Alex Harries's diary

While I'm waiting for a cafétière (did I accent that right?) of photos from tonight's VIP Awards Dinner Thingybob to brew, I just wanted to mention that this is absolutely superb... Boredom's great ;o)

Update: as I'm editing down the photos from tonight, I'm faced with the eternal question of "do I include the photograph for completeness or delete it because it's absolutely terrible/they're gurning/they're looking the other way/all of the above?". This is a bit of a pain in the neck as far as the photos of the ... ohmyGod it's getting light... Where was I? ... It's a bit of a pain where photos of the awards ceremony are concerned because, naturally, people would like to see a pic of them receiving the award wherever possible but, that said, I'm not entirely sure having a pixellated multi-coloured blur is really likely to invoke those feelings of pride and achievement which a good photo might have done. I think I'll just have to admit defeat on some of these pics... Shame :o( (Advance apology: some of the photos I took tonight were, frankly, appalling - if you're reading this and fuming having seen your face as a blurry/dark/gurning mess thanks to my guerilla photography, I can only apologise... Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible... Oops!).

(p.s. lost my going-into-the-sea-after-Tange virginity tonight... Very scary, but not very cold... Beer jackets are handy things...)

I have to admit, I'm a bit late in realising what flickr (the massively popular photo hosting website) can offer anyone and everyone who can be bothered to sign up for an account, for free. Possibly the easiest and most noticeable feature of the site is the ability to "tag" your photos (add keywords) and then show all photos from flickr with matching or similar tags. The other very clever toy is "tag clouds", which shows a list of the most-used keywords in a group of photos, sorted alphabetically, and sized proportionally to their occurrence on the site.

To be honest, it's easier if you just read their explanation on what flickr is/does, or take a browse around some of the (often absolutely stunning) photos on the site.

So I've been sitting here wondering if we can adopt some, if not all, of the great ideas they're using to make it easier to browse around UPSU.net's photo galleries, or even being able to allow every single member of UPSU.net to have their own photo galleries (possible), tagging system (also possible), and photo groups (uhhm, probably possible...?).

Of course, like the forums, there's no point to it all if no-one really uses them, so starting next term we need to do a bit of fairly ruthless marketing.

That said, I'd like to increase UPSU.net's usefulness to members a lot first - the homepage redesign, for example, should mean UPSU.net can be used as your homepage if you like a homepage that...

• lets you carry out a Google search straight off
• lets you create and categorise an unlimited list of links to your favourite websites - no more having to remember your favourites every time you change computer on the University network (although I'm told your web browser history now follows you around the Uni's computers... spooky)
• helps your studies by providing links to free research tools (if you trust the internet as a research resource - for those of us that don't yet, maybe we could find some links to sites that help guide people new to online research?)
  
• lets you see the latest news headlines from the UK, the World, or various Sport feeds (and remembers your preferences)
• lets you quickly go to your student portal account

... and from a UPSU.net point of view...

• lets you see your latest forum posts, diary entries, news articles and anything else you contribute to UPSU.net
• and lets you see the latest Union news, photo galleries, forum posts, and what events are coming up at the Union.

That's a good list to begin with, but I want more - more things you can customise, more information, more usefulness (although not necessarily in that order of priority). Oh, and I want it all to load in a flash.

The question is, what would you like to see on your homepage? What can't you live without on the www, every single day? And what - if anything - could we do to make you consider setting UPSU.net as your homepage? (If that's not too ambitious a goal.)

Just before I hit the button to update the photo galleries, unleashing just under 1,500 new pics onto the site, I wanted to make sure that we are making it as easy as possible for everyone to get themselves heard should they come across a photo they really don't, for whatever reason, like.

When we introduced the commenting system, we extended the complaint functionality so that any URI on the site can be the target of a complaint, simply by adding a button to that page. It was already in use on the commenting system and the forums, but it wasn't added to the galleries simply because I never got round to delving into the gallery code to work out where to put the code in.

From tonight, every picture on the photo galleries carries a "complain about this photo" button, tucked neatly under the photo. Complainers can optionally submit their name, e-mail address and a reason for the complaint; we will deal with each complaint objectively, but naturally the extra information will help us to make the best decision when we handle a complaint.

Time for another cuppa then...