4 Useful Free Stockphoto Websites

Unfortunately not all projects have multi-thousand dollar budgets devoted just to original photography. Sometimes the budget doesn't even amount to double-digits. It's just plain nonexistent. What's a designer to do?

Enter free stock photography. Thousands of royalty-free images with no or low-restrictions on use are your new best friend. The traditional problem with free stock photography is some of the quality is not so great. Thankfully, this has begun to turn around in the past few years. Here's a look at some of my favorite resources and tools.

FreeRangeStock.com
Free Range Stock has access to thousands of in-house free stock photos and user-submitted photos. A big plus of this site is all the photos are at least 2400x1600, perfect to use in YouTube or Google+ cover photos, where the artwork needs to be enormous. You do need to sign up for an account to be able to download, but it's free and quick.

Pixabay.com
Pixabay has access to almost 100,000 high-quality images. No registration is required, but you can follow and message photographers if you do sign up. Lots of really great nature and landscape photos. They also have a WordPress plugin.

Unsplash.com
Unsplash is an interesting Tumblr-based project. 10 new photos are released each week and you can do absolutely whatever you'd like with them. These photos are generally a little more visually interesting than the majority of stock photos, but with that comes a bit more of a limited project-use.

PhotoDropper
PhotoDropper is a WordPress plugin linked up to the over 243 million Creative Commons photos on Flickr. I've been able to find photos related to many obscure topics. Tip: Even if your site or project isn't built on WordPress, you can still load it into a WordPress based site and search for images. Just click "View on Flickr" to download directly from Flickr.

What are some of your favorite ways to find free images for your projects?

Your Reputation Precedes You - Recommendable Reputation Reading

By Gregory Markel

I JUST started reading 'The Reputation Society - How Online Opinions Are Shaping The Offline World' published by MIT press, edited by Hassan Masum and Mark Tovey with a foreword by Craig Newmark.

We live in an age, thanks to ever accelerating digital communication, where word and image travel globally within seconds of an event.

The recent "I just escaped with my life" Tweet just minutes after the Asiana airliner crashed at SFO by the fleeing Samsung executive David Eun, is a timely example of such. It's also a recent example of a reputation creating moment as he then shortly thereafter came under criticism for Tweeting rather than helping the passengers off the plane...(Question: Do you see this as any reflection on his company, which was mentioned along side these criticisms?)

Clearly, Positive and Negative reputation can explode and populate the Internet in nano-seconds thanks to social and does daily now should the catalyst behind such be newsworthy.

Systems, networks, platforms, devices and human digital consumption habits change every day in this age...one might even say every hour and therefore, I must change with them if I am to understand the speed of digital reputation change, hence my study of this book which I came across while performing related research...

I'll be sharing my opinion on the book once completed, along with any real-world reputation application examples that should congeal along the way...TBC...

"Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of---for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear." ---Socrates

The Battlefield that is Wikipedia

by Abby Copuyoc

Wikipedia is the “Free Encyclopedia that anyone can edit” (Wikipedia.com). With over 70,000 active editors and counting, it’s a melting pot of editors from different cultures, modes of experience, and perspectives. Although one of the core policies of Wikipedia is neutrality, editing inevitably becomes imbued with individual rhetoric, with editors pushing different ways of representing verifiable sources. Because of this, “edit wars” may ensue, and the simple inclusion or exclusion of a piece of text may generate heated online exchanges. This is the focus of an online study from Arvix.org featured in FoxNews.com and Wired.com called “The Most controversial topics in Wikipedia: A multilingual and geographical analysis.” The study shows that the most argued topics in Wikipedia are religion and politics. "Some topics on the site better resemble a battlefield than a publishing house," Fox News describes researchers as saying.

The three most contested topics on the English Wikipedia are: George W. Bush, Anarchism and Muhammad. To provide a wider overview, the top ten most controversial articles in the English language edition of Wikipedia are: 1) George W. Bush 2) Anarchism 3) Muhammad 4) LWWEe 5) Global warming 6) Circumcision 7) United States 8) Jesus 9) Race and Intelligence 10) Christianity Here is an image to find a quick snapshot of the top 10 articles in different languages: The top three topical categories are Politics, Geographical Locations and Religions & Beliefs. History follows at 4th and Sex and Gender, Human Rights and Social Activism fall on the 5th rank. Below is another image that summarizes the most controversial topics across Wikipedia: Remember the maxim, “never discuss religion or politics”? This is evidence of how discussions about religion and politics become heated or “controversial,” from everyday conversations to online wikis. These are topics that readers and editors deeply care about, and not surprisingly, triggers critical conversations that are marked by clashing opinions.

 This should not be a deterrent for the regular Joe or Jane to jump in and join the millions of Wikipedians around the world. In the world of collaborative editing, everyone has significant knowledge and something to share. Your edit is just as good as the edit of the Wikipedia veterans who have thousands of edits and articles to their name. Though challenging, Wikipedia is a great way to get involved in the cause of furthering knowledge and promoting scholarship. Ready to edit?

Your Internet Security

by Gregory Markel

Very few of us remain consistently mindful and vigilant of how much information we share about ourselves online via social networks, ahem, blogs, mobile, and websites...

You would be STUNNED to know how much I can find out about you by...

• a) finding all available information about you on the web
• b) connecting the relationships between friends, family, jobs, check-ins, social networks ala information "nodes" to reveal even more information about you...so much so that in some cases, I could predict your future behavior!

Hackers, criminals and ahem, intelligence agencies do exactly that using data mining and relational software some of which I could mention and link to here....but I'm not gonna.

This video does an excellent job of reminding us of this fact...

We're live plus that Google real-time keyword seizure inducer thing...

THE NEW INFUSECREATIVE.COM IS LIVE! (And oh, that Google color explosion...)

Our new interim website, (Because, let's face it, all websites are interim websites in the grand scheme of things;), is live BUT, ya ain't seen nuthin' yet...stuff comin' that will make your head tilt like a dog listening to a harmonica...

In the meantime, check out Google's new time waster, a real-time view on popular Google search terms...(But with the adult terms removed, trust us, otherwise, this would be an entirely different experience the truth be told;). If you're a super digital geek,  we have a fun suggestion...Display it on a big screen in your office and when people ask what it is, tell them it's a real-time U.S. citizen feed from PRISM but you really can't say more than that...;)

Ok, ok...actually, its a real-time view on Google trends...what people are searching RIGHT NOW...click here to view and don't say we didn't warn you.