There is no doubt that “download files” has been the most popular feature among users. However, from our observation, we found that “share” follows close behind “download files” as the second most used feature.

Sometimes, you share because you wish to receive feedback from others, but if your friends can join the online “co-editing”, things will become much more meaningful. The sharing way of co-editing spreads much more fun and happiness, as well as emotional connections and countless touching moments.

We are supposed to have a more fast and convenient way of sharing files with more people at once. Today, we are pleased to announce that ASUS WebStorage’s co-editing feature has upgraded, including its name, “oeo.la”.

For ASUS WebStorage members, one of the benefits from this new upgrade is that the route of sharing files is much shortened and straightforward. You don’t have to first login from ASUS WebStorage webpage and find your files under several layers of tree structure for sharing any more. Now, you would only link to the website of oeo.la and login with your ASUS WebStorage account before you upload. oeo.la will automatically collect your uploads to your ASUS WebStorage, and allow you to download, share and organize files at anytime in the future. Moreover, oeo.la can automatically turn your uploaded pictures into musical slideshows. You will never need other software to create photo slideshows.

If you are not a member of ASUS WebStorage, you can still enjoy oeo.la’s super fast sharing. You don’t even need to sign up or log in. However, oeo.la will only keep your files for up to 60 days. To keep your files and share link permanently, before uploading files, you need to sign in an ASUS WebStorage account. →Get 1GB Free !

Our idea of designing oeo.la is: we wish to offer users the shortest route of sharing their life experience.

You can share photos in a most direct way now. Once your photos are uploaded and with just one click, you’ll get a shortened URL for your shared files (no more lengthy URL links). Then you can start sharing the photos with the shortened URL in messenger or Email, or any mediums you prefer.

The feature of musical slideshow is also upgraded. You can now choose your preferred covers for your musical slideshows, so adding more personal flair.

The last new feature, also we think it’s the most unique in the field of cloud online storage service so far, is that you can now publish your musical slideshows to twitter and blogs directly through oeo.la. If you wish to, you can also open the co-editing function for viewers to join the co-edit fun. This new feature will speed up file sharing and make it full of fun and variety.

Finally, we would like to give oeo.la a simple and clear slogan: Co-editing can be Easy and Rich. It’s true! You can give it a try. Just upload, and leave the rest for oeo.la.

What about sending Christmas greetings with oeo.la this year?

Check out my Christmas slideshow first, and then create one yourself.

For most of us, the holiday season means warm and fuzzy talk of food and yummy recipes. Sadly, it also reminds us of the millions of Americans who don’t have enough of it.

Just last week, the USDA reported that 14.6 percent of American households were deemed “food insecure” during 2008 — a staggering number from where I sit.  Factor in a bad economy that has led to depleted shelves in food bank, and what we have is a tragic situation that extends far after the holidays are over.

To help as much as one celebrity can, food personality Rachael Ray has taken on a special Thanksgiving project to help the 2,000 residents of Wilmington, OH, a community devastated by the economic downturn, due mainly to the shuttering of a local DHL facility.

Not only is Ray (and other organizations) keeping the shelves of Wilmington’s food bank filled for a year, she and a gaggle of volunteers are also throwing a Thanksgiving feast to be documented in a special television presentation airing Wednesday, Nov. 25 during The Rachael Ray Show.  (See the trailer: http://rachaelrayshow.com/show/segments/view/save-date/)

To support Ray’s cause in Wilmington (and other food banks nationally), photo sharing service Snapfish is offering a half-off deal on its online photo books. For every photobook purchased between Nov. 25 and Dec. 2, 2009, Snapfish will donate $1 to local food banks nationwide. Go to http://opti.snapfish.com/db/USA/RachaelRay/offer.html to create a photobook, and use promo code (RRBOOK) for the discount.

So, if you’re going to take all those family photos at Thanksgiving like you always do, help out a worthy cause in the process.

We all are born photographers arent we? Anyway, these days the trouble doesnt end there, you have to upload the photo somewhere to share it with others. There are loads of image uploading sites on the web. Some of them are really popular and some popular but useless. So, here’s my take on some of them.

Flickr happens to be perhaps the most popular image uploading site. However it does have an uploading limit. So, basically its useful for posting private/family photos, but not for using it as a source for pics on your blog. And of course as with all yahoo services, you need to register to start uploading.

I learnt about a really cool image uploading site today called Imgur, which lets you do a whole lot of stuff apart from letting you upload your pics and it has a really cool interface. No registration is needed to upload. But the problem with it is, your images get deleted if they dont receive a ‘hit’ in 3 months. So basically if you have a huge blog which isnt very popular and you dont go through your really old posts at least once in 3 months, your images get deleted.

Photobucket is good, great options etc. but way too many ads for my liking. I dont feel like using it even for my family pics! You also require a registration to upload.

Finally, Imageshack. I’m sure most of you have used at some point in time, but fact is imageshack is the best we have! You dont need to register to upload images, your images get deleted only when they dont receive a hit at least once in 1 year (pretty reasonable), and if you register, your images dont get deleted at all! Plus, there are loads and loads of options (more for registered users). Registration, as with all these services, is free.

Image: Adam Hickmott / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

YouTube has just announced an exciting opportunity that will allow news organisations and community groups to use a new service to generate user content. It will allow other media organisations to replicate a CNN iReport style structure without setting up their own infrastructure. Media Week reports:

YouTube is set to roll out a free tool that will enable any news-oriented site to automatically become a hub for user-produced news videos. The company has introduced YouTube Direct, an open source platform that any interested news site can tap into and begin soliciting content from its users. The Google-owned company has already begun testing YouTube Direct with The Huffington Post, NPR.com, Politico.com and the Web sites for the San Francisco Chronicle and WHDH-TV/WLVI-TV in Boston, Mass.

According to Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube, news sites can easily add Direct to their sites; start requesting specific content from users (such as eyewitness videos of the most recent hurricane, for example); and then decide for themselves what clips are used on their own sites when. The tool is designed to be customizable, allowing news sites to create a product that looks and feels like the rest of their Web site. “This is like a virtual assignment desk,” said Grove.

Throughout YouTube’s history, users have posted news-oriented clips, said Grove. But those have been tough for news sites to find in a timely fashion, making it hard for them to leverage.

“Citizen journalism is one of the most interesting phenomenon on YouTube,” he said—citing Hurricane Katrina and the 2008 election as examples. “But news organizations have had a hard time tapping into that. Videos are hard to find, verification can be tough and there is not really a great way on the site to target contributors….This is about giving our news community something they are asking for.”

It is now up and ready on the YouTube site. Here’s the post from the YouTube biz blog

Here’s the project page

And the FAQ.

Flickr is an online software where you can upload, share and explore photos with a community for free (or for a relatively cheap price if you want additional applications). I found the Newbie Article for Flickr, written by Josh Lowensohn, to be very helpful in explaining all the different features Flickr has to offer.

Working in fashion marketing, I always have to find ways to promote our company. My boss suggested Flickr and I knew of it, but I didn’t really see how it would benefit our company. I thought Flickr was another photo sharing site similar to photobucket and smugmug, but after reading the article by Lowensohn, I realized that Flickr has much more to offer. Some features I found very helpful is the adding “notes” feature. This is when you want something specific on the photo to be noticed by the viewers and you can do this by adding notes to the picture.

I was actually surprised that Flickr had such a strong community where people participate in forums and group discussions. This also gave me the idea to start our own community (don’t exactly know how to do that yet) where people can discuss the latest trends; what they like and don’t like about our product, etc. This will help us to get insight on what our costumers want, guiding us to adapt to the consumer’s needs. Geo tagging was another feature that I found interesting. This is when people can place their photo on a specific location on the map. This inspired me to create an idea for my company where people can send us pictures wearing our product and they can place it on the map. That way we can create our own community and people can see who and where people are buying the same product from.

Flickr is a new picture sharing revelation and I think it is a great tool for businesses to use.

Questions:

How can Flickr be damaging to businesses as well as individuals?

What other ways can Flickr be used to benefit businesses?

Another tool that has great potential for journalists and crowd-sourced photo conversation projects is Microsoft’s Photosynth, which allows you to automatically assemble 3D tours and almost sculptural assemblages from photosets.

Check out this virtual tour of the Oslo Town Hall where the Nobel peace prize is awarded.

In this video Photosynth architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas talks about exciting ways this technology can be used to crawl through the millions of images on the web and effectively create a new hyperlinked visual structure.

There is also a google maps plug-in that lets you mash-up synths and maps.

News organisations have already seen the value of using the tool to cover big events and to crowd-source images from their viewers. From the photosynth blog:

Without a doubt, the highlight of the Photosynth’s first year was the Presidential Inauguration on January 20th. BothCNN and MSNBC featured synths of the moment at which the President took the oath of office, and CNN gave Photosynth 20 minutes of airtime over a five day period. These were tricky synths to shoot and assemble. MSNBC used just a few professional photographers, while CNN augmented its professionals with its “iReports” community.

CNN’s iReport synth of viewers “where were you” moment as Obama was sworn in received more than 9,000 submissions from people who were at the inauguration, or watched it at home and is a marvelous community assembled photo document.

Unfortunately only Windows users can create synths at the moment but you can view on Mac.

Jeff Gritchen documents Long beach as a staff photographer for the Press-Telegram. One section of his blog is devoted to then and now shots of his district. Recently @ljthornton on twitter mused: Wouldn’t it be great to get communities involved in building sites like this?

This is not just a documentation of the architecture and urban scene. Images tell stories of cultures and the perfect example is Gritchen’s recent shots of the bank that has evolved into a gay and lesbian centre. Getting readers involved in stories like this would allow them to document their own patches and their own subcultures.

THEN: A new Security First National Bank near Fourth St. and Chery Ave. in Long Beach, Calif. in the 1920s. NOW The Gay and Lesbian Center of Greater Long Beach, August 26, 2009. Phot Jeff Gritchen

The Web site chewtime.com is just like going to a Chinese restaurant where you are encouraged to share your food. The tagline of the site is “Pictures of food that’s about to get chewed.”

We’re so pleased that our very own photo of our healthy-ish pumpkin brownie is featured front and center on the homepage.

The good news is that feasting with your eyes won’t cause your eyeballs to expand so we are happy to encourage you dig into this digital dining experience and have as many helpings as you desire.

BTW,  If you have not made the brownie recipe yet, Devil’s Food Mix is on sale at Ralphs for 88 cents.

Hi,

[P.S. - This post is only for information purpose. So I have copied all textual content and images from Google and Wiki and put it in sequence].

 Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Google Wave is “a personal communication and collaboration tool” announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009 (Checkout Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009 on youtube). It is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking.

          As of now, Google wave is invitation based like Gmail was. so either request it on Google Wave or tell someone who has already Wave account.

Look out at some features provided by wave as snaps.

Organizing Events
Keep a single copy of ideas, suggested itinerary, menu and RSVPs, rather than using many different tools. Use gadgets to add weather, maps and more to the event.

Organizing Events

Group Projects
Collaboratively work in real time to draft content, discuss and solicit feedback all in one place rather than sending email attachments and creating multiple copies that get out of sync.

Group Project

Photo Sharing
Drag and drop photos from your desktop into a wave. Share with others. Use the slideshow viewer. Everyone on the wave can add their photos, too. It is easy to make a group photo album in Google Wave.

Photo Sharing

Meeting Notes
Prepare a meeting agenda together, share the burden of taking notes and record decisions so you all leave on the same page. Team members can follow the minutes in real time, or review the history using Playback.

Meeting Notes

Brainstorming
Bring lots of people into a wave to brainstorm – live concurrent editing makes the quantity of ideas grow quickly! It is easy to add rich content like videos, images, URLs or even links to other waves. Discuss and then work together to distill down to the good ideas.

Brainstorming

Interactive Games
Add a gadget to a wave to play live interactive games with your friends (we’re hooked on Sudoku!). See everyone’s moves as they make them in a fast-paced game or take a break and come back later.

Games

For More visit https://wave.google.com/

~ Rock On ~

Usually anyone who is interested in something tends to seek out others who are interested in the same something.  That’s what I did.  Last year I was introduced to the Quail Hollow Camera Club, located in Hartville, Ohio.  They meet every second and fourth Tuesday of the month at the Quail Hollow State Park.  Though the club is still relatively small, like most clubs, there is an overflowing amount of knowledge to pass around.  For those who are interested in photography, come on out and see what the club is about.  The meetings are always a blast with a few jokes here and there, but most of all you can ask questions and get answers from people with experience in photography.  We are currently working on getting a more up to date website, but for some more information, you can go here (http://home.roadrunner.com/~moffstuff/) or just ask.

Also, there is a Flickr group for our club http://www.flickr.com/groups/1094114@N24/.  Join the group and share your pictures with everyone.  Feel free to spark up some discussions too.

For directions to the park, here is the address

The Berlin Wall Anniversary is generating some great multimedia coverage that combines reader generated content, archival content, and new reporting including great info graphics. The New York Time’s coverage over the last week has been great. It combines many of the image conversation techniques that I have been covering in this blog. Combining innovative, professionally produced information graphics which, for example, explain the technicalities of how the wall functioned, with the store of archival Times reports from 1989 and reader submitted photos creates a complex historical repository that is both celebratory and informative. The series of split photos that show Berlin locations in 1989 and today is an excellent example of images creating a dialogue between past and present.

An interactive graphic that splits photos at five notable locations in the German capital, in 1989 and today.

NYT Reader Eugen Freund submitted this photo taken in Berlin the morning of November 10, 1989, just when GDR guards started to open the wall at Schlesische Strasse, Puschkin Allee.

This detailed info graphic explains why the Berlin Wall was able to keep so many from crossing from east to west for so long.

Sydney Media140 was itself a great example of image sharing conversations. The event was blogged, tweeted, livecast and now has been documented by speakers and audience through blogs, delicious and flickr.

If you want to check out photos there is a Flickr pool with 49 contributing members

The helpful Media140 team by Mushroom and Rooster

For an interesting perspective from someone who was a virtual 140 participant through the live stream and twitter check out @matt_dasilva’s posts about his experience from behind the screen. He sets the scene:

Media140’s live stream started in silence before sounds kicked in at about 8.50am (NSW time; all times given here will be NSW time). And what did we hear? A sound guy tests the mic over the top of some ambient music.

In the Twitter hashtag we learn about all the peeps converging on the event – by taxi, by bus, on the elevator, down the stairs – and also plaintive tweets from some who are unable to attend.

Wish I was headed to #media140 today. Will have to geek up double hard tomorrow. – @neilwrites

oh no, so many emails this morning and so behind schedule for #media140 hope I don’t miss much! – @ suzieis

Arrived at the #media140 centre of the universe at ABC Sydney. The coffee is a lifesaverlp – @ derekbarry

Ok…off we go…my commute to #media140 is short. 14 floors. Speaking at 9.10 http://bit.ly/qI2Fq – @abcmarkscott

And Matt on day two

One of the highlights of #media140 was learning from the diverse examples of the way journalists from all over the world are using Twitter and other forms of social media and user generated content. It was particularly enlightening to hear from Al Jazeera’s social media director Riyaad Minty (@riy) whose presentation shared the way his network is using innovative tools to track hotspots like Gaza. As well as their comprehensive site gathering news on Gaza, they have a user generated site which tracks incidents of violence in the region, a dedicated Gaza Titter feed, and a creative commons repository for all of their Gaza footage.

One of the interesting points he made is that their decision to share all their Gaza footage with a creative commons license led to an impressive range of uses but also had important commercial rewards for the organisation leading to greater traffic and the development of ongoing commercial relationships. Uses of this material have included:

• films
• school projects
• billboards
• community servce annoucnements
• videogames
• music videos
• teaching

Al Jazeera's Tracking Gaza site collects user generated report incidents of violence from the region

One of the best recent examples of multimedia reporting is the ABC’s recently released Black Saturday site. It presents the unfolding story of the Victorian bushfires in pictures, video, text and audio, focusing n the personal stories of those affected. It is a great example of pro-am collaboration and sources its material from both ABC professionally produced material and crowd sourced material from Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and other user image sharing sites. It presents the material in a range of way including a timeline and a map.

The ABC’s Black Friday site is a great example of using multimedia to bring together a range of story telling techniques including oral history to commemorate a historic event. This is an early example of ABC multimedia produced to commemorate the fires of 1939.

Suburb view is one of the many interesting examples of aggregating data and using Google maps to offer practical information to users

Kate Day at the Daily Telegraph uses her blog to curate photojournalism, share reader images and engage with readers through competitions.

Kate Day is Communities Editor for Telegraph.co.uk. She blogs about photography and runs a weekly photo competition. You can also follow the competition on Flickr and on Facebook and hear Kate on PhotoLegal, a photography podcast. Please email kate.day@telegraph.co.uk if you’d like to receive updates about the photo competition via email or follow @kate_day on Twitter to see what Kate’s doing now

A recent competition asked readers to share photos around the theme of rain:

Gisele Bundchen

Gisele Bundchen Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Top Model Supermodel from Horizontina Brazil.

An image conversation project on Gaza from he Alliance for Justice in the Middle East at Harvard University and the MIT Center for Future Civic Media

Virtual Gaza is an independent, civic media initiative established by a collective of scholars, media activists and Palestinian residents of Gaza in response to the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in December 2008-January 2009.

For years, Israel has been gradually tightening its strangehold on the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, sealing its borders and cutting off adequate food, fuel, and medical supplies, bringing the economy and infrastructure to the point of collapse.

Israel has also sought to control how Gaza’s story is told to the outside — from its sophisticated ‘public relations’ campaigns to blocking the entry of foreign journalists.

Virtual Gaza is a space where ordinary Palestinians under siege can describe their experiences in their own words, and where the destruction of the Gaza strip can be documented by those experiencing it directly. The diary entries, photographs, and video material gathered here have been contributed by residents of Gaza. For safety reasons, authors are located in neighborhoods but their precise location is not shown.

Virtual Gaza invites you to help break the information blockade.

Robin Hamman at the Headshift blog recently published a fantastic post on a new model of curating user generated content and a demonstration project Climate Pulse

A few months ago, one of our technology partners, eVectors, introduced me to a tool they’d created which, with the right editorial strategy wrapped around it, can make the job of finding, curating, editorialising and socialising content far more efficient – and interesting – than I’ve seen before.

So, with our friends Paolo and Cristian at eVectors, Nick, myself and several others here at Headshift created a demonstration which we callClimatePulse. As we say on the site:

“Climate Pulse tracks a wide range of source for information, comment and content about the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (COP15). It’s different from mere aggregation services because there is an editorial layer and a social layer. The editorial layer allows curators to highlight specific pieces of content. The Social layer gets users involved in tagging and categorising content. In the near future, you’ll even be able to take away a widget containing the flow from Climate Pulse – a widget that lets your friends, contacts or audience to not only consume but to contribute their own content, straight from your site, back into that flow.”

Robin Hamman's curation/participation model for Climate Pulse

Two little examples of recent image conversations via Twitter at the Sydney Media140 conference

@wolfcat: flickr: Front row at #media140 http://bit.ly/r1O6T

@media140: caption comp! #media140 Sydney nice pic of @turnbullmalcolm by @babyporridge but what’s he saying?? http://twitpic.com/oculj @sydney140 plz!

A number of image conversation projects have been developed to mark the anniversary of the Berlin Wall. Here we can see the range and differences in the types of projects that are evolving including

• traditional media using user generated content,
• community based projects and
• deep team based multimedia reporting.

As I have already mentioned CNN’s iReport has an ongoing series of Berlin reports

A recent iReport assignment invited viewers to post their memories of the Berlin Wall to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of it's fall, click on image to see more of this report by andshewasnot

Reuters in combination with Alex Wood and team are currently in berlin producing a marvelous series of on the spot live multimedia reports

The Berlin Project is an innovative multimedia project that includes the use of Twitter and Facebook as key community engagement/promotional tools

Flickr is encouraging their members to post historic and current Berlin pictures

Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) seen from the West, the white wall follows the border, the gate itself was 100% on East Berlin territory. The sign says "Beware! you are now leaving West-Berlin"... From Flickr's berlin project. Click through for more.