Great tips for Flickr

PC World had an article in their September 2009 issue with helpful tips for different applications include flickr. There are two specifically I want to highlight in this post.

If you are looking for a picture to use and do not want to worry about copyright issues, go to "Explore" once you are signed into flickr, then search within Creative Commons. These are photos you are permitted to use without any legal ramifications as long as you comply with the CC license.

Another useful tip is the ability to upload your pictures to flickr by sending them to an email address. You can find out your flickr email address by going to your account. (One way to get to your account is by clicking the "Signed in as" name once you are logged in). Once there, you'll see "Your flickr upload email" which is where you'll send your pictures. The subject of your email becomes the title of your picture and the body of the email becomes the description.

Who doesn't love tips that make working with flickr a little easier?

Creating an RSS feed

There’s no shortage of services available to create your own RSS feed. If this is the first time you’ve heard the term "RSS", I encourage you to take a step back and read my introductory post on RSS before continuing on.

I’ve tested a number of different tools for creating an RSS feed and like Feedity because I think it’s fairly easy for a non-technical person to use and does not require any kind of registration.

To get started, go to Feedity.com and enter the web address with content you want to turn into a feed. For example, I tried entering our main web page, then selected preview. At the next screen, the easiest thing is to select the appropriate category and simply “Get Feed” rather than trying to refine anything.

From there, you’ll be taken to a screen with the message that your feed is ready to go. I wanted to see how it looked so I clicked on it and went to an iGoogle page where I saw three menu headers (see image on the left).

I decided that probably wasn’t what readers wanted to see, so I re-did the feed, this time pulling from our news page where the content is updated more frequently. I again clicked on the resulting feed and was happier with the results (see image on the right). So, if you want to explore creating your own RSS feed, there are plenty of services you can use and I especially encourage beginners to start with Feedity.