Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with flickr

How to send phone pics to a spartan web site via Flickr?

ehamiter — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:16:59 -0800

What's a minimal self-hosted "blog" that hooks into Flickr's API so I can send photos from my camera directly to my web site? Ideally, I want a blog that is not a blog. I don't want tags, or articles, or categories, or spam filters, or any of that stuff. A perfect solution workflow would be this:

I take a picture with my phone
I send it to Flickr via e-mail
Flickr then posts it to my website with no interaction

The ideal layout would be a main site title, and each time I send a photo it appears as the newest one, using the title I typed. There would be maybe 10 photos on the main page. You could access earlier photos by clicking "older" or something like that which would serve as the archives.

I can do this with wordpress, movable type, typepad, etc., but they are all way too huge feature-wise and not what I want. I can also do this with blogger or tumblr, but they are not self-hosted. I tried this recently with textpattern, but the templates and general admin are much too complicated for my needs.

It should be very simple, aesthetics-wise. You could maybe change the color scheme / typography via CSS, but that's about it.

Does something like this exist? For the Flickr hook-in it needs to be a MetaWeblogAPI Enabled Blog or other Flickr-approved application.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Digital photo frame low res bummer via Flickr and Frameit

ajp — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:50:06 -0800

How can I get the i-Gala photoframe to display high-res photos from a Flickr group feed via Frameit? Hi all.

So I just bought an i-gala digital photoframe as a Christmas present for a relative. It's wi-fi enabled, and according to all the blurb I read before I purchased the thing, it can download images from email, Flickr, or Frameit.com.

So I bought it, and I've persuaded my relatives who use Flickr to put selected photos into a Flickr "group". After a few clicks, I found the group RSS feed URL, and tried to tell the i-gala to slurp it.

But there's no option for that, or so it seems.

So I set up a Frameit account, pasted the RSS feed URL into Frameit, and it nicely created a feed for my i-gala. Then I told the i-gala to slurp down the feed from Frameit (by means of a Frameit code and URL that the i-gala seems to understand) and away it went, merrily downloading photos.

Unfortunately......

It's displaying the low-res thumbnails instead of the higher resolution versions of each photo :-(

Major bummer.

The Flickr RSS feed does contain both the thumbnails and links to the higher res versions. The Frameit interpretation of this feed appears intact, since I can "preview" the feed and click on the thumbnails to view the high res versions. But the i-gala only displays the thumbnails.

I'm constrained to the following:

1. Flickr, since all my friends and family use it.

2. The i-gala frame, since I've bought it now, and I'm convinced it can be made to work!

3. Using a Flickr "group", since it's the simplest way to get my family to post all their photos into one place, and automatically slurp it down via an RSS feed.

Things that wouldn't work:

# Using a tag instead of a group, since it could be hijacked by anyone. The group allows us to sanction the content.

# Getting everyone to email their photos to an email address, and having the i-gala grab them. (Okay this might work, but frankly it would be just that bit too much hassle for this whole thing to keep going -- people already upload to Flickr regularly; emailing photos instead would be a pain).

I've fiddled with the feeds, according to the Flickr feeds page, but haven't made any change. (See specifically the Group Pools feeds docs).

So........... that's my conundrum. Has anyone dealt with this before? Any words of wisdom?

I will be forever grateful :-)

Flickr Photostream help.

trbrts — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:21:39 -0800

Is there anyway to embed a Flickr Photostream or slideshow on a web page and have it display title and captions for the photos? I've got a Flickr Slideshow of my PhotoStream embedded on a webpage. When viewing the slideshow I'd like the Title and and Description to appear with the photo. Is there a way to do this.

Thanks in advance.

WishFilter: A digital picture frame that'll pull from our Flickr account with no fuss?

GilloD — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:14:44 -0800

I'm looking to buy a digital picture frame. I've never done this before. Wants and needs inside. So, my wife and I left Brooklyn for Korea earlier this year. Our families miss us very, very much. We thought a nice gift for them would be a digital picture frame- We take a lot of photos.

However, some of our family members are more tech savvy than others. They run the gamut from 'Could Linux themselves out a paper bag' to 'Where do I get stamps for my e-mails?'.

What we're looking for: First and foremost, it'll pull from our Flickr account. Once a day? Twice a day? Whenever. This also means that it's WiFi enabled. Asking them to load up a memory card or whatever just isn't going to happen.

No subscription fees. I didn't even know this was a thing.

I'd be happy to hack one together from an Arduino, but I won't be able to get the parts in time and that sounds like more project than I have the time for right now.

Suggestions? We've never shopped for digital picture frames before and it looks like there are a lot of chances to waste your money.

Out of the Flickr group loop

Mael Oui — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:01:02 -0800

Flickr filter: I'm looking for an easy way to keep up with all the photo additions to my 30+ groups on Flickr. It seems that the only way to be notified of additions to groups' pools on Flickr is to manually go to each group (takes up too much time) or to subscribe to RSS feeds. Some of the groups I'm in have a huge amount of posts every day, so I don't want to clutter my RSS reader any more than it already is. Those two options are out, as far as I'm concerned.

You know how you can see (for instance) five new pictures from each of your contacts since your last log-in (Contacts > Most recent uploads)? I want this, but for the groups that I'm in. Activity > In Your Groups (aka 'Recent Updates in your Groups') doesn't do what I want it to do. That seems to be 'topics or replies', which I'm not interested in. I figured I was overlooking this feature, so I did ask on the official Flickr forums. I was told such a feature didn't exist on the site, and it looks like they haven't added it recently.

I had been using a non-Flickr affiliated site called Groupr that did EXACTLY what I wanted. I adored Groupr. You'd put in a user name, and it would show all their public groups. It would show the latest, say, six pictures from each group's photo pool (and each picture linked back to the photo on Flickr). It was a nice minimal way to keep up with the new additions to groups. Unfortunately, the site is gone (seemingly forever), and I've tried fruitlessly to find a replacement. Does anyone know of another site/service that works like Groupr did? Barring that, do you have any good tips or tricks for staying up-to-date in the helter-skelter world of Flickr groups? TIA!

Why Pay When The Wiki Is Free?

Atreides — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:16:25 -0800

Another creative commons question concerning a photograph. The photo is on Flickr (with generic all rights reserved), and that's where an interested person spotted and communicated to me wanting to buy the rights for use of the photograph. Catch, I also uploaded the same photo to Wikipedia with a CC-attribution and share a like license on it, as well a GNU-Free Documentation License. Now what? The bottom line question is that I can't figure out what my position as the copyright holder is with regard to this photograph. The person interested wants to purchase the rights to use the photograph for their business (as an example of their work). Is this generally a request with an expectation of exclusivity?

I also would feel like a heel accepting money for a photograph I've posted on Wikipedia, if the license attached to that photograph allow for commercial use with only attribution as a requirement (I can't figure it out from the Wikipedia definitions).

One slight difference between the Flickr photograph and the Wikipedia version is size of the file. One is 1,417 × 945 pixels (Wiki) and the Flickr version is 3456 x 2304 pixels (though, the email implied they wanted to use a smaller version of Flickr at 1024 x 683 pixels).

In short:

1) Would the Wikipedia licensing allow commercial use with attribution the only requirement?

2) If no, how would the non-commercial use of that photograph affect the offering price for the commercial use of the photograph? (i.e., You can use the photo, but it won't be an exclusive use except commercially).

3) Are there any other issues that I'm missing and need to be addressed?

Disclaimer: I looked but couldn't find quite the similar situation in previous AskMes, nor enough information about CC to answer my own question.

Thanks in advance. All help appreciated!

Shared Flickr set?

cgs — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:19:26 -0800

How do I make a shared Flickr set? I recently went on a trip with a friend and we are both putting up our photos on Flickr. I'd like to create a shared set where we can merge our photos.

Is the group the best/only way to do this? Can we organize the photos (by date) once they are added to the group? This is important since I want the photos to synch up regarding their settings.

I thought the group was meant for ongoing interests...

Thanks for your help-
cgs

Filter for Flickr feeds

foggy out there now — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:10:19 -0800

How would I filter out a single user's images from a Flickr pool's feed? There's a Flickr pool for my community, and it's great. But there's a particular contributor who dominates the pool with self-portraits. I'd like to filter this person out of the RSS feed if possible.

I'm not a member of the pool, nor would I suggest this contributor be removed from the pool. I just don't want to see this user's work in my feed reader every day.

I'm subscribing to the feed via Google Reader if that makes any difference.

should i care that my full name is in my flickr url?

hagelslaag — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:31:01 -0800

i made a big gaffe three years ago while creating my flickr account and set my URL (which you absolutely cannot change) to include my full name. setting up a new account just to be free of my name would be a huge hassle to say the least. is it worth it? notes:
- my three years with my current account now encompasses thousands of photos, countless memories, notes, comments, favorites, etc.
- i've already decided that, if i am to set up a new account, i would maintain a paid subscription for my current one so i won't lose all that history (even though i really don't have the budget for it)
- i'm uploading increasingly personal images of both myself and friends (nudes) as i get more involved in photography
- for various reasons that i won't get into here, i have made the decision to leave almost all of my photos public

thanks for the thoughts!

I like pretty pictures to LOOK pretty!

miss lynnster — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:27:48 -0800

Most awesome, pretty and easy to figure out Flickr image gallery plug-in for Word Press? I'm having some photographers and artists provide content for my LA site, and I want to make sure they're displayed in the most graphically appealing and easy (to navigate as well as to set up) way. I'm not a programmer so I tend to like the plugins that have all sorts of cool features without me having to create them.

Up until now I've been using Picasna for Picasa, and I liked the Lightboxy gallery that it uses but I really am not thrilled with the way the image gallery shows up in the post before you click on it to view the images up close.

Thanks in advance for all of your advice. :)

Why Should You Use Social Networking at Work?

Jaybo — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:06:47 -0800

Many workplaces ban social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and so on. What are some of the reasons workplaces should allow (and even encourage) staff to use social networking sites? I'm particularly interested in the case you would make to someone in the healthcare field but examples that are applicable to other areas, especially those that may ban social networking site for privacy or productivity reasons, are welcome as well.

recovry

mannequito — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:27:58 -0800

I'm trying to renew my pro account on flickr. When I'm on the site, it shows that I'm logged in to my own account. But when I proceed to the payment page, it shows me as logged in to my friend's account. How do I resolve this? I have no clue as to what my yahoo email was - I only set it up to join flickr, and the last time I logged in to it was probably over a year ago when I paid for a year's use of the site. As I said, it always keeps me logged in when I'm on the site, but when I try to give them money, it suddenly logs me in to a friend's account who must have been checking his email on my computer (I recognize the address). I tried going through the 'forgot my yahoo id' page and gave them an alternative (my regular) email address, but it wasn't recognized. How do I recover my flickr account? I'd prefer not to start a new one and lose everything already uploaded. thanks.

Name Recognition

Ann Onymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:45:22 -0800

One business + two Flickr accounts + lots of Google recognition = one frustrated business owner. Help me decide which Flickr account to use, or if I should delete both and start over. Some time back I opened a Flickr account and chose a personal URL. I also opened a second Flickr account with the name of my business. I've been using the personal account with greater frequency than the business account, so the personal account is the one that shows up in Google searches if you search for the business name.

I'd prefer the Flickr account with the business URL to be the one that shows up in Google searches, but Flickr does not allow changes or transfers of custom URLs. So I'm tempted to delete the personal account and start over, but doing so means losing all the Google recognition. So I'm faced with three options:

1. Delete the personal account (con: lose the Google recognition)
2. Use the personal account as the official business account (con: personal URL)
3. Delete both accounts and start over

All advice is welcome.

Please help me find a photo

gakiko — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:54:21 -0800

[ImageSearchFilter]: I stupidly deleted a very cool photo I want to have again. It was on Flickr and showed a girl, mid-jump, balancing gift-wrapped boxes (or possibly cake) on her head. There were some confetti or balloons or butterflies around. I think it was copyrighted (as opposed to CC-licensed). I think it was a part of her "365 photos" project. I tried searching possibly relevant tags on compfight, no luck. Help please?

What's the best way to work with iPhoto 8.1 and Flickr?

2oh1 — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:43:59 -0800

What's the best way to work with iPhoto 8.1 and Flickr? Strategies and tips, please!!! I realize iPhoto can export to flickr, but it seems cumbersome to have to then use flickr to add titles, descriptions and tags. Is there a way to do this in iPhoto? Is there a better way? I used to use Flickr Exporter, but that thing is so buggy! I'd prefer to do all of this in iPhoto, if at all possible.

I'm using iPhoto 8.1 (in other words, the latest version of iPhoto, the one that came with iLife 09).

Why do links to Flickr photos kill my Firefox?

Drasher — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:37:48 -0800

Why do links to Flickr photos kill my Firefox? When someone posts an entry in AskMe that refers to a photo on Flickr, I am forced to copy the link, open IE, and look at the picture from there. I have searched AskMe and Google, I have tried disabling Adblock settings... I just don't get it. If/when Firefox dies because of one of these links, I restart, it comes up and I select "Restore Previous Session", and I need to close the offending tab before it fully loads otherwise it will kill Firefox again.
(I am currently running Firefox 3.0.13)

Need script to backup Flickr metadata to local JPGs

snarfois — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:20:07 -0800

Lazyweb request: I put a lot of effort into my photos on Flickr: selecting them, titling, captioning, adding tags and sometimes geotagging. I need a script that will use Flickr's APIs to retrieve this information from Flickr, and write it into the IPTC headers of my local JPGs. My reasons for wanting this are twofold:

1) Backing up this valuable information (if I could no longer use Flickr)
2) Making all this information available in Picasa (which uses some of the IPTC fields)

I'm not a programmer. Here's an English description of the script's operation:

For every photo on Flickr, find matching local file [1].

For each local match, write into IPTC header:

Flickr Title --> IPTC Caption
Flickr Description --> IPTC Caption (after Title and linebreak) [2]
Flickr URL --> IPTC Source [3]
Flickr Tags --> IPTC Keywords [4]

Also add the following special Keywords (should be self-explanatory):

Flickr (all matched photos)
Flickr_Faved
Flickr_HasDescription
Flickr_HasComments
Flickr_HasNotes
Flickr_Geotagged [5]
Flickr_InSet
Flickr_InSet_{setname}
Flickr_InCollection
Flickr_InCollection_{collectionname}
Flickr_InGroup
Flickr_InGroup_{groupname}
Flickr_Privacy_{privacysetting}

The script needs to replace all existing IPTC data with the Flickr data. Needless to say, the JPGs should not be recompressed. Ignore videos (don't know where one would store metadata in AVIs).

[1] This may be tricky. One way to find match them could be by "taken on" value (in flickr.photos.getinfo) For an idea of scale, I have 5,700 photos on Flickr, and 33,000 locally.
[2] I wish there was another field I could use, but this looks like the only one that'll do. HTML will look rather ugly. I might be persuaded not to include this, especially since Picasa doesn't display captions very nicely.
[3] Use the Flickr canonical short url.
[4] Including machine tags. Ensure they are correctly delimited (I think they're separated by commas in the IPTC header, and phrases don't need to be quoted)
[5] Picasa also has geotagging, and I've not checked where it stores this data. Would be nice to save Flickr's geodata in the same format Picasa uses. Optional though.

I know my chances of getting what I ask are slim, but I'm hoping that some people out there want the same thing, including someone who can actually build it. Or maybe something like this already exists, and all my googling couldn't find it.

Are there more communities like Flickr's ID Please?

k7lim — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:50:43 -0800

I really love the Flickr "ID Please" group, which I originally found here. Are there other services/communities online that allow you to submit a photo (or other media item) for discussion/identification by experts? This particular group tends to focus on identifying types of flora/fauna. I have a friend who's obsessed with getting "deeper information" about his photos and other digital artifacts of travel/living for a blog.

Ask Mefi (or other, lesser, question answering sites) would be a good venue for one-off questions, but I'm interested in a place that's devoted to this kind of media request/ expert discussion.

I've found another good example on Flickr: the Translations group where people post images of non-English text for translation.

I'd love to be able to post pictures of famous people's faces, notable monuments, pieces of IKEA furniture, etc, and get comments/information from people who know these things very well.

I've thought about Amazon's Mechanical Turk for this, but that's not quite what I'm looking for, because I'm not about to teach my friend how to define Turk tasks.

Aardvark has helped me with this style of question, but it's not exactly what I'm looking for either.

Easy, clean slideshow generator for Flickr + Wordpress?

kmel — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:28:15 -0800

Is there an instant slideshow generator for Flickr albums that a) I can use in Wordpress, b) doesn't make slideshows with black backgrounds, like Flickr's own slideshows and c) is cleaner-looking than Pictobrowser? Pictobrowser is near perfect, actually, except the pixel font bugs me.

Why backup to the most likely place to fail?

Jonathan Harford — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:51:55 -0800

How can I backup my flickr account... but not to my desktop computer? I know there are applications out there for backing up flickr accounts, but they all seem to want back them up to my least-trusted storage space -- namely, my underpowered, could-die-any-minute desktop computer. Is there a paid service for backing up flickr photos to another server?

(And I'd love to do the same with my gmail.)

Do I need to remove my photos from flickr if I put it up for sale on istockphoto?

austinlee — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:38:28 -0800

Do I have to remove photos from Flickr if I put it up for sale on istockphoto? I'm getting into photography and thought it would be nice to help pay for my camera by selling some stock photography on istockphoto. I'll mostly be taking new photos but have a few old ones which would work nicely as stock. I'm wondering if I will need to take them off any photo sharing website like flickr if I am trying to now sell them on istock. I have all my photos as "All Rights Reserved" on the flickr settings. Any additional stock photography tips are appreciated! Thanks!

- austin lee

Multimedia Baby Publishing

TrashyRambo — Sat, 16 May 2009 05:27:04 -0800

What's the best way to share short posts, videos and photos of our new baby with our families and friends who live an ocean away? Baby's own account on Facebook? Our own accounts on Facebook? Flickr? Poorly put together Geocities page? What's worked for you?

Flickr authentication Token

Jennifer S. — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:44:49 -0800

Could someone please help me better understand how to get the Flickr authentication token...from flickr?

Outsourcing hard drive space. Y/N?

gnutron — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:45:46 -0800

Is there a way to batch download pictures from my Flickr account? How reliable is Flickr as a resource for saving photos? My wife uses our Flickr pro account extensively. There are currently over 4,400 photos in our stream. After uploading pictures to Flickr, she deletes the local copies on our computer. Having the sole copies of these pictures of family & friends exist only on Flickr's servers makes the little data geek in me slightly nervous. I'd hate for some catastrophic Flickr failure to cause us to permanently lose all these memories.

So....is there a way I can download these pictures (or a portion of these pictures) in a batch? There are obviously way too many photos to go one-by-one. Furthermore, how reliable is Flickr as a service that can be counted upon to store all our pictures? I imagine Yahoo's servers are more reliable than my PC and external HDD. Am I just being paranoid?

Useable wireless photo frame to stream RSS Flickr stream?

cahlers — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:02:27 -0800

I'd like to post pictures to flickr or similar, and pull in the RSS feed of the photos I post with a photo frame I hope to give my parents. I've searched this and other forums, and have not found any solid recommendations so far. My parents will be retiring soon, and will be getting broadband access for the first time in their lives. We live several hours away, and it would be great to send them pictures an a routine basis. We already do the snapfish thing, and they love getting the prints from that service, but it would be nice to have a digital frame update wirelessly.

I've read poor reviews on Momento, and am also not interested in paying a subscription fee, as withe Ceivo.

If anyone has successfully set up something like this for their relatives, your tips are sincerely appreciated. I can set the frame up in my parents' house this summer, I'd just like it to work without too much problem once it is set up.