flickrCC - A Resource for Images Legal for Use on Blogs, Websites, Etc.

I was going through some of my RSS feeds the other day and one  from Wild Apricot (a non-profit technology blog), entitled "How To Find CC-Licensed Flickr Photos for Your Blog", mentioned FlickrCC as an easy way to search Flickr by keyword and licensed use.

It looked interesting so I visited the site at http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net.

I was impressed with the ease of use, as well as the information provided for each image found.

I searched for "pelican" with the Commercial check box checked. The first 36 thumbnails found are shown in the left hand pane, when you click on one of them the attribution information is shown in the right hand pane, along with the available sizes.

This is a quick and easy web app for getting photos with a creative commons license, for use in blogs, websites, newsletters, or experimenting with image editors.

Templates and Design for Web and Print

Bakari Chavanu posted How To Learn Principles of Design From Pre-Installed Templates on MakeUseOf.com January 18, 2010. For the full post and comments go to the following link:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/learn-principles-design-preinstalled-templates/

In his post he advocates using templates from various programs to learn design principles. As I said when I retweeted January 19, 2010, the same principles apply to both web and print design.

Go ahead and read his post and comments, then let me know what you think.

Have you checked out templates and then adapted for your own design? If so, how has that worked out?

Writing Prompt and Search Resources

I have started this three times now, because thunderstorms here in South Florida keep knocking me out of the computer.

I found a new resource for writing prompts, http://plutor.org/threewords/, which gives you three words, and a five minute timer, on Writeboard, in which to write.

I thought that this might make a good post, and was the destination url from another good resource, search engine BananaSlug, where you put in your search term, ‘writing prompts’ in this case, and then choose from a number of categories; such as great ideas, a.word.a.day, and others; to obtain a random word to narrow your search. This is an interesting concept, in my opinion, and produces some interesting results.

If you are a writer in search of some ideas, I recommend you try these. Even if you are not a writer, you can come up with some great ideas using BananaSlug.

Give them a try and let me know.

Thanks to Grace Kerina, via her Odds & Ends Compendium, for sending me to BananaSlug.

Readability via TechBite Newsletter

I subscribe to Steve Bass's free newsletter http://www.techbite.com/
TechBite, via email. In the April 29, 2009 issue, he his first of "Five Cool Web Services You Have to Try" is Readability: Read Web Pages Without Clutter.

To set up and install Readability in your web browser, just go to the Readability site:
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

I agree with Steve's opinion "Arc90 calls Readability an experiment. I say it's a keeper. Get more details at the Readability blog.", there is also a link to a video ( http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=N77Zi&m=1aE1rq.PRpu37q&b=u3V8LDaV9ufkUme485Ophw ) in his article, but I can not say if it is helpful or not, as my access is blocked, where I was reading the newsletter.

I have installed this bookmarklet in both Firefox and IE7 at work, and intend to also install in my personal laptop, desktop, and portable browsers, as well. Thanks Steve Bass, great find.