For a few weeks now I’ve been enjoying taking photos with my iPod. I use two pieces of software to make taking them more fun. Photosynth stitches photos together to create extreme wide angle collages. If you move the camera too much when you capture one of these panoramas the software struggles to put the image together just right and the results are sometimes surprising.  I’ve been playing with Instagram too, that’s the photo sharing web-service that Facebook just bought for a billion dollars.

I added a feed to these photos I’m making to the column on the right.

Kottke.org had a post of intelligent comments on the closed economies that  websites like Facebook and Instagram strive to create, he likens them to company towns:

Like all good producers, the workers are also consumers. They immediately spend their entire wage, and their wages is only good in Instagram-town. What they buy is the likes and comments of the photos they produce (what? You think it’s free? Of course it’s not free, it feels good so you have to pay for it. And you did, by being a producer), and access to the public spaces of Instagram-town to communicate with other consumers. It’s not the first time that factory workers have been housed in factory homes and spent their money in factory stores.

I may have sold out to these big companies by giving them real estate on this little site, cross linking, posing photos I’ve taken to them and all that, but damn it, they make it so compelling.