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You can create widgets to display your photos on your blog in interesting ways. Flickr calls this a badge. You can create an HTML badge or a Javascript badge and add them to your blog. I created a couple of different sized badges that I provide to other bloggers so they can share my Photo-A-Day photos on their blog. IT is a really easy thing to do. First you have to find it. Scroll to the bottom of your Flickr page and locate the link to Tools.

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From there you are going to go to the page where you can download the Flickr uploader and other tools for posting photos to Flickr, but what about expanding Flickr. For that you need to locate the link to Hey! Where is the badge?.

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At this point you are presented with a choice. Will you create an HTML badge or a Javascript badge. Let’s opt for the HTML badge, more compatible with many of the free services that won’t allow javascript. Pick your poison (HTML or javascript) and then we can pick the flavor (content).

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You can now choose to display your photos, a group’s photos or everyone’s photos. If you are looking to just display photos from your own set then you can choose that set. I decided that I wanted to display all of my photos that were tagged with “photo-a-day”

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Once you’ve chosen the content for your badge you are presented with options to choose how that badge is going to look, will it be vertical or horizontal, will you use square images, thumbnails or mid-size images. How many images would you like to display (1,3,5 or 10). Do you want the most recent or a random selection of images? And, do you want your buddy icon (avatar) on the badge. You can also junk everything and style the badge by yourself, but that would be in another tutorial)

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Once you have made your selections you can then choose the colors for the badge. You can change the background, border, links and text. You can also remove the background and border. This is a great way to match your new Flickr badge to your current blog theme. Once this is complete you can get the code so that you can post it to your site.

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On the code page all you can do is copy the code. You cannot edit the code on this page because it will always revert to the code that Flickr supplies. So copy the code and then post it to your blog, there you can make any edits that you wish. Here is one of the options that people can post to their own blogs of my final badge.

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I tweaked the code a bit myself and can probably do much more with CSS however for the basic user going through the steps should take care of most people’s needs.

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For a little while my computer was giving me issues with Adobe PhotoShop Elements. Since I need to work on photos every day I looked for a free alternative so that I could crop images as well as add my logo to each image. I found FotoFlexer on that occasion. FotoFlexer is a powerful online editing tool that allows you to connect directly to sites like Flickr, Picasa and many more and pull your photos right into the program.

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In addition to being able to do many basic edits you can also use FotoFlexer to do all sorts of fun effects to your image. You can create neon outlines, blueprints, and make the photo look old, among other things. You can decorate the image, add animations, work in layers and even do more advanced things (section titled geek) like curves, smart resizing and smart recoloring. You can even work on multiple files at once.

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There are so many options to choose from that you can easily do major photo editing right online with no hassle. Take a look at FotoFlexer.

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Buzznet evolved from a simple photo hosting site to a social network with a very serious music and pop culture tone. Now users can go to Buzznet to read about their favorite bands as well as to post pictures, video and journal entries. As a user you can buzz photos, journal entries and videos that you enjoy. You can make friends with other users and you can post your photos, videos and journal entries to Twitter and Facebook with a click of a button.

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A nice feature of the service is the ability to upload a large image and have the service automatically create thumbnails, small, medium and large images as well as original sizes. This works really well when you are trying to get the best fit image for your blog. When you have the service do this you can easily grab whatever size image you need.

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Adding your uploaded images, titles and descriptions to Facebook is also very easy to do. You can just click on the embed feature and then choose facebook, myspace or twitter to automatically embed the photo to any of those sites, you can also choose to click the same icons on the photo page itself. There are many ways to do the same thing and Buzznet makes it very easy to share your content with others.

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To be honest, Buzznet is way more hip than I will ever be, and when I repeatedly got friend requests from 17 year old girls and boys who weren’t photographers I knew I had outgrown the site. However it can still be another outpost to host your photos. Although, if you are into the latest Movies, TV, Gossip, or Music then Buzznet is a great site for you to use as a resource and a social networking site. Try it today, the accounts are free.

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I have a Motorola Droid and I often use it to take photos when I am out and about. I take the Droid with me everywhere. I enjoy geotagging my photos and have many different options to accomplish this with my photos. The easiest way so far is to take photos with my Droid and post them to Picasa because they are automatically geotagged because of the GPS in the phone itself. Suppose that you want to collect your entire trip and be able to go back and see them along the travel trail.

If you have an iPhone or an Android phone you can use EveryTrail, a great program that allows you to capture your trips along with location and photos. Every time you take a photo with your camera phone you can title it and post it to your recorded trail. Then you can go back and watch your trip like a slide show but instead of transitions you move along the trail and the photo or video appears at that location.

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If you are going to take photos and capture your trip here are some tips to make your cameraphone photos better.

• Light the subject well
• Play with the White Balance
• Get Close
• Clean off the lens, keep it clean
• Hold Still
• Do not use the zoom, use the manual zoom, move your feet
• Use the highest resolution on your phone.

Here are a few other resources I found on taking better camera phone photos:

Geek to Live: Take better cameraphone photos

12 Tips for Improving Camera Phone Photos

SnapFish: how to take better camera phone photos

Share your best Cameraphone Photos in the comments.

The Canon Hacker’s Development Kit is a piece of code that you can install on your SD card to be able to run all sorts of scripts that enhance and extend the capabilities of regular old point and shoot Canon cameras. The time lapse script is called the Ultra Intervalometer and with it you can set the rate at which your camera takes pictures. So if you wanted to have the camera take photos every 10 seconds as you rode your bike around your town you could do that with the CHDK.

That is just one of the scripts that have been created to automate and unlock special features of your camera. Some other features of the CHDK are enhanced image capture. You can actually capture RAW images on a point and shoot. You can set longer exposure times, you can even see more info like remaining battery life, histogram, depth of focus. The Lifehacker article and the CHDK wiki are great information sources for you to hack your Canon as well. If you do it let me know and share your experiments in the comments below.

Snaps with a Camera Phone

Captured on Video

Checking the photo

Quick camera snap.

Making these are really easy. All you need to do is go to Dumpr.net and click on Celebrity Paparazzi.

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There you can upload any of your photos or connect to your Flickr account and select one of those photos. Then just click on the step 2 section and select how you would like to be photographed. There you can choose from the four options.

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Have fun with these.

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1.) Head over to Add-ons for Firefox and download the plugin for free.

2.) Click “Add to FireFox” to install the plugin.

3.) Restart your browser and you are ready to go!