tags

Keep Rover in check with a simple tag

In the world of digital gadgetry, anything can become a booming business--even dog tags. We're not talking about fashion items of the human variety, but ones for Rover and Fido. And far from Lassie's day, the ones on the contemporary market have everything from fitness meters to safety LEDs.

Yet for those canine owners who long for simpler days--and don't want to shell out big bucks--can combine modern technology with old-fashioned ID collars in the form of "Dog-E-Tags." These no-frill devices, which Inventor Spot calls "the best dog tags ever," can provide 40 … Read more

ComScore's latest numbers: Worldwide social-networking growth

Statistics house ComScore released some numbers on Tuesday pertaining to how quickly a handful of popular social-networking sites are growing worldwide, and which ones dominate in which regions of the globe. There's nothing all too notable here, as the global reach of various social-networking sites has been well-documented already--and even mapped. But it's always cool to see numbers, which I suppose is why companies like ComScore exist in the first place.

The main set of numbers tracks worldwide social-networking growth, with June 2006 and June 2007 as the benchmarks, for seven services: MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Orkut, Hi5, Friendster, … Read more

LEDs to help Fido avoid getting lost

No offense to canine lovers, but not all dogs are smart enough to lead humans out of danger, a la Lassie and the fire at the Old Mill. Truth be told, some have trouble just staying near their owners.

So if your four-legged best friend has a habit of wandering off without you, something like the "Pet Tag Flasher" might be worth considering. When worn around the neck (the dog's, not yours), it flashes four red LEDs to help identify the pet's whereabouts in a street crowd or even a packed watering hole because it's … Read more

FotoTagger: Molly Wood's fave new digital-photography tool

We all goof, but we don't all do it as visibly as CNET TV star and executive editor Molly Wood, nor do we often relish fessing up. Molly does both with wit, charm, and FotoTagger, a handy digital-photography freeware tool for annotating digital photos via movable captions.

Read Molly's hilarious confession, Anatomy of a Buzz Report screwup, to see why FotoTagger has become her "new favorite thing." While you're at it, try it out.

Find files faster

Last week, in an article about optimizing hard drives, I mentioned that I'm a digital pack rat. I'm continually bumping up against my disk size and burning files off to DVD.

While maintaining my hard drive is no big problem, finding the files I need among 120GB of images, songs, movies, Web pages, Word docs, and other personal data can be a challenge, especially when I need something ASAP.… Read more

Sproose does social search, bookmarking

Sproose is a relatively young search engine that now allows its users to control search results via voting. Each search result gets its own vote count and the option to click "I like it," which brings the result up to the top of the heap. The obvious comparison here is Digg.

Sproose searches through videos, using Blinkx, although these results cannot be re-ordered or voted on. Users can also opt-in to have their votes recorded on their profiles for others to see and vote on. All results get their own comment area, where users can talk--although I doubt … Read more

LeapTag finds feeds

LeapTag is an RSS reader with a twist: Instead of letting you easily subscribe to feeds and then showing you what's new in those feeds, you subscribe to tags and topics, and it finds items from the blogosphere that it thinks you'll like. As you tell the system how much you like the items, it improves its selections for you.

TechCrunch compares it to StumbleUpon, which is apt. It does help you find items that you'll find interesting on sites you may not know about.

But once you find a new site you like, you have to … Read more

2view: Flickr-style notes + StumbleUpon voting

2view is a neat little tool that lets you add Flickr-like notes to any photo online. If you're unfamiliar with Flickr's note system, a) you should read our Newbie's Guide, and b) you're really missing out on some fun to be had with photos that are shared online. Flickr's Notes feature lets users add their two cents to a picture, and mark certain things of interest with a very specifically placed caption. It's the Web equivalent of a sharpie marker, although a little less permanent.

To use 2view, just plug in any old … Read more

Newbie's Guide to Flickr

Flickr is a popular photo-sharing and hosting service with advanced and powerful features. It supports an active and engaged community where people share and explore each other's photos. You can share and host hundreds of your own pictures on Flickr without paying a dime. There's also a pro service that gets you unlimited storage and sharing for about $2 a month, making it one of the cheapest hosting sites around (more on that later).

Flickr was created by a small Canadian development team in 2002 before being acquired by Yahoo a year later. Many other photo sites (including Yahoo Photos) are easier to use, but none offer Flickr's interesting features or its cohesive community of enthusiasts.

Adding your photos to Flickr

First step: Get your photos into the service. Flickr has a few options to get photos from your camera into your account, the easiest one being a little uploader app you can install on your PC or Mac (there's also a Linux version.) When it's installed on a PC, you can right-click on any photo and send it straight to Flickr. You also can use this uploader to create albums (Flickr calls albums sets) for your pictures. You can install software that lets you publish from any folder in Windows XP, without the need to use the uploading program. If you're using a Mac, there's also a plug-in for iPhoto.

If you're not keen on downloading a piece of software, Flickr lets you upload six individual photos at a time. This might work for some weekend shots, but if you've got more than 20 shots it's worth trying out the batch uploader. We recommend using the downloader software, or if you've got Yahoo's Widgets Engine installed, the latest version comes with a widget that doubles as a photo viewer and uploading tool.

Continue reading to learn how to tag and organize photos, add notes, geotag, create albums, find out if you need a premium membership, and our list of Flickr users worth checking out.

… Read more