Yet another reason why I’d wish OpenID to take off and being applied by some big players:
From: FlickrHQ
…
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.
…
So, until 15th of March I have to get a Yahoo! ID in order to use my (paid) Flickr account any longer. I hardly can keep track of my existing registrations and tons of user accounts across the internet already.
A part of the Viennese Flickr community is apparently active enough to play semantical tricks on the algorithm behind Yahoo!’s TagMap World Explorer, a mapping application based on Flickr’s geotags and associated other tags (read more here).
If you see the map below (or open up that map) you’ll find the tag guessedvienna as large as some other popular place names, mostly sightseeing attractions where probably many different users apply the same tag for their photo taken at that particular place (assuming that this is, in short, the idea how TagMap World Explorer works).
Guessedvienna results from the Guess Where Wien (Vienna) Flickr group, a very popular group among local Flickr users here. Basically it’s a game where users post a picture and other users have to guess where it has been taken. All guessed photos are tagged with guessedvienna. It’s fun to play because it lets you discover many unknown and interesting spots in Vienna. Geotagging is of course a welcome feature in this group, it makes it a lot easier to indicate exactly where the photo was taken.
Btw, the tag Zentralfriedhof (the main cemetery of Vienna) surprises me too. I knew of some conspirative Flickr meet ups there, but didn’t expect it as one of the most popular tags in Vienna.
However, I think it’s a good example where folksonomy makes sense for certain users, while it can be completely useless information for other applications or people.
Some might regret that Flickr is English only. I’m glad.
Regarding German localizations, I dare to say that there is hardly nothing more boring on the web than a photo sharing site full of German comments. I certainly do enjoy the German-English kauderwelsch on Flickr. It’s fun!
Besides, an English site gives you access to photos and, still more important, people taking and sharing those photos worldwide, not limited to a particular region.
I didn’t know Flickr’s Camera Finder yet: browse photos by and compare any camera model used on Flickr.
Besides of being a very interesting camera guide – see what photos can be done each camera or discover some unknown potentials of your existing equipment – photo businesses will be happy about Camera Finder since they got almost a continuous photo market monitoring tool which makes any market research kind of obsolete.
My personal feature request: a Lens Finder – find, browse and compare photos taken with different lenses.
Even web purists must admit that a few AJAX applications out there have certainly some good points.
Like pixer.us for example.
A nifty AJAX driven online photo editor and potential add-on for Flickr, Photobucket or whatsoever photo site.
As much as I appreciate the recently updated European roads in Yahoo! maps, and therefore also in the Flickr map, I hardly use the built-in geotagging feature of Flickr.
If you want to geotag an entire photo set it works great. Once you’ve opened up the map organizer you can easily drag & drop all photos onto the map. But if you upload just a single photo and want to geotag it, the loc.alize bookmarklet gets the job easier and faster done.
In Flickr you need to go through Organize > wait > Map > wait > select photo > drag to location. It’s one click too much and therefore takes too long. The usability of loc.alize is much more convenient, it allows you to access the map and assign the location directly in the photo page: loc.alize > wait > select location > save.
Considering the amount of geotagged photos in Flickr I’m maybe wrong and most user’s are happily geotagging with the help of Flickr’s map. On the other hand you read the default loc.alize link “See where this picture was taken.” quite a lot under Flickr photos…
Rather than satisfying all your photographic needs, a newly purchased DSLR awakes even more desires for photo equipment and gadgets.
Especially lens decisions can lead to never ending discussions. Firstly I stayed with the default lens that came with my new CANON EOS 400D and thought I’ll wait, try and see what’s apropriate for my needs.
In that context I came over a fantastic post on Flickr comparing 3 lenses (EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6, EF 24mm f/2.8 and EF 50mm f/1.4) in quite different situations:
…
Low light outdoors – buildings:
17-85 too slow (even with IS). You’ll need a tripod. 24mm you can get away with dusk / dawn lighting, otherwise it’s tripod time. In dark city with lights it’s not fast enough. 50mm can get away with anything (at the expense of a softer picture). Winner 50mmLow light outdoors – People:
24mm distorts perspectice. Not fast enough for environmental portrait type pics. 17-85 – you will need a flash which may disturb the mood of the picture. (tripod isn’t good for spontaneous candid shots). Winner 50mm f1.4 Fast, right focal length.Low light indoors – The room:
24mm and 17-85 are not fast enough for low lighting (like churches). you will need a tripod. 50mm might be to long for small rooms but you will get a lot in the pic, but it may be a bit soft sometimes (from 1.4 to f2.0). Tie between 24mm and 50mm.Low light indoors – People:
Hands down winner = 50mm. It’s fast. You don’t need a flash. You will get that “mood lighting” (ie. candles) feel. Pictures will be soft, but it will just add to the mood.
…
I already had a closer look at the EF 50mm f/1.4 before, but after reading the post I’m pretty sure that this lens will be one of my next investments.
Count my vote for
If I remember correctly, the price for Flickr was about $50 million when Yahoo! bought it last year. With the big difference that Flickr already has users paying for it.
Flickr considers all given search arguments together, including location criteria such as bbox and accuracy, and returns the best matching photos based on some Yahoo! search voodoo.
It’s as I expected it to be.
The problem why I didn’t get any results while writing this previous post was that there was obviously something wrong at the api.flickr.com servers. It led me to the “Flickr searches solely within the bbox” theory, which is wrong. Flickr searches clever!
See yourself:
This link should return a few (~ 30) photos taken or geotagged in the center of Vienna within an area of 600x600m and an accuracy below city to street level.
Sometimes it works, sometimes not, only Yahoo! voodoo spirits know why…
This afternoon I found the time to try Flickr’s new geo API services. Well, the only thing I did was to add a 600x600m bbox around each underground station point to the existing text search string on my little test site.
Some notes on that:
Flickr doesn’t use the bbox as an additional “OR” filter condition but takes the bbox as an “AND” argument into account, meaning that Flickr searches solely within the bbox for the text search string. With little success, since the majority of photos isn’t geotagged the Flickr search returns only a few results (compared to the text search). Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s what I observed.
I expected the location tag to count as bonus point in the “relevance” ranking if the place name of the photo matches the search string or the photo lies within the bbox.
As a workaround to see more results I’m checking if it makes sense to do a location search around my station. If necessary I strip the bbox condition out of my search arguments and switch to the traditional text search.
Including the location argument is not as straightforward as I thought. It’s easy to implement of course, but the results are not very satisfying.
Anyhow, I’m confident that the results will improve soon since more and more people are starting to geotag their photos on Flickr.
One problem in my region is that one cannot geotag photos based on Yahoo! maps, they’re still to coarse. Loc.alize.us is the better option to get that job done here.
Sometimes I wasn’t getting any search result based on the bbox, strange, maybe there was something wrong at the Flickr servers because loc.alize.us wasn’t displaying any photo either. I’ll keep an eye on that…