Tumblr and Flickr

I would love to see Tumblr and Flickr have greater integration. It would be nice to import pix from Flickr from Tumblr and perhaps Flickr inventory your Tumblr pix. It would be nice to create a photo slide show you could embed in your Tumblr blog. There are some great opportunities there within the Yahoo family.

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My Online Life

I can survive online with just Tumblr, Flickr, Twitter and Instagram…I don’t think I would miss the unnecessary drama that brews there much of the time. Maybe I’ll be missed there a little. I am a progressive/liberal and my views aren’t understood by my more conservative friends. Facebook has become a platform for ads and stuff. I’ll give this a go.

Go to my actual blog and look for the social buttons there on the right hand side and follow me elsewhere. Connections are good.

Yahoo! Revisited

Yahoo as we all know bought Tumblr for a cool $1.1 Billion. So with all the talk about the pioneering website trying to reinvent itself I have gotten a little sentimental so I have been hanging out on the sites that currently make up Yahoo. They are doing a lot to make it a one stop shop for the news and info you are looking for. I have tricked out my Firefox browser with loads of Yahoo stuff. Including the search bar using Yahoo. I even installed the toolbar, it took me time to remember how to use it. Figuring it out just took some time.

Yahoo announced that its image hosting service Flickr would be changing and for the better. Each user gets a terrabyte and unlimited sets for organizing your pix. You can post pix to social media and blogs too.

Search is going to take some getting used to after spending so much time with Google. It seems to have a more targeted search system and gives great results.

My wife and I use messenger to communicate throughout the day. We both have Yahoo email addresses. I used Yahoo mail a lot in the mid 90’s. It’s a new experience there too.

I have to admit, Yahoo is doing some good things. And no I didn’t get paid to write this. Google needs competition and the elder statesman of the web can do that. Yahoo is under great leadership in Marissa Mayer who knows what she is doing.

Using Yahoo now is different than it was back in the day. Its more colourful and gives you lots of info at your fingertips. I recommend it! Give it a go like you did years ago.

Yahoo homepage circa 1994. My how things have changed.

Changing Times Means Backing Up Your Blog

I blogged for years at a site called Multiply. I enjoyed the experience and made some great friends there. That site recently announced they are ceasing social networking and blogging features on their site and moving towards developing a retail and shopping environment. Websites are making decisions that will allow them to stay open and that means making serious business decisions that effect millions of their users. Retail trumps social connections in this case. 

Whenever you blog on a site like Multiply, Tumblr, WordPress.com, Blogger its a good idea to back up your blog from time to time. Some sites offer tools to export your content and with other sites you might have to copy and paste to a document and save your pictures. You might be able to find software that would back up your blog from time to time.

If your blogging site offers you the ability to upload your pictures to a media locker like Multiply you will want to download that media and store it on another service like Picasa Web, Flickr or Snapfish. Storing those files on an a external hard drive will give another level of security. These are priceless memories that are hard if impossible to replace.

Paying for hosting and setting up your own blog will give you more control over your content. If your budget doesn’t allow it be sure you blog in a place that has a focus on blogging and social networking, check out other users and ask for opinions from experts.

As companies come and go it might mean you have to be more careful where you have your online home. Keep on blogging but back up your valuable digital content. This is a uncertain time online so be careful. 

sunfoundation: The World’s Largest Photo Libraries. The story is pretty amazing.