Usability and open source

Interesting intersection -- read about the birth of a movement

Picasa2, Hello, and Blogger + Atom

Picasa2, Hello, and Blogger work together. Be sure to read the note at the botom of this post on use of Atom.

Here is a simple way to get started:

1. Decide where you want to put your photos on your computer. It is much easier if you can work off your hard disk than if you work off a CD. Copy your CDs to your computer. If you don't have room, just start the process with one cd.
2. Download and install Picasa2 and Hello. http://picasa.google.com/index.html will do the trick. You may want to browse around the picasa site, but there is no real need. There is on concept that is new to most people: you will be able to create multiple photo albums, but that does not require creating many copies of the photos.
3. Start up Picasa2 and let it find your photos.
4. Create your Blogger account.http://www.blogger.com/start
   • create an account
   • name your blog
   • choose a template
   • make a post or two (you can delete them later) to see how it works & make sure it is set up correctly. Don't agonize a long time about your template, you can change it later. You will be able to create many separate blogs. You might want your first to have a family oriented name and use it to focus on family issues, contacts, conversations, etc.
5. Start up Hello
   • chose 'send photos'
   • choose 'use picasa2'
   • select a photo
   • Hello will ask you to give it a caption
   • Hello will publish it to your blog

A suggestion. You don't really want to simply publish all the photos. Instead select photos of interest, give them a caption (which might be something like: does anyone know who this is?). Blogger will let people comment on your postings. Send email to family members asking them to comment, clarify, etc.

Hello will also let you chat with others who are online, share photos with them, etc. If you want one place on line to store all the photos so that others can get all of them without using CDs.

Using Atom:

1. From your Blogger dashboard, select 'settings' and then select 'site feed'.
2. Enable Atom.
3. Make a note of the URL for your Atom feed.
4. Download, and have potential collaborators download, an RSS aggrigator like RSSOwl.
5. Let people know your atom feed URL.
6. If they use RSSOwl and subscribe to your feed, they will get all your posts. Of course, they will probably want to subscribe to many other feeds as well. Mother Jones, the NYT, etc come to mind.

This concept takes a bit of time to grok, but soon you will see why most of email is really a waste. Instead post and subscribe.