Chris Pirillo » flickr

What is an Eye-Fi?

Chris — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:28:55 +0000

What is an Eye-Fi? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of EyeFi. All opinions are 100% mine.

I used a digital camera to take a photo of the chat room, and then had it automatically transferred to my Flickr account. I could just as easily send it to my Facebook page, or any other account that is supported by the Eye-Fi. The picture was transferred wirelessly over my home network from the camera directly to my desktop… and then right to my Flickr! Using the Eye-Fi SD card, it is a snap to upload photos without having to go through several different steps.

The Eye-Fi comes with a handy little reader, since you may not have an SD card reader. The camera itself doesn’t do the transfer, in case you haven’t figured it out. It’s the Eye-Fi SDHC card doing all of the work. It’s automagic!

How often do you forget to download photos from your camera? Actually, a more likely scenario is that you just haven’t made the time to do it. If you have several pictures stored on there, it can take quite awhile for you to download them to your computer, upload them somewhere like Flickr, tag them and finally have them ready for the World to view. Using the Eye-Fi takes almost all of those steps out of the process, saving you time and headaches!

The Eye-Fi SDHC card has up to 4GB of storage, so you don’t have to worry about not having enough room for everything. One of the coolest things is that it provides an automatic backup of your memories by organizing them according to date on your computer for you! Don’t we wish more gadgets or programs would do this for us? Life sure would be easier!

I’m willing to bet you want one of these now for yourself, don’t you? Well – here’s your chance! Twelve of you are going to win one of these awesome little cards!! All you have to do is sign into Twitter, and tweet the following:

Hey @ChrisPirillo – I’d like to win a free #eye-fi via http://go.tagjag.com/eyefi4me

Yes, that’s all there is to it! Twelve people will be randomly selected to win, so get those tweets sent out in a hurry! I already love my Eye-Fi. It’s made my photo experience a thousand times better than it used to be. I think I need a few more of these!

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Kris Krug – Photography Tips

Chris — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:18:24 +0000

Kris Krug – Photography Tips is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Kris Krug is part photographer and part open source web entrepreneur. After publishing an online arts magazine, Kris joined Bryght – a community web hosting service which helped create an eco-system of related companies in Vancouver, BC. Kris regularly speaks at conferences and to media about technology and community building in the Internet age. He’s an organizer of Northern Voice blogging conference as well as BarCamps in Beijing and Shanghai, China. Kris moonlights as a fashion and editorial photographer, shooting subjects from dot-com executives to fashion models to rock bands, as well as producing grassroots coverage of events like SXSW and Olympic Games in Turin and Beijing. Find his work online on Flickr and StaticPhotography.com and in numerous online and print media outlets.

Kris was full of amazing tips for all of us, on taking great snapshots of people. We know that many of you take tons of pictures at each conference you attend, and we wanted to help out in that arena. Photos last a lifetime, and these are no exception.

On a side note, the picture he took of Ponzi and Miriam turned out beautifully, as Ponzi had hoped.

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How and Where do You Post Your Digital Photos Online?

Chris — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:45:50 +0000

How and Where do You Post Your Digital Photos Online? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I’ve mentioned ping.fm many times as a wonderful tool to keep your friends up-to-date with what you’re doing. The last thing you want to do is update your status on several networks. Instead, you can use ping.fm to update them all at once. That’s fine for text status updates, but what about photos? What happens when you need to upload one photo to multiple places? Why not use Pixelpipe. Simply create a login, and add your pipes.

Liberate your media with Pixelpipe and get your content out to your favorite social network, photo/video and blog service. We support popular destinations and provide a number of applications to free your media from your desktop and mobile.
Why choose one when you can send your media through Pixelpipe and have it delivered to so many at the same time? Just continue to create your free account and join the liberation.

I have added 37 different destinations that I have loaded now, all places where I might upload photos. I can’t even believe I have that many! I took a picture with my iPhone, and then used Pixelpipe to upload it to all of those sites that I chose. As I upload, I can caption/title the photo if I want, as well. You can also set a list of default keywords, and/or add others as needed. Within a matter of seconds, my image was pushed out to Pixelpipe and then thrown onto my accounts all all of those sites I have set.

How cool is that? I mean, seriously. I upload photos all the time, sometimes several a day. And invariably, I always need to put them in many more than just one place. This makes it so much easier. If I were to read all the sites my photo was sent to, it would take me longer than what it did for Pixelpipe to sneeze it out to them. For free, it’s doing a better job than any other service like it I’ve seen. I will continue to add other photo services through Pixelpipe, and hopefully they’ll continue to improve and upgrade their service.

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Where Do You Search for Stock Photography Images?

Chris — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:33:17 +0000

Where Do You Search for Stock Photography Images? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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When you need to search for an image, where do you turn first? Most of you will probably answer that you use Google Image search. Some of you might check Flickr, or maybe even other means. Why not use a website that allows you to search several different places – all at once? Cyclops allows you to do just that.

The hours spent laboring through stock photo sites. Desperately searching for the perfect image. It burdened our creativity. Weighed heavily on our visions for design.
But then the perfect solution crowned! And, before long, our beautiful baby Cyclops was born. With his father’s eye for photography, film and illustrations, he knows where to find the best, the most striking and most unique. And with his mother’s “eager to please” attitude, he collects everything he finds and brings it straight to us!
Finally, a helpful little monster who takes the legwork out of searching stock sites. His work, no doubt, will become legendary.

Choose to search through all of the partner sites, or only a few. Currently, you can search the following using Cyclops:

BigStockPhoto
Flickr
Fotolia
iStockPhoto
Photos.com
ShutterStock
stockx.xchng

The next time you need photos for a project, or even a background, check out Cyclops first. I guarantee you’re going to find exactly what you’re looking for on the first try.

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Who Needs Photoshop?!

Chris — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:02:18 +0000

Who Needs Photoshop?! is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I have been addicted to the Web since the day it was born. The other day, I did a video about Cameroid which can help you do all sorts of cool things with your video camera. I came upon a link from my friend Mona for a site that is similar to Cameroid… only even better. On PhotoFunia, you will get “the photo software that should have come with your camera”.

Click on any of the pre-defined effects, and then browse your computer to choose a photo. PhotoFunia will automatically apply your selected effect to that picture before displaying it! Once your picture is ready, you can save it to your computer, save it to ImageShack, or save it out as an avatar.

The second place I want to tell you about comes from JoshM. Dumpr is where you create marvellous photos to share with your friends. It’s very similar to both Cameroid and PhotoFunia. Again, you can take an image and throw it into a variety of effects. This site is free, or you can choose to sign up and pay a fee. Once you pay, you’ll have access to even more effects. Once you finish with your photo, you can save it to your computer or Flickr, or send it to others in an email.

So there are two very cool sites you can use to play with your pictures, and create something new.

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Do You Pronounce it GIF (Giraffe) or GIF (Graphic)?

Chris — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:14:26 +0000

Do You Pronounce it GIF (Giraffe) or GIF (Graphic)? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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You may not agree with it, but it is pronounced “Jiff”, according to the person who created it. What do you do if you want to create an animated GIF from a series of photos? And what if you want to pull those photos from somewhere like Flickr? You can do this easily by using Gickr. The feature to grab photos from your Flickr account isn’t quite up and running yet, but will be very soon. You can, however, upload pictures from your computer, and turn them into animated GIFs with ease.

Gickr.com lets you instantly create Animated GIF online, free, right now! Just upload pictures or grab them from your Flickr. Create funny flashy slideshows with you and your friends, cartoons, previews, banners, etc. Post them anywhere you can post pictures: MySpace, Bebo, HI5 etc. No need for flash. Show them to people in our Gallery.

If you know of other free animated GIF creators, let me know. This one is easy to use, and works well enough. What else is out there?

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Do you Embed my Videos or Pictures?

Chris — Sat, 31 May 2008 01:33:25 +0000

Do you Embed my Videos or Pictures? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Someone recently asked me what exactly embedding means? To embed something simply means that you are enclosing or adding something. For instance, you can embed a video into a blog post, or onto YouTube.

We record and upload videos to YouTube. You’re also able to watch those videos on my blog. YouTube allows me to embed the video into my blog. I don’t move the video, or upload it directly to my site. I basically point you to the video, which is hosted on YouTube. Why would I want to do that? Well for one, YouTube bears the burden of the bandwidth. If the videos aren’t hosted on my site, they aren’t eating up my bandwidth. There are also tons of people watching these videos, so having them be on YouTube allows the traffic to be routed through them.

Embedding is a good thing. The only caveat really is where you embed. You need to be careful where you host and upload things, in case the site could someday close its doors. I don’t think YouTube is going anywhere. I don’t think Flickr is going anywhere.

So basically, you take some HTML code, paste it into your blog or website, and presto! The video or picture has been embedded.

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Christmas Wallpaper

Chris — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 03:40:45 +0000

Christmas Wallpaper is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Ahhhh… the holiday season is upon us, whether you’re ready for it or not! We spend a lot of time, money and effort decorating our homes. Regardless of which holiday you may celebrate… I want to know how you deck your desktop!

I get almost all of my desktop wallpaper from Flickr. Flickr is just amazing. There are now over 2 billion images there from people all over the world. Some of these images come from professionals, and many of them come from everyday users like you and me!

If you want to find some great holiday wallpaper, it’s easy with Flickr. Simply do a keyword search for your favorite holiday term(s). You’ll get literally hundreds of matches to choose from. Flickr pictures make excellent quality wallpaper, as well.

If you’d like to send your holiday photos to my digital photo frame, you can upload them to Flickr, and tag them with chrisframe. I am subscribed to an RSS Feed that will automatically download them to my frame.

What do you do to decorate your home, and deck your desktop? Let’s hear from all of you out there!

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The Politics of Security

Chris — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 01:00:58 +0000

The Politics of Security is a post from Chris Pirillo

Online Security is important. Flickr users in China, Iran, and Iraq feel the same way I do – though Microsoft employees in Lebanon and Israel don’t (since they’re all on the Mac). An Online Search for the keyword yeilds few results, so perhaps we’re in need of more Education – or more Firefox Advertising from the Bush Administration?

New Flickr Photo Header

Chris — Sun, 21 May 2006 10:08:38 +0000

New Flickr Photo Header is a post from Chris Pirillo

Apologies for everybody who saw this post before it was fully baked. I was testing the style for the iG-Syntax Hiliter plugin. Seems to be working okay, and even though I can tweak the options under the appropriate tab in my admin panel, I think there's some other page I can use to tweak specific settings (as the plugin comes with a set of images that I don't see surfaced anywhere). No matter, the plugin came in handy here - and will definitely be used again in future code displays.

I hate big-ass blog headers. The first thing I do when I see a gigantic image sitting front an center on a Web page is flick my scroll wheel to move down to the meat of the page. Yes, they can be aesthetically pleasing - but they can also be a gigantic waste of space. As such, I haven't really ever had an interesting blog header. My most recent design (admittedly limited due to the overly-complicated template design of BlogWare's system) had all the important and relevant information sitting there. You know who I am, right? This time, I wanted to do something a bit more dynamic - a bit more interesting. To get what I wanted, I needed to slap two few tools together: a simple photo thumbnail repository engine and a syndication format interpreter.

I've been looking around for a great RSS plugin for WordPress, and still can't find anything close to satisfactory (read: configurable, powerful). I've been a registered CaRP user for years, and (what do you know) it also happens to be a PHP script. I've gotta convince Antone to turn CaRP into a full-blown WordPress plugin, though it has abolutely no UI to begin with. I know how to use CaRP, I'm learning how to work within WordPress, and I know just about enough PHP to tweak what I need to tweak in a script.

You've seen a few images show up inline in recent days, having been posted through email via the Postie plugin. It's not generating thumbnails (or RSS, let alone an album), so I'm turning to my friend Flickr. Unfortunately, it only outputs 8 square thumbnail images per feed pull (and I really wanted 10). No matter, Flickr and CaRP have helped me get the job done. For CaRP, I'm employing these options:

CarpConf('cborder','');
CarpConf('iorder','image');
CarpConf('maxitems',12);
CarpConf('bitems','

');
CarpConf('aitems','Chris Pirillo

');
CarpCacheShow('http://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=49503157467@N01&format=rss_200');

Of course, now I needed to define the CSS. Putting the images there (alone) is nifty enough, but I'm the kind of guy who loves combining fun with functionality. My name needs to be there, but I'm still not sold on slapping up a tagline in that position. As a visitor, I'd expect to click the name to return to the root of this site - so it had to be hyperlinked. Cake. Almost. I ran into some issues with positioning of my small nav icons, but (amazingly enough) the code works in both browsers. I think I'm the only blogger who optimizes his pages for IE, though? Anyway, here's the CSS:

.headertext { font: 75px Georgia; left: 0px; position: absolute; text-decoration: none; }
.headertext a, .headertext a:hover { color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none; }
.headerwrapper { left: 50px; position: absolute; top: 15px; }
.headerwrapper img { border: 0px; float: left; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; }

The result is what you see at the top of my blog. As I upload a new image, the older ones will get pushed off to the right (and eventually pushed out altogether). Been looking for a way to rip 10+ images out of my feed without futzing with the API. Anyway, it's there now - and you're more than welcome to take this code and do it on your site, too (although you'll have to adapt the PHP script if you don't use CaRP). That should be easy enough to do, even if you have to work backwards from the source of any given page here.

Flickr Fun

Chris — Thu, 18 May 2006 20:38:03 +0000

Flickr Fun is a post from Chris Pirillo

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I'd like to put my latest Flickr photo thumbnails in the Lockergnome HTML newsletters. Since I use CaRP, I have virtually no configuration options (other than manual hacking or asking Antone). In searching for an easy way to get 'er done, I found this solution from Fuddland (but it relies on MagpieRSS, which I'd rather not use). The information is already in the feed - it's getting it out of the feed that's a bit tricky for people like myself. Why doesn't Flickr just have a separate feed for thumbnails - letting the user designate the size of the desired output? Yeah, there's an API for that - but have I not beaten it into the world's skull that I'm not a developer? In my Flickr travels, I found quite a few useful tools - including one I used this morning for my previous Dell post.

Clipr - Upload Clipboarded Screen Shots
deskFlickr - Create Collages from Flickr Tags
photocastr - Form for Easier Flickr Photocasting
John's Background Switcher - Change Your Desktop Wallpaper with Flickr Tags

What other amazing Flickr tools am I not aware of?

Gnomedex Site Redesign

Chris — Wed, 17 May 2006 07:06:35 +0000

Gnomedex Site Redesign is a post from Chris Pirillo

I called upon Gnomedex.com's original graphic artist to give 'er another go. Eddie Hollenbeck is back and better than ever, as evidenced by these mock-ups. I definitely have my top choice, but would like to know your preference as well.

I'm starting to get caught up, and I have a handful of other conference participants to announce. Hang in there, my friends - we're just getting warmed up. If you haven't purchased your ticket yet, please do. If I haven't personally invited you to be a discussion leader, don't count yourself out yet.

How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

Using GoToAssist is the easiest way to view and control another person's computer online. Use it to provide instant technical support to family, friends and customers. Start a session with just one click, and instantly connect with the other party.

Network Tools for Windows

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

You need these network tools, no matter which operating systems and networks you have to support. SolarWinds ipMonitor: Affordable Network Monitoring for SMBs. Get turnkey network, server and application availability monitoring with SolarWinds ipMonitor v9.0. This easy-to-use, reliable solution for SMBs delivers out-of-the-box availability monitoring so you always know exactly what's up with Active Directory, DNS, Exchange, FTP, Web, IMAP, MS SQL Server, and SMTP. Download your free trial today. Or, try their totally free tools! And, through 2/29, save 20% when you purchase ipMonitor 9.0.

Get Your Own Web Site

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

Starting at just $3.99/month, web hosting from GoDaddy includes 99.9% uptime, 24/7 support and free access to GoDaddy Hosting Connection, THE place to install over 30 FREE applications sure to help you get the most from your hosting plan and Web site. Enter code CP2 at checkout, and save an additional 10% on any order.

Plus, as a friend of Chris Pirillo, enter code CHRIS7, that's C-H-R-I-S and the number 7, when you check out, and save an additional 10% on any order. Get your piece of the internet at GoDaddy.com.

VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

Coupons for Online Shopping

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

This feed is fueled by Lockergnome Online Shopping and Coupon Codes

Before you shop next time, see if we have a coupon first.