High Tech Inspiration
There are too many sites and interesting articles to follow; my bookmark folder is overloaded and disorganized; and, each browser has its own rules for creating and accessing bookmarks, which makes it even more confusing to keep track of sites, ideas or photographs that inspire me.
Pinterest is a visual bookmarking site, whereby one creates boards of inspirational sites, images and ideas from around the web. After you have requested an account (yes, you will have to request an invitation or ask a friend to recommend you to the site), you will be forwarded a link to create your account. You can sign-in utilizing a Facebook or Twitter account or create an individual one. (The benefits of using Facebook and Twitter is that it will be easier to find friends to follow).
Now the fun begins…the ‘Pinterest‘ icon is installed on your browser’s toolbar, making it easier to capture images from around the web. When you happen upon an inspirational idea, you click the ‘Pinterest’ icon and you are given options of which image to capture; an option of which board to post to; and the option of creating a description of the item you’ve found.
And yes, for designers and creatives who find inspiration everywhere, this is a site that organizes it all for you. We have boards for “The Relaunch of BohoMamma.com“, “My Desk“, “Moods“, “News Sites We Love“, “Street Style Fashion” and more.
People are creative and I now hold out hope for the human race (maybe not, See: Poverty in America). I suppose Pinterest isn’t going to save the world, but I do think the service offers a new concept in sharing ideas, company information and creativity. It’s exciting because people feed off of the images and ideas that someone else has posted. So, someone may post a photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson and describe it as “Photography”, while someone else will borrow that photograph, pin it to their own board under “Moods”. And if you’re looking for ways to capture ideas, sites and information from around the Internet, this is one beautiful way to do it.
There are drawbacks or kinks to the navigation within the site, but I suspect that these issues will be resolved soon enough. Besides remembering the correct spelling of the site, there are also issues with the functionality. For example, if I’m visiting a site and I want to ‘pin’ an image, I find myself on the Pinterest side instead and I find it a little clunky to have to go backwards or to resubmit to the site I was originally on. Working with the Pinterest iPad app did not work for me at all, so I removed the app from my iPad and followed the instructions for installing the Pinterest bookmark into my bookmarks folder.
I would love to be able to arrange the photographs within each board I create (a user is allowed to rearrange the board layout, but the ability to layout photographs or images isn’t available as of yet) because I don’t always happen upon inspiration in the order that Pinterest lays out for me…I like to group things I find by color or detail. That said, this is a super fun site and I think businesses, creatives and professionals will find plenty of uses in the months ahead.
A Business Insider article reports impressive valuation of the company. Pinterest will be the next big thing in social networking and in many ways, it’s better…it allows users to share information in a format that is clean, easy to navigate and beautiful in the process.
Some inspirational images for the relaunch of BohoMamma.com.
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