Neha Tiwari Pvt. Ltd.

Good old Yahoo! photos is closing it’s doors in just a few days. All Yahoo users have the option to download all their photos, or migrate to Yahoo! owned Flickr. I may be one of the last users of the traditional Yahoo! photos, but any site that is geriatric approved [note: my mother can understand it] deserves some appreciation. Sure it wasn’t all web 2.0 fantastic, but it was easy to use. As everyone and their dog now has a online photo blog, I am thinking it’s time to join the masses. Not to say that I haven’t been there before…

I still remember the first time I danced around joining Flickr. I was in college, it wasn’t owned by Yahoo, and I was looking for a way to share high res pics with my chums. Flickr seemed to be the only alternative at the time, though the page format seemed confusing to me. After all, it was one of the first sites to use the Web 2.0 module. In any case, I was turned off by it and stuck with what I had;Yahoo!, TextAmerica, and Webshots.

While in college, I stuck up random streams of images on my Textamerica Moblog. I got bored and creeped out by that site [hello stalkers], so I tried out Webshots my last two years at Cal. As a free service for a few pictures, it worked well. After a while, I lost interest in posting pictures, perhaps because of the lack of community and boring interface.

Alas, I never really found a place to settle on photo sharing. Sure there is SmugMug, Zooomr, and a bunch of vowel-lacking photo sharing sites.Somewhere in between creepy TextAmerica and snoozy Webshots, there has to be a happy medium and a place where I feel like I belong. Is Flickr the missing link? Should I give it another shot?

Usually when one thinks of the word “shiny”, positive thoughts come to mind. A shiny car, a shiny new penny, and the rad indie-punk band, Shiny Toy Guns. The word and aforementioned things are nice, but there are a few situations where we shouldn’t all shine on; noses, bald heads, and finally, laptop/desktop LCD screens.

The good news is that shiny noses and heads can be dabbed down with powder foundation. The bad news: the treatment for an LCD screen is not as simple. While visiting my Uncle up north, I was wowed by his new HP widescreen laptop for its multimedia displays [via Windows Vista], along with sleek design. I was not, however, impressed by the uber shiny screen.

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I’ll admit it. Now that I’m single, I’ve perused Match.com a couple of times, but have never come across anything that peaked my interest. Today, that all changed. I happened to land on a profile of a worldly, Ivy league cutie, who reads The Economist and has a Zen center. The thing is–I refuse to become a member.

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with being on a dating website [I know plenty of people happy as a result of them], but I just feel like Facebook and Myspace should somehow be enough. I know that both are meant to be used as platonic networking sites. I’ve been a Myspacer/Facebooker for years now, and have used both for that purpose successfully. The thing is, if someone who was a potentially good fit was even on those sites, would I approach them? Probably not, as I am kinda old fashioned with the dating scene. What happens when you see a hot person who lives within 25 miles, likes the great outdoors, exceeds your height requirement [6 ft...wowza!]–but is on a dating site? After all, Match.com’s tagline is “It’s okay to look.”

Maybe I should not have looked to begin with…perhaps it’s not really “okay.” I suppose it’s a community just like the other sites and there is always a catch. You always have to join as well; Reciprocate with your profile on the site. I think the idea of being linked to a dating site is also something that isn’t quite accepted in social circles yet. The funny thing is that I have a number of friends who are members, to whom I have sworn secrecy to never tell. Plus, it’s always so random when you see someone you actually know on the dating site of your choice. Their profile with their likes and dislikes in poetic prose–you can’t help but smile and feel a tad bit of an “aww…how sadly dorky.”

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