I have uploaded 387 photos to Flickr so far, about 220 of which are not of my nephew (sorry, those photos are only available for viewing to people specified as family and friends on Flickr).

Of these approximately 220 photos I have on the site, 32 have inspired people to press the “Add to Faves” button in the upper left corner of the photo. The majority of those are favorited by just one person, half a dozen by two and a handful by more. In just a few days, this picture of the Hungarian Parliament’s ceiling quickly rose to the top by landing on five people’s favorites page. I thought it merited a special mention here.

And don’t be shy, I really enjoy receiving comments on my photos so feel free to add impressions.

Wow, there is some serious pumpkin-carving talent out there.

New York Changing has a collection of photos comparing various New York City locations to what they looked like 70 years ago. It is actually surprising how many of the locations haven’t changed that much at all.

The site reminds me of the page I put together after 9/11 about Web site changes.

JFK quote in Chicago Public Library,
originally uploaded by eszter.

I started a new group on Flickr called “Quotes in Public”.

The idea is to bring together pictures of quotes in public places, e.g. on monuments, walls, buildings, benches, in cemeteries, and whatever other location people may find interesting quotes.

The above image is what inspired the group. A few others have already been added to the group, check it out.

Do you like to play sudoku? Do you prefer images over numbers? You may for this game. Picture sudoku lets you choose images from photo-sharing site Flickr with which to fill your sudoku puzzle. You can specify the tag and/or the user whose images you want to integrate into the game.

Examples:
Chicagoland sudoku (with just my photos)
turtle sudoku (with everyone’s photos)
long-shadow sudoku (with everyone’s photos)
chocolate sudoku (with everyone’s photos)

As you can see, the possibilities are endless.

The game also gives you a “blank” with which to erase placement of photos. If you are intrigued by a picture and want to see it in full size on Flickr then just click on the asterisk next to its name in the left-hand column.

Have fun!

[thanks]

Changing leaves,
originally uploaded by eszter.

Fall has arrived and so far it’s looking great. This tree is right outside my office. I really liked the changing colors within one tree.

The accompanying weather makes for great walks by the lake.

Business card,
originally uploaded by eszter.

I’m always on the lookout for ways to organize physical objects digitally. Back when I was guest-blogging at Lifehacker I posted an entry about using Flickr to help keep track of wines by taking pictures of their labels and uploading them to Flickr. While a handy tool, I’m not much of a wine fan so it’s not something I’ve been able to use myself.

But now I have thought of a way to apply this method to something that is quite present in my everydays: business cards.

Despite lots of material available about people on the Web, exchanging hard-copy business cards is still something people seem to do quite a bit. There is some value to it. If you add a few notes to the card then the card can help you remember the person. That is, the person may have a Web site with all the relevant contact info, but if you cannot recall their name then that won’t be of too much help. Business cards can help in remembering people’s names and recalling the context in which you met them.

So I started taking snapshots of business cards I have collected recently. I upload these pictures to my account on Flickr. Since people don’t necessarily want their contact info floating around publicly, I have specified these pictures as completely private.

I then add information about the context of the meeting in the notes field and info about people’s affiliation and fields in the tags.

Castle in Budapest,
originally uploaded by eszter.

I just booked tickets to Budapest this morning for a trip coming up in a few weeks. I hope to take lots of pictures although I will be busy attending meetings. In the meantime, check out this photostream by a Flickrite. This set of pictures captures Budapest extremely well.

Yahoo! has launched a new site: Hot Zone featuring the first news correspondent of its own: Kevin Sites. Sites will transmit news from around the world – mostly from areas underreported by the mainstream press – using various forms of media to Hot Zone readers. The articles often come with accompanying photo essays, audio or video material. Comments are open (for those with a Yahoo! ID, which readers can get for free) on the pieces so readers can contribute to the content.

There are numerous photo printing services available online these days. Their prices can vary considerably. The cheapest I have found recently is York Photo. It looks like this may be temporary, but for now as per their summer sale, 4×6 prints are just 10c each. I used them a few weeks ago and just put in another order. They processed my orders very quickly. In fact, even this Labor Day Weekend, the order I put in yesterday is already ready for shipment today. (Of course, due to the holiday, it will only be shipping tomorrow.)

IMPORTANT UPDATE (9/17/05): I no longer recommend York Photo. It took this shipment ten days to get to me AND they cropped by photos even though that was not identified in the order and this means that they got rid of important parts of my pictures. I do not plan on using them again.

This compares well with very similar services such as Snapfish – the service I usually use -, which charges 12c/print. What used to be Ofoto, but is now Kodak Easy Share Gallery charges 19-25c although if you sign up for a pro account on their service you do get 10c/print for 4×6. There are lots of others that charge 20-25c/print, I see no point in linking to them.

I did check and York Photo’s mailing fees do not seem to be higher – in fact, if anything, they seem lower – than those of Snapfish so it’s not as though they are making up for costs there.

Perhaps I should note that I am not affiliated with any of these services. However, if you think you may sign up for one of them and send in an order, do let me know. If I send you a referral and you do put in an order, I get a few free prints. Why not?:) This intro offer is available on both York Photo and Snapfish.

Self-Portrait 1995,
originally uploaded by eszter.

Uploading pictures to my Flickr account is a nice little walk down memory lane. Occassionally I’ll be adding photos of paintings I did, for the most part, many years ago. Here is a self-portrait, the only one I’ve ever done. In case you’re wondering why the look is so intense, try painting a self-portrait sometime.;-)

I took a few studio art classes in college. I started with a course called Design I. I had a great time and then pursued some other courses as well. My most productive year was in Geneva where I took a year-long course at the Geneve School of Fine Arts. Although regular students of the University of Geneva could not enroll in those courses, Smith College – on whose junior year abroad program I was taking part – usually managed to make special arrangements for us. It was a wonderful experience. My teacher, Aldo Guarnera, pushed me to paint on huge surfaces I would never have considered approaching on my own. It was quite a challenge. Here are some of the results.

Socializing with Lego Lady,
originally uploaded by eszter.

I loved playing with legos when I was a kid. I remember constructing an entire town with my brother one time. It was super fun.

Most toy stores in the US that carry legos usually sell complicated preconstructed elements. My interest has always been in starting from scratch with the very simple little bricks.

I finally found a lego store that I thought would have the basic bricks. I walked into the store enthusiastically. The store clerk who greeted me started with a simple question: “What age is the child?”. Ouch. Now how is that a good marketing plan? If I had been any less confident about my legitimate lego interest I would have turned around or had pretended I was shopping for a kid. Instead I just raised my arm and pointed my index finger at me. Then I asked for the basic bricks section.

In this same mall – located on Michigan Ave aka Magnificent Mile section in Chicago – is this lego lady at the West end of the third floor. There’s a guy on the east end of the second floor near the store itself. I wonder if I’ll find any others during my next visit.

The photo-sharing site Flickr has come out with some nifty features recently that make it even more fun to browse pictures on the site than before. Beware, there are hundreds of thousands of photos to see, and more ways to navigate the Web site than before so a simple click can take you away from whatever it is that you were doing for longer than what you might expect. Of course, just like with blogs and many other things, there is a lot of uninteresting mediocre material. But there are also great pictures to view. To help find these, Flickr came out with the interestingness feature. To figure out what gets highlighted in this section, they are using “a ranking algorithm based on user behavior around the photos taking into account some obvious things like how many users add the photo to their favorites and some subtle things like the relationship between the person who uploaded the photo and the people who are commenting (plus a whole bunch of secret sauce)”. There is a calendar feature that lets you browse the interestingness category by day.

Another new feature is their clustering of tags. First, let me take a step back for those who are not familiar with the service at all. When users upload photos to the system they can tag them with descriptors such as name of location, type of event, etc. Photos across the entire site can be viewed by tags. Say you are interested in viewing photos of Chicago. There are over 70,000 photos tagged with “chicago” so you are likely shown many that are not of interest. Tags in and of themselves are only so useful since someone may tag all their private party photos with the name of the city in which the party took place, but that won’t be of much interest to someone looking for pictures of the urban landscape. This is where the new clustering feature comes in handy. For popular tags, the system now offers you related tags so you can be sure that you’ll be viewing pictures of the Chicago skyline, buildings or Millennium Park if that is what’s of interest. (Note that when looking for something specific, it’s worth checking alternate spellings/specifications. For example, you’ll get more pictures of Millennium Park under the misspelled tag milleniumpark than under the correct spelling millenniumpark.)

Some basics about Flickr: anyone can create a free account, which comes with the ability to feature 200 photos organized in up to three sets with a 20MB upload limit per month. For $24.95/year you get much more (unlimited storage, 2GB upload limit, no ads, etc.). You can add contacts and specify them as acquaintances or friends. When you upload photos, you can specify them as public or restricted to your contacts. You can join communities based on interest and affiliation. You can mark photos as your favorite and find them easily later. You can add notes to photos. You can leave comments on people’s photo pages. It’s a neat service, I recommend giving it a try.

When you upload photos, you can either reserve all rights or specify a Creative Commons license for them. Although many people – especially those who seem to be pros – reserve all rights, many do not. Thanks to the Creative Commons licenses, the site offers great illustrations for those in need of adding some photos to other sites, presentations or whatnot without worrying about copyright infringement.

I really enjoy browsing the site aimlessly, but I also appreciate viewing pictures from people to whom I have some connection. So if you happen to have a flickr account, how about posting a link in the comments? My album is here.

I live in such a beautiful area. The other day I went for a beach walk with a friend and this is what we saw. I’m very excited about the season beach passes I bought yesterday.:-)

I did something spontaneous the weekend before last and flew to NYC for less than 48 hours to see The Gates. I was very intrigued by all the reports I had read and the pictures I had seen so I wanted to see the park in person. It was a wonderful experience. Although pictures can’t possibly make up for being there, here are some photos in case you haven’t seen enough of them already. I have noted my favorites with a bold border.

I don’t like to be up earlier than planned, but such
views really do make up for it. (Please note that I did not edit these photos in any way.)

I need a better camera, because my current machine just
can’t capture the breathtaking views from my place.

This is not such a bad view to wake up to.. even if the waking up
takes place way too early for a Saturday morning.

I’ve put up some new pictures. These are of the Passover festivities this March in Cleveland at the Katz’s. I had a wonderful time, I think the mood comes through pretty nicely in the pictures.