Tagging

Today's geek tip is really more of a reminder. I'm sure you're an expert at tagging your photos in Facebook and beyond, but I keep seeing a common, easy mistake: Forgetting to tag yourself in pictures on Facebook.

I'll click into a newly uploaded album, and mouse around the picture to see who's in it, and often, the uploader tags everyone but themselves. My theory is that you think that because you're uploading the photo, Facebook will track that it was you, and keep it on your profile as a picture of yours.

But a picture of yours is not the same as a picture with you in it, so when you're tagging photos, don't forget to click on your own face and add your name.

The idea of tagging photos is nothing new, but most people use it for things like identification, ala Facebook or Picasa (whose face-recognition technology continues to blow me away). After having had several parties in the last few months for people, and thereby putting together slideshows featuring the guests of honor, I realized how much photo tagging could help me — but with the original files.

I'm finally putting iPhoto's tagging to use; not only will tagging the photo files by the names of the people in them to sort through later, it couldn't be easier. iPhoto lets you assign hotkeys to the names of people who frequently appear in your pictures.

To see more of how you tag and use hotkeys in iPhoto, just read more