Lately, Flickr has been whipping out new features left and right. I particularly like their new “collections” feature for Pro account holders and the ability to mark images as either photos, screenshots, or art/illustration is also nice. Flickr now lets you search by image type as well.
In addition users can now set their comfort levels for what kind of images they want to see.
As anyone that cares to listen knows, I’m a big Flickr fan.
It’s bothered me that Flickr has decided that all the original members need to update the way they login by merging their accounts with Yahoo! accounts.
Here is a copy of the announcement:
Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,
On March 15th we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.
We’re making this change now to simplify the sign in process in advance of several large projects launching this year, but some Flickr features and tools already require Yahoo! IDs for sign in — like the mobile site at m.flickr.com or the new Yahoo! Go program for mobiles, available at: http://go.yahoo.com.
95% of your fellow Flickrites already use this system and their experience is just the same as yours is now, except they sign in on a different page. It’s easy to switch: it takes about a minute if you already have a Yahoo! ID and about five minutes if you don’t.
You can make the switch at any time in the next few months, from today till the 15th. (After that day, you’ll be required to merge before you continue using your account.) To switch, start at this page:
http://flickr.com/account/associate/
Nothing else on your account or experience of Flickr changes: you can continue to have your FlickrMail and notifications sent to any email address at any domain and your screenname will remain the same.
Complete details and answers to most common questions are available here:
http://flickr.com/help/signin/
Thanks for your patience and understanding - and even bigger thanks for your continued support of Flickr: if you’re reading this, you’ve been around for a while and that means a lot to us!
Warmest regards,
- The Flickreenos
Obviously in the end I’m going to stay a Flickr user, but I will admit, I did take this opportunity to shop around, just in case there was something else out there that compares. For a hard core flickr fan like myself, that’s a serious statement.
I know I shouldn’t admit that a change in the way I login to Flickr bothers me, but it does. I really don’t like Yahoo! and so I’ll try not to let my hatred of companies that play dirty get in the way of enjoying the world’s best photo sharing site.
Here is the Official Old Skool Merge Topic on Flickr. The backlash has been fierce. I’ve found reading the comments fuels my disappointment, but also the way the Flickr staff has handled it has me feeling good about the long term future of the site.
Today marks the two year anniversary of the first photo I ever posted to flickr. I’ve since uploaded over 4,300 photos and had almost 71,000 views of my photostream, so of course I still love flickr!
Last month a company called MOO Print Ltd gave out ten free “moo cards” to any Flickr Pro subscriber. Since I didn’t have anything to lose, I ordered up my ten free cards and was pleased that there really are no strings attached and the cards look great.
I was excited to jump on the “take pictures of my moo cards and post them on flickr” bandwagon, however, at the time I got mine in the mail, my camera happened to be inconveniently getting a free massage by the nice people at Nikon. (They replaced the shutter and aperture, not to mention gave it a nice software upgrade—it fixed the problem so despite the wait I’m happy again).
Anyway now that I have my camera back and without further ado, here are a few of my moo cards:
The thing on the left is a roll of magnetic tape. I’m in the process of turning the cards into magnets moo-gnets.
My new favourite tool to go along with Flickr is the Flickr Map GeoCoding Bookmarklet. It’s a Google Maps/flickr mashup that let’s you easily add geocoding information to your picture and/or see where other people’s geocoded images were taken. Also it’s so easy to use that even my parents could do it.
[The bookmarklet] enables mapping, geocoding and (of course) geotagging directly in your Flickr photo page. It works with all common browsers (Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera), so you do not need to install any extension to run it!
Once you’ve got it saved check out my collection of geotagged images.
Flickr has unrolled their new look. I took a bunch of photos this afternoon, so why not take a moment to try out the new interface with my Lethbridge scenery set.
Here is a list of new changes coming to Flickr.
(Via FlickrBlog)
This flash app “randomly retrieves images from Flickr.com and creates an infinite film with a style that can vary between stream-of-consciousness, documentary or video clip.” Your mileage may vary—I found it an interesting way of blending random content to create art.
I found this neat search by sketch service that retreives flickr images (Ajax style) while you sketch.
I sketched this:
and the server returned this:
Try it out for yourself at http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/
A folk/rock singer named Jonathan Coulton has created a really cool music video using Creative Commons licensed Flickr Photos. It’ll put a smile on your face.
Jonathan Coulton’s Flickr.mov
Update: here is the big 17mb version Flickr.mov
Now (if you live in the United States anyway) you can just take pictures, upload them to flickr, order your favorites for printing and have them delivered right to your door. I heart flickr. This will be awesome for me once it’s available in Canada.
Memry is a memory flash game that uses Flickr tags to choose images for the game.
My sister and I started a really popular flickr group today that has gained over 120 users in less than 4 hours. It’s called Flickr Firsts and it is a place where flickrites can add their first image to the pool. Everyone is welcome, so if you’ve ever uploaded an image to flickr then you’ve got one perfect for this group.
If you’ve never added a photo to Flickr - now’s the time to do it. You bought that fancy digital camera / scanner, so show that collection of beautiful images off! Also feel free to invite your friends and family to join as well.
I find that as I join more groups my photos get more exposure and I get more comments. That’s really why anyone uses flickr anyway right?
Oh, and about this image, I whipped it up in Photoshop using the flickr logo and some Verdana size 36 font - it’s for the group icon.
Update: It’s been a day and a half and our group now boasts over 700 members. It’s been fun to watch as the growth is beginning to increase exponentially. Reminds me a lot of what I read in Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point”.
I took advantage of the new flickr meme going around. It’s from the same folks that brought us the Flickr Badge Maker. It’s called the Flickr Magazine Cover Maker. It lets you convert photos from your flickr photostream into magazine covers. Granted this is one of the worst photos I have, but I decided to use it because it was one of my most recent shots. I also made a flickrbadge awhile ago:
I don’t really know why I bother, but it’s kind of a fun distraction. See all of Flagrant Disregard’s Flickr Toys.
I came across a neat tool that lets you search Flickr tags visually. Give it a try.