Ello, Is It Me You're Looking for?

Like lots of people, I'm trying out Ello. My profile is here: ello.co/davidgalletly.

According to Ello's About page, Ello is "a simple, beautiful, and ad-free social network created by a small group of artists and designers" and, after a look, that sounds about right. Yeah it could (and probably will) all fall apart in no time but let's play with the new toy anyway, eh?

My first impressions are good. Well, good-ish. From what I can tell there's a Twitter + Tumblr + LiveJournal mash-up thing going on. It's an endless-stream-of-stuff-from-people-you-follow kinda deal but with a neat friends & noise system for managing clutter. Two thumbs up. I've never enjoyed the "here's a bunch of photos I think are cool" side of Tumblr and being able to filter that stuff out is, um, cool.

However, social networks are only as good as the people you follow and, on Ello, the (few) people I'm following are pretty quiet right now. That'll hopefully change. @garrymac (AKA ace comic artist Garry McLaughlin) has written a wee post that I agree with hoping that folk'll use Ello for talking and journaling instead of just photo sharing. The death of Google Reader killed blogging for a lot of my art / illustration friends and I'd love to see them writing more.

So until we're all sold out in a billion dollar cash grab, I'll stay optimistic. The name is a good sign - "'ello" is a hell of a way to start a conversation.

If you're signed up and if you're that way inclined, gimmie a follow. If you're not and you'd like an invite (especially if we're friends), gimmie a shout. You gotta write something though, jeez.

Flickrin'

I've started using my Flickr account for posting 'proper' photographs again (it had recently become a bit of an Instagram dump). Alex got me a spiffy new camera for my birthday and it's encouraged me to try to get better as a photographer. I'm not very good, but I enjoy it.

Have a look / add me if you'd like to follow my learning process (advice welcome!). See sillier stuff on my Instagram.

Facebook Home - A More Realistic Mockup

Facebook Home, the replacement homescreen for your mobile phone, has just been announced. The preview looks absolutely beautiful - not something I'd use - but beautiful nonetheless.

Considering it further, my thoughts turned to my current relationship with Facebook and how I've been inching closer and closer to deleting my account. There's just so much stuff on there that doesn't interest me and, um, so much other stuff that kinda creeps me out.

Regardless, I thought it'd be funny to quickly grab a few things from the top of my own Facebook feed and slap them into a mockup (above) of how Home might look to a regular person. I dunno about you, but there ain't too many models and professional photographers hanging around when I log in*.

I've changed the names to protect the privacy of my friends. If any of you guys read this, please keep in mind that I just grabbed the first few 'normal' images I found. I hope I don't cause offence - I honestly do care about you, your cocktails and your interests - I'm just not sure I want them on the freakin' homepage of my phone.

* saying that, there are a couple - what with having art-farty friends, but compared to people talking about football / work / the weather, they don't post much.

My Instagram Web Profile

Instagram is rolling out its web profile pages this week and mine just went live. Once they're done, everyone's public photographs will be viewable through a normal web browser. This'll make it super easy to share / follow / find people from links and blog posts (such as this).

Here I've quickly put together 3 sets of photos that I really love, loosely themed around animals, people and places.

Revisiting my own wee archive has been interesting - 402 photos over two years. All stuff that at some point, I reckoned was worth sharing. Some of my early uploads were pretty heavy on the filters but, on the whole, I think they hold up not too badly. Mostly.

The square format keeps Instagram photos out of my yearly montages and it's nice to now have a place I can browse through them easily. The selective nature of the app actually creates quite a tightly edited little gallery when you view it all at once.

I still use Instagram a lot, quite carefully choosing who to follow (mostly people I know) and trying to stay up to date with my timeline. Uploading is something I do only when I feel that I've got something funny or interesting to share and I loosely stick to a 1-a-day limit because, man, nobody really cares about someone else's God damn trip to the beach too much at all.

Follow me (if you like) at Instagram.com/davidgalletly.

Instagramming

For the past year I've been using Instagram, the photo filtering / sharing app. I really like it. I know, I know - making digial pictures look all retro and analogue is cheesy. But, guess what? It's kinda fun. You can be pretty subtle and at least they don't force you to use the faux-Polaroid borders anymore.

Anyway, 'til now, the only person I followed or (allowed to follow myself) was Alex. We had a private photostream (nothing saucy, honest) that only the other could see. It was a pretty cool thing - if Alex was away somewhere, I'd occasionally get a text saying 'check instagram' and I'd know to take a look at whatever she'd found on her travels.

The other day though, disaster struck. Alex accidentally made her stream public and was followed by some people she knew. What do we do?! A first-world problem. Should she block her new friends and go back to how things were before? Maybe. Should she keep her stream public? Maybe. If she did that though, should I keep my stream private? Could I remain monogamous with a polygamist?. I'd feel like a chump. The resolution was to both 'go public' on Instagram and set up a new, private account to keep our silly little world of daft faces and in-jokes alive.

So, should you want to, you can now follow me on Instagram. Just add me as davidgalletly.

My photos range from interesting-ish (like the photo above) to very, very dull. I guess that's true of most people. Maybe with audience of 2+, I'll put a little more effort in. Maybe I'll freak out and delete everyone. Welcome to the future David, it looks like 1978.

The Follow Friday Rule

On Twitter, on Friday, it's a wee tradition to recommend your favourite people out to those who follow you. A nice way to help funny/interesting/entertaining folk gain a larger audience. These tweets usually comprise of a little #ff hashtag and a list of names. Simple and effective.

Well, kinda. I've noticed a little problem that can sometimes occur because of the way Twitter handles @ mentions. It is not a fault with Twitter at all, just something that can catch people out when they're trying to be nice. Here we go:

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THE FOLLOW-FRIDAY RULE:

When composing a Follow-Friday tweet, do not start it with an @ symbol. Doing so will restrict who can see the post to those mentioned in the tweet and to people already following those mentioned, defeating the purpose of the tweet.

or,

TO MAKE SURE YOUR #FF TWEET REACHES EVERYONE WHO FOLLOWS YOU, START IT WITH ANYTHING BUT AN @

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Now, I'm not the most eloquent of writers so that might not be the clearest thing to follow (ho ho). The formatting of this blog probably doesn't help either. I'll give some examples that might help explain a little better, starting with the wrong way. Imaginary tweets in bold with imaginary usernames:

@personA, @personB, @personC - check these guys out #ff

Bad! Twitter presumes this tweet is for @personA and hides it from the timeline of anyone who isn't either mentioned in the tweet or already follows at least one of those mentioned. This means that your recommendation is mostly being seen by people who already know about the people you're trying to promote. Silly Billy. A much better way to go about it would be either:

#ff @personA, @personB, @personC - check these guys out

or

check these guys out #ff - @personA, @personB, @personC

Good! Make sense? Oh, probably not. Anyway, the idea is that if you start with anything but an @ symbol, Twitter rightly presumes the tweet is public and it goes out to every single person who follows you. People find out about new people and everyone wins.

Jeez, if someone wants to write that out more clearly, go for it. If you found this useful in any way, please point people here (use the tweet this button below). If you don't use Twitter and this was just an impenetrable wall of rubbish, I'm sorry. Also, follow me.