sjwillis

thx. i emailed him and cc'd you.

@cotuit; sry. have been away on vacation. any ideas on how to get in touch with Bob?

I've posted an announcement for this over at the SNA blog: http://sna.providence.ri.us/blog/ I think the idea of neighborhood tags is brilliant. I also think it would be great to be able to tag with some planning-specific taxonomy but I don't know the vocabulary well enough to propose anything here. I believe the best-case scenario is to have some people who understand the issues AND know the vocabulary to seed the two tags with photos and additional tags that others can then use as models/samples. Once we get a critical mass of photos in there (and some additional tags), I'll create a "Providence Tomorrow Photo Browsing page" (i'm happy to share the code for this, it'll likely be PHP) so that multiple sites can grab the code to aggregate and display comments on tag/neighborhood specific photos. I should, however, note that I'm on vacation right now and trying to take a break from coding.

@ runawayjim: awesome! Thanks for giving it a shot. I'm still waiting for the two mail gateway accounts to go live (I needed to have at least 5 pics in each for them to get out of the pending state and i didn't realize that until tonight). Once those accounts are fully functional, I'll get the word out and I'd imagine it will be a nicely used tool.

@cotuit: awesome. glad you get it. I actually had the idea when i saw the pictures you posted on your blog. it seemed to me that using flickr's annotation/note tool would just make the pictures so much more useful (and being able to actually discuss individual shots). My real hope here is that you and others who are a bit more well-versed in planning vocabulary/ideas will seed the two tags with some photos of your own and set the tone of the postings/discussion a bit. later Jim

also, I hope you all will also consider using the Flickr tags (either through your own flickr accounts or through the email gateway i've written if you want to futz around with the email gateway, you can see photos that you mail to [email protected] here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/50049432@N00/ and photos that you mail to [email protected] here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/82214198@N00/ Like I said in the previous post, those pics should start showing up in the main pvd_tmrw_good/bad pages in a few hours. They are new accounts so it takes a while for the tagged pics to start being aggregated with the rest of the site. Let me know how it goes! Yours, Jim Willis

[uP folks: the following is a draft of a blog entry and email that I'll be posting/sending around shortly. I'd appreciate any feedback you have. My contact info is at the end. thanks!] The city is looking for people to take pictures of things they like and don't like about Providence. This is a great idea. It is such a good idea that I'd like to help the city realize the potential of using pictures/photos as a planning tool. As such, I propose the following: Use tags on Flickr to handle submitted photographs. I'd suggest using the following tags.\: 1.) pvd_tmrw_good 2.) pvd_tmrw_bad Wherein citizens can upload their photos to flickr and tag them as photos of things they think are "good" or "bad" (e.g. things they like/don't like about what they've photographed). This achieves multiple ends: 1.) A central repository of all photographs 2.) A very low barrier to achieving this central repository 3.) A completely transparent repository (e.g. if the city sets up a tool that collects the photographs, it is almost inconceivable that they would share that collected data transparently on the web given their track record and the barrier to creating said infrastructure) 4.) Flickr has a built-in notes/annotation and commenting system that will make it very easy for fellow citizens to comment on, make notes/annotations, etc. on submitted photographs. There are two ways that citizens can utilize the Flickr tags: 1.) If you have an existing flickr account, simply tag your photos as "pvd_tmrw_good" or "pvd_tmrw_bad" - see here for help with tags 2.) If you don't have an existing Flickr account (and do not wish to establish a free one) you may use a gateway that I've created on sna.providence.ri.us server. Simply email your photo to one of the following two email addresses: [email protected] or [email protected] These two email accounts are gateways to Flickr in that any SINGLE photo that is attached to an email and sent to one of the addresses will be automatically submitted to flickr and tagged with "pvd_tmrw_good" or "pvd_tmrw_bad" depending on the email address used. Note: The subject line of the email will be used as the Title of the submitted photo. The body of the email will be used as the Description of the photo. You can use your cameraphone to send pics to this email address and they'll show up on flickr. Photos submitted through the sna.providence.ri.us email gateway should include the name and neighborhood of the sender somewhere in the body (since totally anonymous submissions probably aren't that useful.) Other big gains here are the ability for websites/users to subscribe to RSS feeds of the photos and comments. This would allow all neighborhood groups and other planning folks to benefit and use the same tool. Additionally, Flickr is VERY cameraphone friendly. If you're walking around town with your cameraphone and see something you like/dislike, take a snap and send the pic to your flickr account or one of the two sna email gateways that I've setup. In a few minutes the pic will be up on flickr and open to comments, discussion and annotation by anyone who's interested in participating. There are still a couple of bugs I'm ironing out with the email->flickr gateway at sna.providence.ri.us. If you've got your own flickr account though you can start uploading and tagging photos right now. I've posted a couple of sample shots (simple to test things, I'll delete them once real photos start showing up). Things that are "good" are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/pvdtmrwgood/ Things that are "bad" are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/pvdtmrwbad/ RSS feeds of these items are of course available. Images uploaded using the sna email gateway should start showing up in those pages over the next several hours. Feel free to contact me with any questions, feedback or comments at [email protected] Enjoy! Jim Willis