I’ve been using Flickr for over a year now (I just had my subscription renewal though). Although it has some irritations, the mess of menus and buttons all over the place, the non-flash organiser that’s not as as intuitive as the old one and the lack of a way to share private pictures with non-Flickr members, I still think it’s a great site. It sits with the iTunes Store, BBC News and Gmail as web applications I’d really hate to loose.

Over the year, I’ve started using Flickr in different ways. Originally, it was just a safe place to backup and organise my photos. Then it became a neat way to keep in touch with friends who live a long way away. Recently, I’ve started using it as a way to see what’s going on in the world. Where BBC News used to be my first source of information about current events, I now search Flickr and use its clustering to find a view on an event.

It works better with some events than others. It was great to track the Gumball 3000 Rally or the World Cup. It works because they’re not official press photographs. The fact that they’re not technically perfect and look like the sort of pictures I’d take, brings the event to life. It works less well in the current Middle East conflict, there are too many pictures that have been taken from news sites and photo agencies and uploaded. There are some horrific and shocking real images in there, but they’re harder to find.

If flickr could find a way to filter out the agency copied photos, I think it could become one of the best sources of information on these kind of events.

It’s been hot the last few weeks and there was a big storm last night. It was happening right in front of the kitchen window (which has all the best views) so I attempted to hang out and take some pictures. I think I really needed a tripod and some long exposures, but I went for the random luck approach. Out of about 600 pictures, I managed to get a few with lightning on. I managed not to fall out the window, but I’m not sure what the neighbours opposite made of me pointing a lens in their direction.

Out of all the weather conditions I don’t think you can beat a good storm.

We’re always discussing business ideas at work. Mainly as we think we will quit our jobs and become the next Richard Branson. I don’t think we ever will, but it doesn’t stop us talking about them. Roo and myself are up in Nottingham for a work conference. We arrived early and were hungry so went in to the local town center to get something to eat. Turned out there wasn’t much opened, but there was a Subway, so we stopped for a sandwich. Here’s Roo outside.

Anyways, we were talking about burger vans. I’m not sure if burger vans (and ice cream vans) are a UK thing, but they’re just vans at the side of the road that sell things like burgers, chips and kebabs. Sometimes they taste alright, but they have a bad reputation for making people ill. We were talking about even though people don’t all like McDonald’s or Subway, at least you know they’re reliable and safe. So, why don’t people do franchise burger vans. You could have a McDonald’s burger van or a Subway sandwich van. We weren’t sure if you could cram a McDonald’s into a van, but I’m sure a sandwich making counter would fit. If it was parked near work I’d use it.

I think I just found my song of the Summer. Pull Shapes, by The Pipettes is a proper Summer song. It sounds similar to The Go Team stuff, but a little bit lighter. It’s very 60s sounding and completely fun. It’s so good.

Clap your hands if you want some more. Clap your hands if you want some more. Clap your hands if you want some more.

I got the new Thom Yorke album, Eraser. I was ready to be disappointed, after The Bends and OK Computer, I didn’t really like any of the newer Radiohead stuff, but this is different. It’s much more accessible, it doesn’t take a hundred plays before it finally grows on you. I don’t think there are any High and Drys or Fake Plastic Trees on there, but I’ve had it on repeat for the last two days and I really like. He still has a goose pimply haunting voice. The best song is Harrowdown Hill, which sounds like a tripped out version of Radiohead at their best.

I’m sure it’ll get good reviews by all the supposedly cool music journalists. I don’t know what any of the songs mean, but it doesn’t matter, they sound fantastic.

I really like iTunes and the Apple Music Store, the interface to both of them is perfect. I have daily arguments with my Linux geek office mate about this. He uses Amarok, which is fine unless you want to do simple things like fast forward podcasts. I know the Apple combination is a little too proprietary, but it works that well that I’m prepared to put up with this.

The one problem I have with iTunes and in particular the store, is that the whole social aspect of it isn’t really working. Why does nearly every song get a rating of four and a half stars? It doesn’t make sense to have explicit user feedback about songs. Most people tend to buy singles, so they know they like the song before they buy it, so why would they ever give it a bad review? It’s not like Amazon, where you don’t really know if you like the book till after you’ve read it. I also think much more could be made of people’s playlists, they’re even more important when you end up buying lots of individual songs, the value is in compiling your playlists, not just the actual songs.

I also think that their officially prepared playlists (iTunes Essentials) are really weak. They’re all obvious song selections and I don’t think they are done by people who are really in to their music. The celebrity playlists are usually worse, a mixture of plugs for their label mates songs, their own and obvious songs that I already know about.

The current iTunes Essentials Summer Classics is a typical example. It’s tagged as, “… if ever Summer had a soundtrack, this is it”. I think they created by searching for all the songs with Summer in the title. It probably took about 5 minutes to put together. Surely they know that most Summer songs are about the sound and feeling of them, not that the lyrics have Summer in them. I have my own Summer playlist (I have one for every season), which has things like TwentyFourSeven, Drinking in LA, Pure Shores, Will You Catch Me and La Isla Bonita in it. None of them have Summer all over them, but they’re so much more Summer songs than Summer Holiday could ever be.

With it being such a big business, I wonder why Apple don’t employ some of the people who pick songs for TV and films to come up with playlists, the sort of people who would put a little more imagination in to things. I’m thinking of the people who pick songs for The O.C. or the BBC’s World Cup coverage. Until then, thank the geeks for Lastfm.