Thing 8: Flickr Mashups

Created with Spell with Flick

I haven’t quite figured this out so I had to take a screen capture of what I created in “Spell with Flickr.”  This mashup is a cool artsy way to create word art using random picture selections from Flickr (side note - I still haven’t really figured word art in “Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac.”  I use to be able to make word art in rainbow colors and have the text box curve or bow.  I think I’ve found an adequate replacement for doing word art in MS Word, I’ll use this program and take a screen capture to insert whatever word art I’ve created into a document as a picture).  When you click on the “Created” hyperlink above, it won’t show you this same picture shown here, but will create “Thing 8” using a different selection of Flickr pictures each time.  This would be great in a classroom for students to use in a PowerPoint or in any classroom presentation (like a video movie).  Students could also use it illustrating writing projects (like if students were writing a book they could use this to create a title for their book).  A fun and somewhat addicting mashup.  

  I was interesting in the Mappr mashup but it appears to be discontinued through the website is till active.  A note at on the site reads “As of 2007, Mappr is no longer processing images from flickr.  Take a look at flickr to find images on maps.”  It appears that the Flickr site now does what the “Mappr” site was doing.  Clicking on the hyperlink like “route 66” just take you to a screen capture image and not any of the Flickr pictures on a map.

 

Another mashup I visited Clockr which advertises that it “uses random digital images from Flickr display the current time.”  At first I couldn’t get it to work even after clicking on each number of the clock several times and closing and restarting my Firefox browser several times.  Revisiting the site again several hour later I still was having the same problem but this time stayed on the site for about 15 minutes (checking my browser settings for pop-up blockers and such) and then it just started working.  Now I’m thinking the clock program just took a while to load because now it’s working every time I revisit the site.  An interesting site to visit once (just to say I’ve been there) but not one I could really think of any uses for in the classroom or for my personal use.

 

Last I looked at a Flickr app developed by rapi.castillo, created on September 16, 2010, called Flickr Lithe.  Not anything out of the ordinary but just search that arranges the pictures in a more user friendly way.  By moving the cursor over a picture an enlarged version of the picture appears with the title and photographer listed.  This is my search “Clarksville, Tennessee” and one I did for “Austin Peay State University”.  Note: double click on the image for an enlarged view of the screen capture.  Not something I found beneficial for my personal but perhaps a limited use in the classroom for visual learners who wanted a more exciting look to the regular Flickr search.