90 Ans Après la Grande Guerre

Posted on November 20, 2008 by Gary

The popular French news site LeMonde.fr published a phenomenal collection of news and multimedia related to World War I at the start of this month in remembrance of the 90th anniversary of the Great War. The édition spéciale, which corresponds to a print publication in France, compiles stories, photographs, audio and video associated with the war nearly a century ago.

One such video is a shot documentary highlighting the works of Jacques Grison who, as a child, played in the countryside of Verdun without even realizing that 300,000 men died there in 1916. Now a photographer, Grison has documented the landscape of Verdun, capturing a world that looks as if the war ended only days ago. Even if you don't understand a single word of Français, the six minute long video is worth watching.

The Big Picture: Storm-battered Yemen

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Gary

Silt and mud cover the land around damaged homes following two days of storms in the eastern Yemeni province of Hadramaut on October 25, 2008. (KHALED FAZAA/AFP/Getty Images)

The Big Picture, by far the best blog for photojournalism geeks, posted some photographs of the recent flooding in the country of Yemen. In case you don't know, the Republic of Yemen (الجمهورية اليمنية) is an Arab country located on the south-west corner of the Arabian Peninsula. The floods started on October 23rd, and were a result of the 2008 Yemen Cyclone, aka Deep Depression ARB 02/2008. At least 1,700 homes were reported destroyed, along with 180 deaths and over $1 billion USD in damages.

The ancient city of Shibam is seen in this aerial photograph in the southeastern Yemeni province of Hadramaut, October 28, 2008. (REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah)

The mystical city photographed here is the ancient city of Shibam (شبام‎), famous for its mud brick tower houses which are between 5 and 11 stories high. Known as the "Manhattan of the desert," the town was threatened by the major flooding, though it remains largely intact with the exception of a few houses which unfortunately toppled over.

Photographs courtesy of The Big Picture, posted without commercial intent.

Idée Multicolr Flickr Search

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Gary

I've seen quite a few Flickr API mash-ups, but this has got to be one of the most creative. Idée Inc. has created the "Multicolr Search Lab" that uses a collection of 10 million Creative Commons licensed images on Flickr to match photographs to a user-selected color palette.

As the user selects up to ten colors from the palette on the right, the mash-up searches an index of matched colors and pulls up results in the form of thumbnails, each linked to the image's Flickr page. Not only is this just plain fun, but because of Creative Commons licensing, an artist can quickly find images to use in a project (as long as he/she gives credit and shares alike). Idée's Piximilar, the engine behind this app, seems to be a very powerful and groundbreaking image analysis system. It will be interesting to see how this algorithm is incorporated into future projects. For now, you can check out Multicolr at http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/.