50you50me

This is now is a highly addictive real-time visualization tool displaying all the photos as they happen within a city on Instagram. Cool!

On my last post about image search online I didn't mention Instagram simply because if you don't have an account the website is useless.

However, I discovered a really cool use of Instagram pictures — AMPERGRAM. It allows users to create typographic compositions using Instagram photos. As you type some text, the letters turn into pictures of those letters! Seems like magic. Give it a try!

When you need to find a picture on the Internet, where do you usually go?

Personally, I start with Google Images (that can be used in a very creative way!) and Yahoo that is sometimes even better, then I check FlickrHiveMind and rarely go further. But what if I need to find a picture by colors, not subject or theme? There is no better place than Multicolr Search Lab. You set the colors you want, their dominance and the service shows you thousands of images that match your preferences. "Addictive and very likely the best color search engine in the world!" says the service about itself and I can't disagree.

In my last post I started a challenge, a sort of word association game for posts.

And speaking of associations, I stumbled upon an interesting example of how one can endlessly drift from one topic to the next in the context of pictures. I'm talking about Dina Kelberman's blog where she's created a stream of pictures found on Google Image Search that move seamlessly from one subject to the next based on similarities in form, composition, color, and theme.

I find it fascinating, and you?

Today I asked myself this question: "Why should someone follow my blog?". 

First I thought a good answer might be "because I post some cool content", but then I realised that it's not enough. A visitor might like one post and find out that all the others are not that good. After that he won't come back. And the reason for that is likely to be — no story. 

What I mean is that this blog still lacks its story, an element that makes it different, appealing for new visitors. So I decided to try something new, a challenge. My next posts are going to be connected through a simple rule — each post must somehow recall the previous one — a sort of word association game applied to posts. For example, my next post will need to recall something from this one (the fun part is that now I have no idea what it's going to be).

A girl shakes a young tree to make the yellow leaves fall in a park in the city of Minsk. I was astonished by such a wonderful capture by Sergei Grits. Simply great!

Text is a slow information compared to pictures, which deliver their message instantly.

Can this explain why only 9% of text posts here on Tumblr have chances to be liked, whereas for pictures the number is 83%?* Maybe, in part. But consider also the videos that are 100% liked*. Maybe because videos have a narrative that we need and appreciate.

The takeaway message I see in these simple stats is — post visual content and leave the text in the description. Challenge accepted.

The Pale Blue Dot is a stunning compilation of footage accompanied by profound thoughts about our planet — Earth. It's an unofficial promo edited by Reid Gower for The Sagan Series, a collection of tribute videos dedicated to the late, great Carl Sagan.

"...that's home, that's us on it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard, every human being..."

The way users access the Web has changed. 15% of global Web traffic was mobile in May 2013 (up from 1% in 2009). These represent large numbers of visitors, with sophisticated browsers which however have limited screen space. This fact shouldn't be ignored, especially by web developers, but also by bloggers who have direct access to their blogs' design. It's their responsibility to provide a good browsing experience for all their visitors.

The most efficient path to follow is responsive design. So after a brief consideration, I decided to change this blog's design. Among free Tumblr themes I found the one I liked at first sight - responsive, readable & minimal - everything I actually needed. Big thanks to its creator Brent Jackson (his thoughts about unreadable text really entertained me).

I am more than happy with the new design and not worried at all if someone visits my blog from a smartphone or a tablet. Now it looks right on any device.

I was exploring Google Maps looking for photographic spots around San Francisco and stumbled upon this shocking view (rotated). I doubted it was a real plane crash and thought it could be a movie-shooting place or an emergency training place (for firemen). So I googled just 4 words — plane crash google map — and pictures with the exact same view popped up. Thus I found out that the crash was actually created for the late NBC show Trauma back in 2009. 

A 13-year-old boy from Kenya invented a "bright" solution to protect family animals from lions. By using solar powered LED lights that flash intermittently, he managed to trick lions into thinking that someone is walking around with flashlights. The young inventor — Richard Turere — presented his Lions Lights idea at a TED conference where the audience responded with a standing ovation. What a great young mind! 

I would definitely put my pictures in this airframe designed by James Kim. It looks really great with aerial photographs.

It is a real, though false color, picture of our Earth that shows agricultural structures in the US state of Kansas. The cropland is divided into circles and rectangles due to the different types of irrigation systems. The false color allows to distinguish different vegetation types. And yet, what a beautiful picture!