Flickr Rocks
December 31, 2004 | 
22 Comments
So, I finally jumped on the Flickr bandwagon, and what a nice ride it is.
Honestly, all the good things I’ve heard about Flickr are true. This has to be, quite simply, the greatest Web service/application to date. It’s amazingly simple to use, extremely powerful and just plain fun. I checked it out initially out of professional curiosity and I need to let you know that if you design Web sites or interfaces for a living you should take a look at Flickr. They’ve taken so many great ideas and managed to pull them all together into something really special.
If you’re interested in the photos I’ll be posting up there, stay tuned, I’m going to try and get quite a few up as I’m able. I’ll hopefully be posting them here soon as well, but I can’t seem to get Flickr to post to Movable Type yet. If anyone knows how to do that, I’d love to hear it. It’s the only real problem I’ve had with Flickr so far.
Also, I’m dragging my stuffy ass out tonight with my new Treo and I’ll be sending up all sorts of party pictures while I ring in the New Year. Speaking of which — have a happy one.
Filed under: News
Comments
1. Mathias Bynens said:
Flickr rocks indeed, though personally I feel like there’s still a difference between a photo gallery on your own site and someone else hosting your pictures.
Happy New Year to you too!
Posted on December 31, 2004 04:31 PM | #
2. Gabriel Mihalache said:
I only get 20MB for storage with my hosting service, so it helps that Flickr will host my photos for me. Everything else is gravy :-)
Posted on December 31, 2004 05:10 PM | #
3. David said:
I think I don’t get Flickr - though I’m using it a bit :
cloudsoup Flickr
because people say it’s fantastic and I’m trying to understand why.
It’s slow, that’s for sure. Stewart Butterfield of Ludicorp says it isn’t a database problem so I think it might be to do with converting the images to .swfs (why?). You’ll do better serving carefully chosen images from your own server so the thing must be to do with ‘social software’, however that’s variously misunderstood. It’s all about sharing and caring.
Perhaps I don’t care enough. I haven’t found the interface to be particularly intuitive, either. In my admin area at the moment I seem to have an archive, though I’ve never archived anything. And while a count of the views of the images are shown in the review area, ‘favourited’ items don’t get obviously flagged.
I’ll persevere for a while but I’m not at all convinced.
Posted on December 31, 2004 06:19 PM | #
4. Keith said:
David - Hmm. It’s not really that slow for me.
As well it makes it much easier (IMHO) to get photos posted and grouped than anything I could do here with MT.
As far as the interface–it seems very intuitive to me. It’s one of the reasons I like it so much.
Posted on December 31, 2004 06:58 PM | #
5. Scott said:
Hmm, I really haven’t gotten into Flickr that much. The only feature that I like is the groups, the photos and things don’t seem very important to me. I did notice that it’s still in “beta” though, I wonder when the final version will be released and if it will include any new features.
Posted on December 31, 2004 07:17 PM | #
6. David said:
Well, yes, Flickr is still in beta so I shouldn’t be too harsh. And they’ve been growing quickly too.
I’m still looking for decent a PHP/MySQL gallery. I’m not too keen on Gallery - the code behind it’s a bit nasty. Might have to do my own but that’s part of the fun.
Posted on December 31, 2004 07:24 PM | #
7. Mathias Bynens said:
Users without the Flash plugin installed get to see the real image instead. But why SWF, you ask? Have you seen the “Add Note” feature? It’s awesome. It’s a way of commenting on part of a photo, something I had never seen before.
Posted on January 1, 2005 03:02 AM | #
8. Michael said:
I love Flickr. It’s added an entirely new layer of community to my life, and it’s a great way of quickly and effortlessly sharing photos from my life with friends and family. I’ve used it almost nonstop around Christmas…
By the way, I’ve been following your feed, and it looks like it was quite a party ;)
Posted on January 1, 2005 04:46 AM | #
9. Philipp Keller said:
I also am not that conviced of flickr.
But posting from there to my blog is pretty cool and also the slideshow. But for me the interface too wasn’t really intuitive. But I have to say I am not really into photos..
Keith, I didn’t have any problems with posting to my blog. I set up the url to my mt.cgi, username and password and then it worked.
Posted on January 1, 2005 07:29 AM | #
10. philip said:
diggin the shirt from the party ;-)
Posted on January 1, 2005 02:56 PM | #
11. darren said:
i was going to comment on flickr’s great email to web thinga…but it seems you’ve already found it judging by the load of mms pics you have :)
flickr is by far the best shit to happen to the web since the browser itself. the people at Ludicorp have done a sterling job.
their UI is amazing. everything is where you’d hope to find it. it’s quick. it’s intuitive. their use of flash and javascript is perfect.
the more i use flickr the more I love it. it took a while to fully get into it, but now i find myself spending more time on flickr than on any other site.
i <3 flickr
Posted on January 2, 2005 01:50 AM | #
12. Indranil said:
I really think flickr rocks. It really is one of the all time great web apps.
BTW, great party you had there. ;)
Posted on January 2, 2005 11:43 PM | #
13. Charl van Niekerk said:
Flickr is indeed a very nice service. I wouldn’t recommend posting directly from Flickr though, since that typically creates non-semantic markup.
Posted on January 3, 2005 04:03 AM | #
14. Brandon said:
Flickr is awesome. I paid for a pro account after messing with it for a day or two. It’s worth it for unlimited storage and download.
This post may explain any slowness that people have been experiencing.
Posted on January 3, 2005 02:03 PM | #
15. David said:
OK, I’ve been playing with Flickr a bit more. The RSS and Atom feeds of Group postings … that looks interesting.
Posted on January 4, 2005 06:27 AM | #
16. J. J. said:
I’ll agree with David about Gallery (I assume he means the Menalto software). I’ve had to do a lot of my own modifications, as well. On the version I’m using, I can do 10 uploads at a time using the quick web interface. Labeling photos is pretty easy. Otherwise, the code is pretty messy and I haven’t even tried to get it to validate yet.
About the Treo, I assume you got the new 650? I rarely use my Treo 600 for photos since my Olympus digital camera does a much better job (including EXIF info). Are you moblogging or just doing a sync and upload?
Crazy party…. I’m in the process of uploading dozens of my own New Years celebration vacation photos. Happy New Year!
Posted on January 4, 2005 09:36 AM | #
17. djchuang said:
I’ve tried a bunch of different web-based photo hosting sites; and currently most actively use www.fotki.com for my photos. I like the unlimited space & low cost!
Posted on January 4, 2005 12:36 PM | #
18. Daid said:
I suppose if I had an incontinent need to publish every photo I ever take with a phone then unlimited space might be an issue. I don’t and it isn’t.
Posted on January 4, 2005 01:45 PM | #
19. Hugh said:
After going through and trying a load of open source PHP/MySQL apps (gallery, coppermine, etc.), I’ve finally settled on minigal. It’s not perfect, but it’s by far the simplest to customize, and implement quickly. Unlike others, it doesn’t try to do too much - just nice and simple.
Posted on January 7, 2005 08:59 AM | #
20. David Jones said:
Easy to customise sounds good. I installed coppermine but couldn’t get on with it. I’ll try minigal, thanks for the recommendation.
Posted on January 7, 2005 03:27 PM | #
21. ed said:
to show flickr photos on your own site: http://www.worrad.com/archives/2004/11/30/flickr-gallery-wp-plugin/
Posted on January 15, 2005 02:52 PM | #
22. Amber said:
I like flickr, infact I like it alot. So much I started a ring.
If you are a Flickr member who blogs please checkout Blogs That Flickr homepage
We are bloggers & flickr members…a ring of sorts.
Posted on April 8, 2005 08:08 PM | #
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