Thursday, March 31, 2011

Are Blogs the New Zines?

Kerri_eLLe wrote an interesting post on this topic. Check it out. Do you agree that the feminist movement lost something in the move from zines to blogs?

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Embed Flickr Photo with Proper Attribution

One can easily paste the URL of a photo at Flickr into the window provided when one clicks the Add Photo icon in Blogger.  But is that the best way to add a photo?  One should always provide information about the photographer and the Creative Commons license which allows one to use the photo legally.  And this simple copy/paste method does not.  It is better to use the Embed code provided by Flickr.

At Flickr.com on the main page displaying a photo, one can click the Share button and choose Grab the HTML code.  Then back in Blogger, where you are creating your post, switch to the Edit HTML view.  Then Paste in the code provided at Flickr. The resulting photo will provide some attribution.  One can hover one's mouse over the photo to get basic info.  One can also click to go to the original Flickr page to get more information about the exact Creative Commons license.  Below is a test with the same flower picture in previous post.

Stella d'Oro Daylilly - Long Blooming

This result appears to be the same as if one had used the Add Photo icon when composing a post in Blogger and then just pasted in the URL of the small size display page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/24567741@N04/4784562251/sizes/s/).  But note that using the Share > Grab HTML method provides a link back to Flickr (as Flickr requests that one do) - by clicking on the photo.

If one does use the simple Copy URL and Paste into Add Photo window, one should at least provide some attribution and a link back to Flickr, for example,

      Photo courtesy of cronegeek at Flickr 
      under Creative Commons License 2.0

Note a similar formulation can be used for Photos from other sites.

Proper Attribution for Creative Commons Photos

It is easy to find photos with a Creative Commons license which allow one to legally use the photos in blogs and on Websites, etc.  But how does one give proper credit and document that one has legal permission to use?

After much research, it appears that at minimum, one should indicate the photographer, the Creative Commons license and link to page where found and/or photographer's profile page on Flickr.  So the minimum attribution for the photo below from Flickr would be   Photo used under Creative Commons license from cronegeek.  (Note Flickr wants one to provide a link back to Flickr. And many other web sites also want you to provide a link back to page where photo appears.)

Alternatively, when working with Flickr photos, one can use the app at Imagecodr.org to produce a photo with the attribution at the bottom as seen below.  [For this photo I displayed the small size at Flickr and then input the URL for the small size page into Imagecodr.org.]


On the Get Code page at Imagecodr.org there is a button that you can drag to the toolbar on your Web browser for instant access to Imagecodr..

To search for images with a Creative Commons license one can go to
  • http://search.creativecommons.org/ where you can conduct searches from Google Images, Flickr, and other places and have your results limited to only images with Creative Commons license. You can also specify whether you want images that can be modified (legally) and/or used commercially (legally).
  • http://compfight.com which also searches just Flickr, but tends to give more images than either of the sites above. 
Updated 1/26/17 to use newer, current ImageCodr attribution code.