded the most public photos to Flickr, one of my Flickr meet-up (another story) contacts has over 15,000 public photos!
The Commons
Another fantastic initiative from Flickr is The Commons where you can find the "hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives". You can add tags and leave comments on photos to make the collections even more descriptive and worthwhile to others. I could (and sometimes do) spend hours browsing these, we even have a few Commons partners from Australia & NZ including the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, State Library of NSW, Australian War Memorial, State Library of Queensland and the National Library NZ!
With holidays on the way in April I hope in my next post I'll be able to show off some new pics from my own Flickr photostream and tell some stories, or perhaps I'll just end up plugging the cool (and very useful) tripit.com website we used to build the holiday itinerary!
Cheers
Tim
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Coldplay gig at Acer Arena in Sydney
It's rather ironic that this post is about the very thing I said I wasn't planning to do again in my previous post! Mel had been talking a lot about how much she wanted to see Coldplay in Sydney but given the previous experience of the Acer Arena we hadn't really bothered looking around for tickets.
I've seen Coldplay at a festival in England before, in their early days together as a somewhat less popular band. They were good but not hugely memorable. Anyway knowing how much Mel wanted to see them I went onto Gumtree Australia to see if I could pick up tickets last minute from someone who could not make it after all. I sent a few emails to people advertising tickets at face value $140 each, telling them all I'd be willing to pay $200 a pair. Fortunately one guy wanted a quick sale and even drove over to Balmain to make the exchange, result!
I have to say, I really felt like I was taking one for the team by going along and tried to show enthusiasm beyond what I was feeling before the gig. I had no idea Chris Martin and the band would put on such a great show, worth every cent we paid and more... One of our friends in NZ said when she found out I'd bought Mel tickets as a surprise "has Tim had brain surgery or something", I'll take that to mean I'm losing my "squeaks when he walks" reputation!
I'd definitely recommend seeing Coldplay live if you've not already done so; Chris Martin is lively, energetic and bloody funny at times. The floor show is fantastic, enough said and it would be like telling you the end of a movie to say more.
Oh and the sound in Acer Arena was great this time round!
Cheers
Tim
I've seen Coldplay at a festival in England before, in their early days together as a somewhat less popular band. They were good but not hugely memorable. Anyway knowing how much Mel wanted to see them I went onto Gumtree Australia to see if I could pick up tickets last minute from someone who could not make it after all. I sent a few emails to people advertising tickets at face value $140 each, telling them all I'd be willing to pay $200 a pair. Fortunately one guy wanted a quick sale and even drove over to Balmain to make the exchange, result!
I have to say, I really felt like I was taking one for the team by going along and tried to show enthusiasm beyond what I was feeling before the gig. I had no idea Chris Martin and the band would put on such a great show, worth every cent we paid and more... One of our friends in NZ said when she found out I'd bought Mel tickets as a surprise "has Tim had brain surgery or something", I'll take that to mean I'm losing my "squeaks when he walks" reputation!
I'd definitely recommend seeing Coldplay live if you've not already done so; Chris Martin is lively, energetic and bloody funny at times. The floor show is fantastic, enough said and it would be like telling you the end of a movie to say more.
Oh and the sound in Acer Arena was great this time round!
Cheers
Tim
Monday, 2 March 2009
Fall Out Boy gig in Sydney
Weekend before last Mel and I went to see a Fall Out Boy gig in Sydney. It was actually my birthday that day which I decided to keep pretty quiet this year, must be something to do with turning 33!
I booked the tickets quite a while back and missed out on standing, they only had seated tickets left and I'd contemplated not going for that reason as last time I sat at a rock concert (Linkin Park) I vowed to never do it again! It turns out sitting was better in Mel's condition anyway, well it would have been if it weren't for so many overweight (not really relevant but a fact) screaming girls who we're acting like they'd never been let out of the house before. I've got nothing against people having fun but was never stupid enough to buy a seated tickets at a gig and then stand the whole time so no one else could see (unless everyone stands up therefore defeating the purpose of a seated event). We certainly felt our age as well!
Fall Out Boy we're OK and played all the favourites as expected. I was disappointed with the quality of sound, not sure if that was the fault of Patrick Stump (lead singer) or the Acer Arena acoustics. Sound did not seem to be an issue when The All-American Rejects played as backup, they rocked!
As with the experience last year in going to a game of Rugby at ANZ stadium in Homebush, I'll be unlikely to return to Acer Arena (also in Homebush) - it's just too far out of the city and not good enough to be worth the hassle in my opinion.
I'll not stop listening to Fall Out Boy on my ipod at the gym though, where I can enjoy the music without the loud obesity looming!
Cheers
Tim
I booked the tickets quite a while back and missed out on standing, they only had seated tickets left and I'd contemplated not going for that reason as last time I sat at a rock concert (Linkin Park) I vowed to never do it again! It turns out sitting was better in Mel's condition anyway, well it would have been if it weren't for so many overweight (not really relevant but a fact) screaming girls who we're acting like they'd never been let out of the house before. I've got nothing against people having fun but was never stupid enough to buy a seated tickets at a gig and then stand the whole time so no one else could see (unless everyone stands up therefore defeating the purpose of a seated event). We certainly felt our age as well!
Fall Out Boy we're OK and played all the favourites as expected. I was disappointed with the quality of sound, not sure if that was the fault of Patrick Stump (lead singer) or the Acer Arena acoustics. Sound did not seem to be an issue when The All-American Rejects played as backup, they rocked!
As with the experience last year in going to a game of Rugby at ANZ stadium in Homebush, I'll be unlikely to return to Acer Arena (also in Homebush) - it's just too far out of the city and not good enough to be worth the hassle in my opinion.
I'll not stop listening to Fall Out Boy on my ipod at the gym though, where I can enjoy the music without the loud obesity looming!
Cheers
Tim
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