As promised, foretold and so on google earth has arrived... for the PC. But not for mac-land unfortunately, and even though I've got Virtual PC, given how pathetic that is at rendering a regular page of HTML I'm not going to bother downloading a web application that demands a 3D card (especially as I think that mine is on the no-no list anyway). But Windows folk, have fun, and as usual the mac community will be jogging along in a few months time, out of breath, and wheeze - "it was our idea anyway..."

flickr montager
Originally uploaded by blind sam.

Montager is a piece of software that scrapes flickr images through tags to create montages like those nineties things of dubious taste. The natty thing with this is though, due to the power of the interweb, each component image has a link so you can lose yourself in the visual minutiae of the surf.

flickr album
Originally uploaded by blind sam.

flickr album is a tool for creating online ebooks from flickr images. It uses flickr tags and usernames and is a very simple way of getting yourself into vanity publishing... This shows a spread from images tagged with 'christening' from my nephew's recent baptism. (due to the fact that I haven't created anywork recently...)

This is getting old but Photo District News recently reported that Kodak is ceasing to make black and white photographic paper. While this latest move is not particularly surprising - we are, afterall, all waiting macabrely in the wings for film photography's death - Kodak's stance on the matter is a little odd due to its internal conflict. I don't use kodak's paper, but the lab I work in uses Kodak's chemistry, and this is the norm. Oddly, Kodak is encouraging people to use other paper manufacturers (see fourth paragraph in article link), emphasising that it still continues to make the chemistry. The obvous reason for this is that there's more money in the chemistry than the paper for Kodak but this internal tension cannot sustain itself readily given that it is pulling out of one half of the same market.