Slashdot Mirror
Flickr Online Photo Service Reviewed
kschoenwandt writes "I have been an early fan of Flickr and while I am by far not as much of a shutter bug as most users seem to be, I enjoy the features and use it regularly. Taking some time out reading, I noticed that I am not the only one impressed: The Globe and Mail published a piece on it as did The Christian Science Monitor. Cool!"
I don't think 2 minor news sites can say that this is the best photo sharing site. I'm not saying that I won't check it out and see if it is worth it to me but unless something a little more well known talks about it I really do not think it is slashdot worthy.
I happen to use ofoto which has worked very well for me although now I'm looking for a more advanced site. One that will allow me to sell my photos to make a profit for me and not just the website.
... I just read on their website.
But, unfortunately, it's just advanced privacy:-(
While also nice, we unfortunately will have to resort to our standard piracy tools...
I don't need a signature.
- http://www.whcc.com/ -- great color-calibrated lightjet output at great prices if you're comfy with ftp
- http://www.pbase.com/ -- a free/cheap host for albums, allows deep links to images
- http://www.printroom.com/ -- a popular site for albums and print order processing
- http://www.smugmug.com/ -- a popular site for albums and print order processing
I used to use ezprints.com for lightjet output, but their color calibration is very spotty and inconsistent these days.[
What I really like about Flickr is the way it brings people together over photographs. They say a picture is worth 1000 words (bring on the picture worth replies) and allowing individuals to comment on photos and discuss topics in the group forums are by far the most often used features for me. The interface is also slick and innovative, tags are of great use in photos (as they are with mail) and the notes feature made possible by thier custom flash rendering scripts are a pretty neat as well.
I use flikr too and the thing I like is the easy integration with various blogs (specifically I use blogger.com, but it works with others). It's easy to create a blog entry from a photo posted to flikr - very convenient.
Some of the features are only available in the Flash interface, and I don't see what the benefit is anyway. Too gee-whizzy.
Hi! I was wondering what the rates are for getting my business mentioned as a front-page Slashdot story? At first I thought that I might have to insert open-source code into my commercial product and claim it as my own, but now that seems to not be necessary.
Thanks in advance for your help.
from their "about us" page
[Mary Baker] Eddy [founder of The Christian Science Monitor]insisted, against strong opposition from some of her advisers and church officers, that the words "Christian Science" should be in the paper's name. According to one of her biographers, Robert Peel, to Eddy, "the designated title was an identification of the paper with the promise that no human situation was beyond healing or rectification if approached with sufficient understanding of man's God-given potentialities. Nor did the "good news" of Christianity involve the prettification of bad news, but rather, its confident confrontation".
There's more information on that page, but in the interest of brevity, I only copy pasted the relevant part of the FAQ.
Um, why don't you look at the web site? The Christian Science Monitor is basically a normal newpaper with only one religious article in each issue. It was founded in 1908 and is published by the First Christ of Christ, Scientist as a public service thing. Check out their FAQ
FTA: Flickr (www.flickr.com) is what's known as a web service or web application -- something between a website and a regular software program. Web services have long been seen as the future, but until recently they've been held back by technical limitations. Now the combination of faster computers, better development tools and greater access to broadband is making them a reality. Some have even taken to calling this new trend the Web 2.0.
/.) think HTTP is the Internet, now we need everyone hyping "Web 2.0", because we all know how much version numbers mean.
Emphasis mine
I can only imagine the marketoid this came from. Its bad enough most people (outside
Sorry, feeling a bit ranty today.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
I use flickr as an easy way of sharing my photos. The dealmaker was the great communities that are on there. People will give you constructive input, not elitist prickery when you post your photos. More than I can say for deviant art/etc.
I hate sigs.
Flickr is pretty nice, though personally I'm a bigger fan of fotoflix.com - better multimedia options and a cleaner interface.
I haven't tried that many I'll admit. Thanks for the list above, very useful.
I started using Flickr last month and am very impressed. Granted I don't have a big need to sell my photos, just to manage them easily and quickly.
Two of my favorite features of flickr are the ability to email photos from my phone directly to the site, and the fact that they provide code which enables me to display the last 5 flickr photos on my personal website. In addition to those two features, they allow members to post comments on photos. Plus, you can see how many times each photo has been viewed. Another nice feature is the photographer's ability to make several notes on each photo, which appear when the viewer hovers the mouse pointer over each note's user customizable box.
Yes, there are features I'd like to see incorporated, but the service is still in beta, and considering that I think they've done a great job so far. Check it out. Here's my page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/travischurch/
Uh, obviously you've never actually read an issue of the CSM otherwise you'd never make such a remark. While it is published by a church (not one I particularly care for btw), it is one of the best researched independant publications in print since they actually have reporters in foreign countries rather then just relying on AP/Newswire/etc. Not quite up to Economist standards in my unhumble opinion, but worth at least looking into.
I've never used Flickr, but I have been using Gallery now for about 2 years. It's Open Source, based on PHP and MySQL. I've had to do two complete machine moves in that time, and it's handled them both flawlessly.
I think of all the OS projects I've used (and I've been at this a while now), Gallery has brought me the most pleasure. I had more or less put down my digital camera, because I found sharing, storing and cataloging photos publicly too much of a pain. Being able to share my photos with my friends and family has just been a real joy for me. (And before someone says it, they're pictures of my garden, not pr0n
Gallery also has a hook to buy photos from Shutterbug (but I haven't been very happy with them so far).
Thanks Gallery!
"...you can steal my woman, but you ain't done nuthin' smart."
Flickr is a really cool site. I do like their keywords and group features. We recently finished a site that's (imo) as good as or better than Flickr. Give some feedback on FotoFlix.
This site lets you create movies with some really nice templates and your own music.
Flickr and FotoFlix are by far the best sites for photo management and sharing.
Better than Flickr - Manage, Share, Archive
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
One post mentioned smugmug.com, which is what I settled on after an intense evaluation of 25 sites, including ofoto, Yahoo!, shutterbug, etc. Here is my quick plug for smugmug as a recommendation for anyone else looking to run from ofoto etc. for superior services like flickr or smugmug: 1) Unlimited storage (they get you for downloading - viewing - more than 180,000 med-size jpegs in a month, flickr only limits your UPloading 2) Sharing of ORIGINAL size photos. This is indeed rare. 3) Backups to CD or DVD of ALL your photos (about $25). A great deal for groups like mine with 20,000+ photos. A NEW feature of smugmugs they didn't have a year ago. This was the reason for my intense search. 4) Hotlinking to intelligently organized pictures (www.smugmug.com/-[Ti S M L O].jpg Does it matter if my $0.02 are in Australian dollars?
Test signature: Brett Walker
Unfortunately, it seems to be very particular about what webhosting services it likes - both of my office's hosts, Readyhosting and Interland don't have enough PHP access to make it work. It works just fine for me at home running XP Pro, Apache and PHP.
It's pretty vanilla but it supports multiple users with permissions, you can add comments, rotate, do batch uploads through either Java applets, a html form or from a URL. I was using statically generated pages from Jalbum and while these lack the prettiness of Jalbum, they are HUGELY more flexible.
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
I work at Flickr. Of paricular note to /.rs, check out our open API: http://www.flickr.com/services/api/
Hey, thanks. :)
I'm the CEO at smugmug.com, arguably one of flickr's better competitors. (Actually, since we were here before them and have larger share, I suppose they're one our better competitors. Whatever).
Luckily, the flickr gang and I have had a chance to meet and hang out, and to be honest, they're very smart, talented people. There are a lot of other companies playing in this space, and most of them don't have a clue.
I think it would help all of us who are clueful if someone (the media, geeks who have family that hang on their every word, etc) would sit up and notice that sites like ofoto and shutterfly provide *really poor* sharing. They're sorta like the AOL of photo sharing. Thank goodness sites like smugmug and flickr exist once people discover how not-useful their sites are.
Kudos to the flickr guys for the great reviews! They deserve them.
Don
my smug mug is on smugmug
The search isn't acessible from the front page. When I pointed this error out, tech support gave me a rude response. YMMV.
1/3 of jokes get modded OT. If you get the joke, mod 1 in 3 insightful/interesting/underrated to restore karma balance.
That if this service is ever introduced in the Netherlands they pick another name for it.
... poofy.
Phoneticly it sounds a bit
-- forget
Do any of the online photo services (ofoto, snapfish, etc.) provide an SDK that would let developers bundle professional photo printing capabilities into custom software or web sites? I would like to host photos on my website using some custom software I wrote (or any of the hundreds of PHP-based alternatives), but I want family and friends to be able to order printed copies of the photos.
I realize that I can upload the photos to one of these services, but I would prefer to upload the photo to the service on-demand.
Adobe Photoshop Album provides this service in their software package using a wizard, but they probably deal with different business development people than Joe Schmo sharing photos with his friends.
The comments are encouraging for an amateur photographer like me who wants to take good pictures for people to enjoy, and not be eviscerated by a professional critic.
Definitely room for improvement (sets of sets, printing integration), but they seem to be hard at work making this happen. And it looks like they're going to charge $60/year, which seems kind of pricey compared to the competition.
What finally (after a couple days) pushed me over the edge to pay them and subscribe were the fact that they have seamless integration with Creative Commons licenses for your photos (cool-factor points), and an open open API for managing your photos through 3rd-party scripts. With it, I've written a python script that I use to batch-upload and annotate photos. I haven't tried their client with Wine, so I don't know if that option exists for Linux-only users.