Cooliris: pictures upon a wall

The Cooliris plugin is a web browser plugin made by Cooliris that provides interactive full-screen slideshows of online images (wikipedia). The instructions for how to install Cooliris in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari is located via cooliris support. If you find yourself enjoying using cooliris as much as I am then you can also follow the cooliris blog. Once you have installed cooliris you are able to search things like Flickr and Google Images.

Searching images through cooliris is fantastic in that the images you find can be displayed on a wall. Cooliris then makes it easy to scroll across many images, focus on a particular image, bookmark your favourites and jump out to the site the image is located on. I had seen cooliris demonstrated at a conference last year. However, it was only when a colleague dropped the URL on my desk and said try this did I give it a go. They gave no explanation beyond that and I think you will only truly understand what cooliris is if you yourself give it a go.

While looking at cooliris the first time another colleague asked me what I was looking at. I showed them and then asked if there was something they wanted to search. They suggested trying to find a photo of the All Saints Church in Dunedin - so I put in the terms Saints and Dunedin. Then the most wonderful thing occurred: the first result was of them in the church, which had been taken by the local newspaper. They were thrilled :-)

This in itself is a wonderful way to find images yet it gets better.
The power of cooliris comes into play when you discover sites that have enabled cooliris - how to enable your site. As already mentioned Flickr, Google and Facebook have enabled cooliris.

Now to start my blogroll to show you why I love cooliris so much.

One of my favourite blogs is Secret Agent Mama: shooting from the hip. The photography is breathtaking and there is sprinkling of poetry throughout, which as a poet I love. Now go to the photostream in flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/secretagentmama and activate cooliris. I have to admit it took me a bit of playing to figure out how to look at a site like this in cooliris. At first I tried searching in cooliris itself with "secretagentmama" but I kept picking up other images as well.

I have discovered that any blogs on blogspot also seems to let you activate cooliris.
For me this means I can see a wall of amazing doodles that Beck posts on her blog BeckaDoodles. And then for a change I can view a wall of gorgeous vintage postcards from Cpaphil Vintage Postcards.

If you love history then you will really like the last example I will give you, which is via the National Library of New Zealand in the Manuscripts and Pictorial Collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library digitised collection. Once you arrive at the site search for something like "shortland" and activate cooliris. Though I have noticed you might have to refresh once or dig a little before cooliris realises it should be working. Dr Edward Shortland was the nephew of one of my ancestors and to see his letters like this is fantastic.

Arguing with a brick wall

I will involved in a discussion through a Facebook group "Guy Who Threw His Shoes at Bush" about whether it was respectful or not to have done so to a leader of a country. In case you do not know, the name of the man who threw the shoe is Muntazer al-Zaidi and he is a journalist. The reason I bring this up is because it had my creative brain thinking - well at least 1 or 2 of those who were posting did. Not because I thought wow that is something I had never thought about before - it was more the fact that not only did they have a completely different perspective from me but they had long, very long, reasons to back it up. From the beginning of what became a very heated discussion I found certain flaws in their argument, not because I disagreed with them, but simply because they put something on a pedestal and then proceeded to insult anyone that disagreed with their point of view. Which is how I come to call this post "arguing with a brick wall".

I wrote a poem about it, which of course once I posted it was ripped to shreds: called Into the Wind. Though in the end that was more amusing than anything else, as truthfully this poem was a 1 in the morning sort of creation. I admit it is not one of my best poems but I felt like everyone was hitting their head against the wall and in some cases simply throwing up their hands and walking away: so I 'had to' say something about it. To the one that commented about the poem, it is full of "predictable lefty dogma" with "Utopian touches". I did respond to their feedback, which included thanking them for their feedback.

While tweaking the poem, with the help of my friend, I was reminded of another poem I wrote a while back and then recently re-posted when I made some changes to it called Walk the Line. I started this post because I realised I should share what brought about this poem. Like Into the Wind, this poem does not have to be only stuck and centred around my initial thinking. Others may read them and get a completely different image from them. I will not be unhappy or upset. I spent a little too long at University pulling a part too much literature, which in many ways took the fun out of it all. That is one of the reasons you can not really find much information on my blog of poetry about what inspired each poem. I want others to decide what they think it is about. I would also love to know what others get from what I have written and what imagery came to mind when they read it.

Walk the Line came into my life after I encountered a blog called Baghdad Burning, whose author called herself Riverbend. I found this blog when the book, which contains many of the earlier posts came across my desk. It was about her life after the US and other coalition forces arrived in Iraq. The last post was after her family left Iraq in October 2007. One of the main reasons that this blog has left such an impact upon me is because Riverbend has an amazing ability to see from many perspectives. She strives to not be 'anti' and shows true sorrow at all the lives that have been lost on all sides of this war.

I mainly read the book of the posts and then the 2nd volume that was published because the writer who brought the posts together also added information along the way about events that were occurring while Riverbend was posting. The 1st volume in 2005, won 3rd place for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage and in 2006 it was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Burning.

The most amazing thing about the thread was that someone else also posted a poem called Saracen, which is raw and beautifully written.

How Facebook is helping me to find a new audience

I have been feeding my blog of poetry into the Facebook application My Notes for a while now. This has been a great way to make others I know aware that I have a blog of poetry.

I have now also discovered another application in Facebook called Blog Networks. Actually I have known about it for a while - I simply had not really explored its potential until about a week ago. This application has allowed me to list both of my blogs and say a little about each one. I have also found myself communicating with others who have simliar blogs. The added bonus of this application is that it has given me fantastic blogs to bookmark in my delicious account behind-dreaming, as well as adding many to my favourites in To Write is to Dream.

I wonder how far this application will take me. It has already reminded me that by having a blog I am part of a community and I should do more to support others.

Feeds: sharing your blog through another site

Placing an RSS feed of your blog in other areas where you and others you know spend time online is a good way to make others aware of your blog. This can be done with many types of social networking sites that you may be currently using.

For instance, I spend a lot of time on Facebook and I wanted to be able to share my poetry that I post on my other blog To Write is to Dream with my friends, without expecting them to go to my blog all the time. I discovered that within Facebook there is an application called Notes, which you can post to and share with others your are connected to. Once you go into your Notes Settings you can import notes from an external blog. At this point add the RSS feed from your blog and save.

I know you can also create feeds that will appear in your Facebook Notes from other types of sites like a LiveJournal. However Facebook only allows you to add one blog feed to your account at a time. Once these notes begin to be imported someone within Facebook can add a comment to the post in Your Notes, though this comment will not then appear on your blog.