Two days before I left for New Zealand, I spoke at Online Northwest—a one day library technology conference here in Corvallis. The talk was called Hacking Web 2.0 and I stumbled across a summary by Will Stuivenga at the Library and Information Technology Association blog: Online NW: Keynote. I definitely felt like an outsider, but my guess is that's the perspective they were looking for. I enjoyed getting a glimpse of a different world, and having the chance to chat with several people there. I think there should be more brainstorms between librarians and webheads. We have many big issues in common—even though our day to day problems seem very different.

sk and I just got back from driving around New Zealand's South Island for 10 days. It was an amazing trip, and I'm having trouble figuring out how to summarize the experience in a single post.

Instead, I'll just post some more pictures. I posted photos from the road at Flickr: New Zealand 2006. And you can click the photo of me hiking tramping below to see 15 more photos from the trip.

yay! I'm a little late with this news, but Flickr Hacks is now available in physical book form! Is there someone you'd like to see posting their photos to Flickr but they haven't made the leap? Give the gift of Flickr Hacks. :) I think the book is a great introduction to the Flickrverse, and any reader will become a Flickr power user if they give some of the more advanced hacks a go.

It's great to see the book in its final form, especially because this one was so much fun to work on. This picture is my copy of the book, and you can keep an eye on photos tagged with flickrhacks to see others.

One of the reasons I use Firefox is because it blocks pop-up ads so effectively. Unfortunately, the latest version of the browser has an aggressive update availability notification system that is a pop-up ad.



This window pops-up randomly when I'm trying to read a website. Clicking Later means I have to endure this pop-up at random intervals in the future. Clicking Download means I have to stop working, close the browser, and spend time updating. Great choice. Someone should write a Firefox extension that disables this annoyance and puts the update notice back in the upper right-hand corner where it belongs. This pop-up is a bad move for Firefox.

Update: Instead of simply complaining like me, Phil Ringnalda started a conversation about a better notification system for Firefox: Where's Mama Bear's update notification?

Update 2: Got a tip from Colby T, "...my suggestion is to type about:config [in the address toolbar] and change app.update.silent to true. I think this may achieve an experience closer to what you're looking for." Thanks, done!

Brian Sawyer—Hacks Series editor and another partner in crime on Flickr Hacks—just uploaded every figure from Flickr Hacks to Flickr in a gallery appropriately titled Flickr Hacks Color Figures. (Flickr.) So as you're reading along in the book and want to see a much larger image than you find on the printed (or HTML/PDF-ized) page, you can browse to the gallery and take a look by figure number. And don't forget about the All Sizes button on the image detail page if you really want to study a figure more closely.

This image is from Hack #43, Mash Up Your Photos.

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