FlickrTab for Chrome

How about an extension for the Chrome Browser that does nothing for your productivity, almost the opposite: Flickr Tab

All it does: it will show a photo from flickr every-time you open a new (empty) tab on Chrome. That's it.
No productivity value at all. But you get to see truly awesome pictures.
I installed it a couple of weeks ago when it first was released, and enjoyed it ever since.

Why, Flickr, Why ?

As much as I like the new flickr app for iPhone [1] and Android, I wonder, why they could not decide on one layout for the toolbar

The above is from iPhone, the lower is from Android.

Why, Flickr, why ?


--
[1] actually, I use it on my iPad, but there is no HD version yet, so I have to use the iPhone version... room for another rant :)

ifttt to the rescue

Since my feed from flickr to Facebook has been broken for a while now (and I re-authorized flickr on facebook and v.v.) I decided to work around this with ifttt.

No, I'm not out of my breath, I'm just using if this then that

A simple but very convenient service, with rules of the nature

If (this) happens then trigger (that)

with predefined "channels" for this and that. E.g. flickr and Facebook.

So I created a rule

which takes every new picture I upload to flickr (with the tag #FB) and posts the URL to facebook
Bingo, it works again, and I can now control what is being posted to Facebook by adding or omitting the #FB tag.
Cool

You can slightly modify those rules, but you are bound to what ifttt offers. Pretty much actually.

Sort of competes with Yahoo Pipes in a way (if they were really still alive). Bit more powerful in some aspect, less powerful in others.

Flickr language - could this be any more embarrassing

Remember how I ranted about how Fickr changed the language to German for my account, and I could not find how to change it back to English...

Oh this is sooo embarrassing.... really... but I have to admit this...

Anyone ever take a look at the bottom most bar in flickr?

Yeah... that one.

Turns out, that when you click on English, it changes the language to English.

Another example, if you click on Deutsch, it changes the language to German/Deutsch.

Funny stuff, really.

Flickr language

And why exactly is it, that Flickr fall of a sudden talks German to me?
I did not change any preferences, still have en_xx way before de_xx in my browser language settings, ...

But starting last weekend, Flickr is German.
And no option[1] to turn it off.

What the f%&/( ??
--
[1] none that I could find, anyway.

Google Acquires Online Image-Editing Tool Picnik

Odd .... Google Acquires Online Image-Editing Tool Picnik (see also here)
I know Picnik mainly from / for Flickr, which now is a Yahoo company...

So, did Google just grab Picnik before Yahoo had chance?

Then again, it was also available for Picasa et al... still surprised me.

Yahoo pushing its brand?

Seems that Yahoo noticed that they own flickr...
Well, at least they changed the logo :-)

Innovation = unintended use

One excellent example for using a service in a way the creators (of that service) did not have in mind can be found on flickr - the photo community site/service (now owned by Yahoo):

There actually is a group called "Translate Korean -> English" where you can post your picture with any Korean text and some nice flickr members (who speak Korean and English) will add a comment to your picture with the English translation of that text.

A friend of mine needed this service because she owns a Korean (only) washing machine and needed to know how to operate it ...

Cool - isn't it.

And I'm sure that the flickr founders did not think about this - back then.

Flickr GreaseMonkey script

For the flickr users amongst you:
if you are/were using the GreaseMonkey script for icon replies (the one where you place an icon of the person you reply to next to your text) has been updated to v3.5; the old version did not work anymore.
For details see here.

Shapes from the crowd

Here's an excellent post from Christian about flickr (geo-) shapes - derived from crowd-sourced tags.

Shapes from the crowd - Christian Spanring

The 2 examples he gives (Vienna boundaries, and Vienna inner city) to me are typical examples of the "wisdom of crowds" effect: quite accurate with a large enough sample and good mixture of people within the crowd (Vienna boundaries) and sometimes "totally off" with a specific narrow topic and (therefore) a badly composed crowd (Inner city vs Stephansdom).

It also highlights the problem with tags, that - especially on flickr - it is unclear what the are used for: the place where the picture was taken from, or the motif...

Thanks.

Some Flickr Observations

Just some random thoughts and observations around flickr.

• I don't get explore – or the interestingness.
  I do have (or did have) a couple of my pictures in explore in the past, but – quite frankly – I only see the explore-worthiness of 2 of the 5 - guess which.
  
  
  I don't really want to understand the algorithm, really, I just don't get it. That's all.


• Why for example are my 2 personal favorites (of my own pictures) not in explore ?
  
  
  That's what I really don't understand.
  


• Why did flickr change their start page?
  I now cannot distinguish that easily between activities on my pictures (comments, favs) from activities by me on other pictures. That used to be separate, and I quite liked it.
  
  
• News drive(s) flickr views... [2]
  I do have a couple of pictures of my next door (or rather vis-a-vis) building, the "Stadt des Kindes" (read: City of/for children) - an abandoned former children's home and/or orphanage in Vienna. Used to be quite progressive 30 years ago - both, from a pedagogical and architectural point of view. Now the building is about do be demolished and the demonstrations against that of course made it into the local news... All of a sudden the stats on my Stadt-des-Kindes picture went significantly up, which google-image search being the #1 referrer[1].
  Strange ... but feels good.

So, thanks for listening.
Good night.

[1] I know that the HTTP header is called "referer", but don't blame me, if the standards guys don't know proper English.
[2] Does not really rhyme well, but what the heck.

New flickr home page

Flickr has upgraded (or is just about to upgrade) their homepage with more dynamic and community oriented features. More details here on the flickr blog

FlickrPalmr

I just created a litte Java app that downloads prefedined (=selected) photos from flickr down to my palm.
I noticed that I can do this quite easily without the need for a conduit.

So here's what id does.

1. You create a set in flickr and add the files you want to have on your palm, let's call it "flickrpalmr" per default.
2. The program picks this set from the defined user (=your user)
3. Downloads all new pictures from this set to the palm photo installation directory, into a new set ("flickrpalmr", again)
4. if there was a photo in this directory that on flickr no longer is in the defined photo-set, it removes it from the directory as well.
5. hotsync the palm

This works due to the fact that the media conduit in palm really syncs the folder
<palminstall-directory>\<hotsyncname>\offline copy location\Internal
bi-directionally. Every subdirectory will become an Album on the handheld.

So the directory c:\programme\palmone\txr\offline copy location\Internal\flickrpalmr\ gets sync'ed to the Album flickrpalmr on my T|X.

If I remove a picture from the photo-set on flickr, it will be removed from the directory and thus from the palm.

Then you have to cron (or create a "scheduled task" under windows) for the java program for e.g. every hour or once a day... e voila.

Not the nicest integration, but it works.

What I initially wanted to do, was to avoid the set, but go for a tag only. You'd just have to tag your photos with "flickrpalmr" (or whatever you'd prefer), and that'd be it.
The flickr api, however, does not seem to expose a method to retrieve all picture from a user with a given tag.
You have to walk through all the picture and then for each photo check, if it is tagged with "flickrpalmr". With 500+ pictures this is extremely slow. And it does not make a difference if you only want to sync 20... you have to enumerate all of them.
So I went for the photo-set.

Flickr mobile soo different from (full) flickr

Why is this ?

Look at the regular Flickr home page:

You have a clear structure there.

1. upload
2. your photos / recent-activity / comments
3. photos from contacts
4. everyone else
5. your groups

On Flickr mobile you have

1. recent activity
2. photos from contacts
3. comments
4. upload
5. your photos
6. everyone else
7. explore
8. your contacts

or, if I use the numbers from full flickr.
2b. 3. 2c. 1. 2a. 4. na na


But why ?

I understand that options 7 and 8 are added, because in the full flickr interface they are in the javascript drop down menus. Hard to do on a mobile.
But why change the order and structure of the other items ? Why not keep them in sync ?

And most importantly: why do I care ?

Can't say, but just annoys me.

Please don't

Microsoft bids for Yahoo | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone:

"Microsoft went public Friday with a $44.6 billion cash-and-stock bid to acquire Yahoo.

In its response, Yahoo called the Microsoft bid 'unsolicited' but did not reject it."

Now that I finally became a flickr, del.icio.us and upcoming addict, ... PLEASE DONT.

New Flickr Uploadr

Flickr released their new version (3.0) of the upload tool, aptly called uploadr.
2 technical details worth mentioning:

1. It is open source.
2. It is based on XULRunner, the mozilla runtime.
   (and therefore Windows and Mac OS-X)
   

Actually it is the first XUL application (except for Mozilla and all the direct spin offs like Flock) I came across "in the wild".

As for the features:

• you can now manage a lot more attributes offline, i.e. still on the PC
• the user interface and layout are a lot more clear than in previous version
• since it is XUL it has - like Firefox and friends - an easy online update feature.
  

Sadly, though, the most important "Upload Photos" button vanishes unpredictably from time to time (for me). Hope this gets fixed...

Or no, it's open source, so I'll just check out the source myself, wont I.

Flickr now has statistics

Flickr now comes with quite improved statistics. When I say improved, I mean improved over the pure "this photo has been viewed x times" statistics - if you can call it "statistics".

Anyway, now there are proper statistics, like this:

You get web access statistics like the view count for photos, your photo stream, the sets and the collections (yesterday, this week, last week, and all-time).
Your most viewed photos (yesterday and all-time only)
The top referrers (yesterday and all-time only) (not surprisingly flickr itself is on top)

You also have "content" statistics like how many pictures are public/private/..., tagget/non-tagged, fav'd, ...



Here's the help for it.

Dopplr speaks Flickr

Dopplr - the travel social network - now integrates with flickr.
As usual with flickr meshups, you provide the "link" to flickr within Dopplr, and then ...




Dopplr will show photos that were taken during the trips registered in Dopplr ... clever, eh ?

Flickr introduces Places

Flickr now does more with geotagged photos.

Flickr: Places:

"The Places project is our way of saying thank you to all our members who’ve taken the time to put their gorgeous photos on a map. Browse the whole globe, from your hometown to your favorite place, or places you’ve never even heard of..."

I think of it as a place's portal into flickr, check Vienna for example... here's the full URL which says a lot about the concept of places as well:

http://flickr.com/places/austria/vienna

More Flickr Love

Flickr now lets me export my flickr group subscriptions as OPML.

How cool is that ?