Stockio: A Better Option for Free Graphical Assets

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No matter how great your content, you need to have an appealing look to really make your website pop. The ins and outs of using stock photos can be complicated and buying assets is often expensive. However, savvy users can make great use of a free stock photo site. Stockio is a great choice for anyone looking to make their blog look better. [Read more…]

How to Protect your Photos from Online Theft

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We are living in the age of visual content. We are living in the age where engaging imagery has become an integral part of all content marketing tactics. It’s hard, if not impossible, to conceive a blog post today without quality photos since articles accompanied by photos are likely to get 94% more views. Blogging is indissolubly linked to imagery, and this is due to multiple reasons. [Read more…]

How to Pick Photos for Blog Posts That Will Pop on Social Media

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photos for blog posts
We’ve long known that having a giant image at the top of a blog post will help the post perform and find an audience. People are visual, and that’s only become more of the norm as time has gone on. Many sites have redesigned their pages to highlight more, and larger, pictures.

But one thing that’s changed in recent years is how we find and share articles. Social media — and all of its various platforms — now requires writers and editors to have in mind how and where the blog posts will be seen as they construct the content. That’s not just for the headline and copy, though; the images, too, need to be relevant and shareable for people to be drawn to them. [Read more…]

5 Legal Problems Raised By Mobile Blogging

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Cell Phone in CrowdBlogging, as well as almost all media, is become much more mobile. Not only are people reading and consuming news on the go, but they are also recording, writing and photographing it as well.

This move stems directly from the rise in both smartphones, which often include high-definition video/still cameras, as well as other portable recording and Internet-connected devices. From Flip cameras to laptops, you can run an entire multimedia empire without ever sitting in an office.

However, all of this mobility comes with it a series of new legal questions and issues that desktop-only bloggers don’t have to face. When you’re recording audio and video on the street, you have some additional concerns to worry about.

Fortunately, they are legal questions that you can easily address and deal with, so long as you’re aware of them and take steps to avoid them before you step out the door. [Read more…]

The 3 Most Common Copyright Mistakes Bloggers Make

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Do OverCopyright is a notoriously confusing and complicated area of law, but one that also impacts nearly every part of our daily lives. As such, it is pretty much inevitable that well-intended people are going to make mistakes.

However, with copyright law, blunders can be very costly. In addition to the threat of a lawsuit, one can have their site shut down, access to some of their favorite services revoked and lose a lot of credibility. Even if none of those things comes to pass, a copyright dispute is still a major headache and one that most, if given the choice, would prefer to avoid.

As such, it’s important for bloggers to be aware of some of the more common copyright pitfalls that come from blogging and, more importantly, how to avoid them.

With that in mind, here are three of the most common copyright blunders bloggers make and what can be done to prevent yourself from falling into them. Fortunately, all are easy mistakes to see and avoid, if you know to look for them. [Read more…]

Flickr Gets Cozy With The iPad, Adds Expanded Lightbox Support

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Photo sharing site Flickr has been on a roll in its support of mobile operating systems and their accompanying browsers. A Windows 7 App that fully integrates in to the OS and presents a clean interface was released recently. Shortly after Flickr turned its sights to iOS and released an iPad optimized version of the site.

The new iPad friendly addition is a change to the light box. When browsing the site on your iPad you’ll be able to access a full screen photo viewer and initiate a slideshow:

We’re happy to announce some big improvements to the photo light box for iPad users! The light box is a handy, full browser photo viewer available from any photo page. From a photo page on Flickr, simply tap on a photo to view it larger (if available) and on a clean, dark background.

While Flickr has a native iPhone App that taps in to the power of iOS and the hardware, no native iPad exists yet. Flickr may opt to focus on its site and continue improving it for iPad users instead of releasing an official App. As fellow Blog Herald author Darnell Clayton mused, Yahoo’s growing commitment to the service and expanding features to mobile devices hints Yahoo! doesn’t want to shutdown the service like it’s doing with Delicious.

Flickr Removes Egyptian Blogger’s Photos Of Secret Service Documents

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Social Media played a huge part in helping the Egyptian populace coordinate a revolution that the whole world followed. Despite the new defunct Mubarak’s attempts to silence the people by disconnecting all internet connectivity in the country, updates were still sent out by Bloggers using old school mediums such as faxing. Following Mubarak’s fall, we’re still receiving updates on the Egyptian revolution thanks to the brave Bloggers, Journalists and Photographers giving us an intimate view of a country going through a massive change.

Many photos were shared through Flickr but the photo sharing network has acted to take down an Egyptian Blogger’s photos of the revolutions.

[Read more…]

5 Sources for Free and Legal Images

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Everyone knows that almost any blog post is better with images. However, getting them can be a difficult matter. With a maze of licensing and fair use issues making it hard to decide what is and is not legal to use, many bloggers don’t wish to use images that they have not taken themselves.

But while using your own images is always the best way to go, there are several great sources to help you find and locate images that you can use as part of your blog posts. In fact, there are some very neat tools designed specifically to help you correctly license and use other people’s photography, art and more.

The best part of all is that these tools are free. They will not cost you a dime to use and, if used correctly, can let you fill up your blog posts with as many images as your heart desires. [Read more…]

Flickr Founders Jump Ship

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This has got to hurt. Yahoo have lost Flickr founders Caterina Fake, who left last Friday, and Steward Butterfield, who’ll be leaving on July 12, according to a report on TechCrunch. When reading this, I quickly surfed to Valleywag with hopes of some juicy rumors or just plain fun nastiness, but alas, they make a poor pun on the fact that it took the husband/wife Flickr founder team less time to give birth to a baby, than to get the video features rolling.

Nothing on the Flickr blog either, but I did find this photo, at least that’s something.

15 Great Sites for Legal, Free Content

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[Updated June 2018 by Laurel Devoto]

You don’t have to spend a bundle to get great free and legal content for your website. Photos, videos, sounds, and vectors are available for free online without breaking the bank or the law. Knowing where to find high-quality, relevant content is a great way to improve your website or blog and make it more interesting for visitors. Without spending a dime, you can still use high-quality images on your blog to improve reader engagement and help make your blog posts look more attractive. There are so many sites that offer a variety of licensing options to suit any project.

[Read more…]