Week 3 Thing 7

Since beginning the 23 Things I have become more aware of articles and news items on web 2.0 technologies. This week I have seen several news items relating to some of the new technologies that we are exploring: the Democratic canidates debate and You Tube, a new feature called Street Views in Google Maps and a column on Photo Sharing Sites. I found Mike Himowitz's "Plugged In" column in the Baltimore Sun on July 26th to be particularly noteworthy as I was finishing Week 3 on Photos & Images. The column related the writer's experiences with posting his photo collection on a photo sharing website. One day the site he had stored his photos on just disappeared from the Internet. This illustrated how sites can come and go without notice to the users. Users need to be prepared in case this happens to them. It is important to keep another copy of your photos elsewhere besides online storage. The writer suggests taking advantage of the photo sharing sites offers to put your digital images on CD for a small fee. I went back to Flickr to see if they offered anything like that. You can upgrade your account which would give you permanent archiving. But I could not find on their site what permanent archiving includes. This is certainly something to keep in mind when using the photo sharing websites.