Neal Romanek – words/pictures

As you certainly must know by now – because of all the rioting in the streets – Flickr has adopted video. And there are many angry Flickr users threatening to boycott the Beijing Olympics because of it. Yahoo may be pulling a fast one by adding video to Flickr in order to “add value” prior to an imminent buyout by the wise & kindly Rupert Murdoch, et al.

I have been hoping a Flickr-like video community would appear for some time now – a classy, and useful, alternative to the busy, pixelated , irritating mess that is YouTube. In fact, the sheer mediocre awfulness of YouTube’s features and interface and image quality have discouraged me from posting video online in general. Why take time to make a video when it will only be seen in a crummy version? Online video is mature enough now that we should be getting high quality – HD even – video as a matter of course. A photo site that offered only low-resolution uploads would be laughed out of countenance today. So it should be with video.

Flickr is currently restricting uploaded videos to 90 seconds in length and only to Pro Account holders, which seems a sound approach. As a result, the video self-portrait below, which is just slightly over 90 seconds ends, prematurely.