Flickr is one of the best if not the best web site for digital image enthusiasts. Anyone can create an account, and upload their digital photos and pictures for free. Flickr offers a Pro account which lets you upload more images and create more albums (sets). Flickr also lets you join communities with people of similar interests. For example I belong to a Vermont group, a couple video game groups and a couple horse groups. In those groups we share related photos. You can meet lots of cool people and see lots of neat images!
One really awesome thing about Flickr is that they work with developers and provides them with code and information on how Flickr works. That way the developers can easily create programs to use Flickr without going to the website. This entry is going to cover some of the best creations developers have made to enhance users experience at Flickr!
The newest Flickr application I’ve found is Flicker Time. It’s web based and I actually recommend that you have a speedy connection because it downloads a lot of photos. Flickr Time lets you input 2 different tags. A tag is a word or a couple words to define a picture. For example if I use the word “iPod”, a lot of iPod pictures are going to be used. The pictures are downloaded and arranged to form numbers. Flicker Time can be used by anyone even non-Flickr.com users.
FlickIt is an OS X 10.4 Dashboard widget. It let’s you view the images from any Flickr account. You can view the image and get the HTML code for the various image sizes. The widget also includes a link so you can email photos. I use this widget a lot when I am posting images to my blog or to online messages boards. It’s faster then going to the Flickr website and clicking through a bunch of images to get the HTML code.
FlickrSavr is a screen saver for OS X. It has multiple modes so you can specify which photos to use. You can show photos by username, tags, your contacts photos or completely random photos. FlickrSavr is currently in beta but it works pretty good.
FlickrGraph is another web application that lets you visually see relationships between you and your contacts and your contacts contacts! It’s made in Flash so it is web based and you can move the contacts around the screen as you expand them. This application is great at showing you how connected people are. This application doesn’t really have much to do with photos but more of social networking and links!
One of the most important types of Flickr programs to me is the external uploaders. There are many of these but only some of these make the cut! The first one is called juploadr. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux and it’s free. juploadr allows you to upload as many images as you want, and you can tag them, title and give them descriptions. You can also set privacy and image resizing options. One thing I wish juploadr did was allow you to assign photos to sets. It’s a small, and un-bloated program that does a great job!
The next application is made for Linux users and requires Python. If you’re a regular Linux user you’ll have no issues with setting this one up and using it. It’s called Flickr Uploadr and lets you input the tags and title for the image. Unfortunately this application doesn’t work with people who use Yahoo accounts on Flickr. The developer did mention on the website he was going to fix that issue soon.
The last Flickr uploading application I want to mention is FlickrExport. This is the first picture uploading application that I used. It’s extremely nice because it allows you to upload images right from iPhoto. You can title, tag and set descriptions for images as well as put them into sets and resize them. FlickrExport shows you how much space you have left to upload photos which is really nice. Then you can choose to upload only your best photos. FlickrExport also allows you to submit photos to groups you belong to. It has privacy options so you can edit those to your liking. FlickrExport has got all the features and while that might seem great for some people, for others it’s just too much.
I usually switch between juploadr and FlickrExport when I am uploading my photos. If I am not near my computer I usually just go for the Flickr uploading website which does the job too.
Because of the large amount of Flickr applications I cannot tell you about them but there are other websites that find all these cool programs to better your Flickr experience.
If you’re a Flickr user feel free to add me as a contact, my username is keainanhai.