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20 Essential Tips and Tricks Every Flickr User Should Know

Alex Castle and Norman Chan — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0600

For photographers, the last decade has been a very exciting time. Between the rise of the DSLR, Photoshop, affordable HD camcorders, and other technologies, the tools of the trade have seen dramatic changes. But one of the most important innovations has been Flickr.com, which hasn’t changed how pictures are taken, but how they’re stored and shared.

Flickr is an online photo management service and social network, which has become the service of choice for professional and amateur photographers to share their work and discuss their trade. Its open API has allowed the community to develop hundreds of third party apps and add-ons to enhance its otherwise minimal interface. Because we know that many of our readers are into the art and tech of photography, we’ve compiled the 20 essential tips and tricks that we think every Flickr user should know. And even if you aren't a photographer or don't have a Flickr account, we have cool tricks for searching and browsing through Flickr's incredible database of photos.

Read on to find out how to get the most of Flickr!

Automatically Upload the Contents of a Folder to Flickr

We’ve already shown you how to do quick, batch uploads to Flickr, but wouldn’t be nice if you could just select a folder, and have to the contents of that folder automatically uploaded to Flickr, a la Dropbox? Well, as it turns out, you can, using a program called Flickr Foldr Monitr. As the name implies, the program monitrs—err, monitors a folder, and uploads any pictures dropped into that folder to Flickr.

Here’s how you set it up.

1) Download Flickr Foldr Monitr

2) Install the program. It’s a small program, so this is quick.

3) Select the folder you want to monitor. We chose C:/Photos, and checked the Include Subfolders box.

4) Click on Options.

5) We selected to upload photos to sets based on directory name. This makes organization easy, but remember that users with free accounts are limited to three sets, so choose your directories wisely. We also chose to have the Monitr start syncing and minimize itself when run, so it behaves like Dropbox.

6) Click on Authenticate, and you’ll be taken to the standard Flickr app authentication page. When you’re finished, click on the Finish Authentication button.

7) Click Go. Now the Foldr Monitr is active, and any pictures you put in the folder will be uploaded.

Add Flickr to Windows search with Flickr Search Connectr

Among the new features in Windows 7 is Search Federation, which allows third-party services, such as Flickr, to integrate seamlessly with the explorer’s search bar. This means that you can select “Flickr” the same way as you would select a normal library in Windows 7, then type a query into the search bar in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Photos will show up in the explorer, as though they were on your local computer even though they’re actually on Flickr’s servers.

The enable Flickr search, do the following:

1) Go to http://www.istartedsomething.com/flickrsearch/

2) Scroll down to where it says “Get the Flickr Search Connectr.”

3) Select whether you want to search results from all of Flickr or from a certain user (such as yourself) and how you want to sort the results.

4) Click Download the connector.

5) Now simply double click the flickr.osdx file that was downloaded to your computer, and Flickr search will be added to the Windows 7 explorer.

Upload Videos to Flickr

Earlier this year, Flickr opened up video hosting for Pro and Free members. Free account holders can share 2 videos a month, uploading them using the web or Desktop Uploadr utility. The rules for videos are simple: they must be safe or moderate content, and you can only upload videos you’ve created yourself – no YouTube-style hosting of TV show clips. Videos show up in normal search results, but only play when you click through to the video’s permalink page. You can also filter searches to only display video results.

Since Flickr considers videos a “long photo,” they’ve instituted a time limit of 90 seconds for each clip. If you upload a file that’s longer than 90 seconds, Flickr will NOT split up the video into separate clips – only the first minute and a half will play. High-definition video (720p) uploads are possible, but only Pro members can share those clips (check out this HD gallery).

A Free account member can still upload an HD clip, but Flickr will downsize it to 500 pixels wide (500x281 for widescreen videos, 500x375 for 4:3 content). The service will store the full resolution version until a Free user upgrades their account. There’s also a file size cap of 150MB per video (500MB if you’re a Pro user uploading an HD clip).

Finally, here are the file container formats that Flickr accepts for video uploads: AVI, WMV, MOV, MPEG 4, 3PG. As for codecs, Flickr doesn’t have an official list of supported types -- H.264 works, but and DivX and Xvid do not.

Know Creative Commons Your Rights

Flickr uses the popular Creative Commons licenses to allow you to choose how the photos you post can be used. If you choose to apply one of these licenses to your photos, you’re granting the public the right to distribute those photos, with one or more conditions. Here are the four common conditions of Creative Commons licenses, and what they mean:

Attribution: If a person wishes to distribute this photo, they must credit the photographer. Though originally an option, this condition is now included by default in all valid Creative Commons licenses—you cannot select a license without Attribution on Flickr.

NonCommercial: Any use, distribution, or derivation of this photo can only be used for non-commercial purposes. In other words, your picture cannot be used in advertisements, on for-profit websites, in magazines, or for any other money-making purpose.

NoDerivs: Anyone who wishes to distribute your pictures must distribute them exactly as you posted them—they cannot make derivative works.

ShareAlike: Any derivative works made from your photo must be shared under the same Creative Commons license as the photo itself. This condition is obviously mutually exclusive to the NoDerivs condition above.

So which should you use? Generally, the most lenient license that you’re comfortable with. If you want others to see your photography, then the more freedom you give people, the more likely they are to distribute your photo for you, raising your profile. If you use Flickr for purely personal photos, then of course you’ll want to keep all rights reserved.

Parse a Hotlinked Flickr Image

When someone uses Flickr to host a photo on their blog, the hotlinked image actually contains information that can lead you back to that user’s Flickr page so you can browse the rest of the photos from that set. Decoding the status photo URL is pretty easy. For example, let’s take a look at a cool photo from user SlimJim:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2501/4112962396_07998b272f.jpg

The part of the URL we care about is the first part of the filename – in this case, 4112962396. Copy this photo ID number and paste it at the end of this address: “http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=”. This will take you to the Flickr photo page, where you can see the username of the photo’s owner and click through to their photostream.

Quick Tip: You can input a Flickr photostream address (ie. http://www.flickr.com/photos/username) to http://idgettr.com/ to get that account’s Flickr user ID number. This id number can then be used with a variety of Flickr API tools to set up slideshows, galleries, or RSS feeds.

5 Essential Flickr Greasemonkey Scripts

If you’re looking for something to customize the way you interact Flickr, without going as far as to install a FireFox add-on, consider Greasemonkey scripts. These snippets of code can be loaded into the Firefox GreaseMonkey plugin, and apply subtle enhancements to the Flickr UI. You can find a giant listing of Flickr GreaseMonkey Scripts here, but we’ve collected five of our favorites for you below:

Multi Group Sender: A simple script that changes the behavior of the normal “Send to group “ button to allow you to send to multiple groups at once. Excellent for getting your photos some exposure.

Flickr AllSizes+: Adds a convenient “All Sizes” button to photo pages, which allows you to quickly access any size version of the photo.

flickrPM: Adds extra icons next to user photos in discussion forums and photo pages, making it easier to get more information about other Flickr users, and to get in contact with them.

Greased Lightbox: Not just for Flickr, this script opens thumbnail images from services like Flickr and Google images in a popout “lightbox” without actually having to load a new page.

Flickr Auto Page: Don’t worry about hitting the end of the page with Auto Page, which automatically loads new images as you scroll down.

Download All of a User or Group's Photos

Now that the Flickrleech website has gone offline, where do you turn to batch download images from a single user or group? Flickr Downloadr is an open-source desktop application that lets you preview images based on keyword search, specific user id, or group name. You can sort your results to filter out ones copyrighted with a Creative Commons license, and then batch download any chosen images to a local disk. The interface is designed to look integrated with Windows Vista and 7, but the newest version also works with XP.

Take a Stroll through the Flickr App Garden

In this article, you’ve seen how Flickr can be augmented with extensions, plugins, bookmarklets, mobile apps and more. But truthfully, what we’ve shown you is just a fraction of the huge collection of applications and webapps written with the Flickr API, which allow you to interact with Flickr in all sorts of new ways. Flickr collects all these apps for you in an app-store-esque-but-free service called the “App Garden.” Just point your browser to www.flickr.com/services/ and start browsing apps. The app garden’s pretty crowded, though, so we’ll call out some of our favorite featured apps.

Picnik: This webapp is essentially photoshop-lite in a browser window. It’s got the tools you need for most any basic photo manipulation, and it’s free. Best of all, it integrates with Flickr, letting you edit your photos directly, without any extra uploading or downloading.

Color Hunter: For all you designers out there, Flickr can be an excellent source of inspiration, with its never-ending stream of professional quality photographs. Color Hunter lets you take a photo that inspires you, and extract a color pallet from it. Further, you can tell Color Hunter a tag to search for, such as “Ocean” and it will search Flickr for photos with that tag and show you a list of pictures, with pallets.

Flogr: For any aspiring photographer, a photoblog is pretty much a necessity these days. Fortunately, there are webapps like Flogr, which handles a lot of the coding for you, easily turning your Flickr photostream into a photoblog.

Flickr Schedulr: Once you’ve set your photo blog up with Flogr, or developed a following on Flickr, you need to start making sure you keep uploading a steady stream of photos to keep people’s attention. Flickr Schedulr allows you to schedule uploads, meaning that you don’t have to log on to upload a photo once or twice a day—instead, you just queue a bunch up in advance, and let Flickr Schedulr take care of the rest.

Fd’s Flickr Toys: After all that talk of running a photoblog, it’s time for a little fun and games. That’s what fd’s Flickr Toys are for—having fun with (or at the expense of) your Flickr photos. The Flickr Toys let you make jigsaw puzzles, fake magazine covers, motivational pictures, Warhol-esque pop portraits, and more.

Manage a Flickr RSS Feed

Flickr offers several different RSS feeds to serve photos from individual accounts, groups, pools, and even photo comments. Each feed has parameter options that let you filter specific users, photo sizes, languages, and friends. The user ID parameter can be acquired from sites like http://idgettr.com. Here are some basic feeds you can tap for your blog or RSS reader:

Public photos: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne

Friends’ photostreams: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_friends.gne (user_id parameter required)

Public favorites: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_faves.gne (user_id parameter required)

Group pools: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne (id parameter required)

Only recent activity: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/activity.gne (user_id parameter required)

Recent Forum Discussion topics: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/forums.gne

So, if you want to create a feed that just shows the photos of your friends, the feed would be:
http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_friends.gne?user_id=XXXXXXXX?friends=1. Check the Flickr feeds page for specific parameter syntax.

You can also use a Flickr RSS feed to create a dynamic Windows 7 wallpaper. Go to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes, and make a copy of one of the themes (we picked aero.theme) to your Desktop. Open it in Notepad and add the following code to the file:

[slideshow]
Interval=1800000
aShuffle=1
RssFeed= (your RSS feed goes here)

Then save it, and double-click to install your theme (You may need to right click and open with Windows Shell Common Dll). Only RSS feeds that include images as enclosure items will work. With Flickr, that means you’ll need to add the “?format=atom_1” extension to the end of the base feed.

Use Flickr Stats Wisely

If you’re a pro user, Flickr’s Stats page can tell you a lot about how popular your photos are. Here’s a quick breakdown of the kind of information you can find on the picture stats and user stats pages:

How many people are viewing your photos

If you click on the Photo Stats link in the Additional Information section of a photo page, you’ll see the number of views, favorites and comments the photo has received recently, and in total. If you have a pro account, you can click Account stats at the top of the photo stats page to see a listing of your most popular photos, and their stats.

Where they’re coming from

You can also see a list of top referrers, both for individual photos and on an account-wide level. This is an excellent tool for uncovering the cause of a sudden spike in popularity for a photo, as it will help you identify if it’s been linked to by a popular blog or other website.

If one of your referrers is a search engine (and it almost certainly will be) you can click on that referrer to see a list of the search terms that brought people to your photo.

Send Photos to Flickr with Email

Though this feature was originally set up for users to upload photos from their web-enabled camera phones, email is a really quick way to get your photos up on your Flickr account. The way this works is that Flickr gives you a secret email address (which you can set up here), and you just send your photo as an attachment to that address to upload the photo to your account. The subject line of the email becomes the title of the photo, and any email body text becomes the photo description. The email address is supposed to be private, but you can give it with your friends and family if you want to create a shared pool of photos.

You can also add tags to these emailed photos by adding the “tags:” at the end of the subject line or on any new line of the body text. For example, if you wanted to tag an image ‘comic-con’ and ‘costume’, you would append “tags: comic-con costume” to the end of the subject line. Put tags in quotes if they are longer than a single word. Tip: turn off the auto-signature on your phone (ie. “Sent from my iPhone”) before sending photos to Flickr, or else it’ll appear in your image description.

Additionally, you can set the privacy settings for each email upload but appending a little bit of text to the secret email address. If your secret email is secretemail@photos.flickr.com, for example, use secretemail+friends@photos.flickr.com to only make the photo visible to users on your friends list. Other options include:

secretemail +family@photos.flickr.com - Visible to family
secretemail +ff@photos.flickr.com - Visible to friends and family
secretemail +private@photos.flickr.com - Only visible to you
secretemail +public@photos.flickr.com - Visible to everyone

Email Flickr Photos Directly to Your Blog or Twitter

Along with emailing photos to your Flickr account, you can also get Flickr to post that photo to your Twitter feed. This requires linking and authorizing Flickr to modify your Twitter account. Go to the Add Twitter page, and click the “Head over to Twitter now” button. Once authorized, emailing a photo attachment to your secret Flickr2Twitter email address (which is separate from your normal secret Flickr upload email) will post a tweet with a shortened Flickr link (http://flic.kr) to your Twitter stream. The subject line of that email will be the title of the image and also the tweet (max 116 characters).

Upload to Flickr from your Favorite Desktop Client

Flickr is a great tool for managing your photos online, but there’s still something to be said for the power and speed offered by a dedicated desktop photo-management or photo-manipulation program. Fortunately, plugins have been written for all of the most popular photo apps using Flickr’s API, which allow you to upload to Flickr directly from within those programs. Here are some examples:

Google Picasa

Picasa is an excellent photo management program available for free from Google. It’s able to tag and organize photos, and it’s available for free here. Picasa is made to work with Google’s Picasa Web Albums service, but it’s also possible to upload directly to Flickr using a plugin called picasa2flickr which can be found here.

Adobe Lightroom

If you’re seriously into photography, chances are good you use Adobe Lightroom, which allows you to organize and process your photographs. If you use Lightroom, and you want to show off your photo’s on Flickr, you can download the Export-to-Flickr plugin here. This plugin is “donationware” which means that after a trial period, you must make a donation of at least 1 cent to keep using it. A bit of a pain, but a very handy plugin nonetheless.

If you’d like to try out a full version of Lightroom for free for a couple of months, check out the public beta of Lightroom 3, which is going on right now.

Adobe Photoshop Elements

For those not willing to shell out $200 for Lightroom or $700 for Photoshop, the $80 Photoshop Elements is a strong choice, with all the photo editing tools needed by the vast majority of users. Unlike the previous two programs, you don’t even need a plugin to upload to Flickr from Photoshop elements, the functionality is built-in. To access it, look in the Online Album menu, under More Options.

Make the Most of Flickr’s Geotagging Feature

Here are three easy ways to Geotag photos:

Tag from the Flickr photo page itself

Using a bookmarklet called loc.alize.this you can geotag your Flickr photos from inside your browser. Simply go to the bookmarklet’s homepage and save the bookmarklet to your bookmarks list or quickbar. Then, visit the photo page for one of your photos, and click on the bookmarklet. It’ll inject the geotagging code right into the page, without having to reload.

Tag from Picasa

Picasa has an excellent geotagging interface, complete with integrated Google map. Simply download the program[picasa.google.com], use it to tag your images (the tags will be saved into the images EXIF data) and then use the Picasa2Flickr plugin listed above to upload the photos to Flickr.

Tag from a dedicated program

For the fastest tagging experience, you’ll want to go with a dedicated tagging program, such as GeoSetter. Being entirely devoted to geotagging, Geosetter has the most complete list of features as is the fastest way to automatically or manually tag photos. Plus, like Picasa, tagging your photos before uploading to Flickr means that the geo information is stored both locally and in the cloud.

To see all of the geotagged photos on Flickr displayed on a map, just hit up http://www.flickr.com/map/, navigate to part of the world map, and click Search the map.

Use Flickr’s URL Shortener, Flic.kr

Flickr employs its own URL shortening service, Flic.kr, for linking to images in tweets, but you can also use it to link you images without using a third-party service like tinyURL or Bit.ly. The only tricky thing is that Flic.kr doesn’t have a landing page to shorten URLS, and photo id numbers are shortened using a complicated base58 system. Fortunately, the user-created http://urlkr.com/ site will let you generate a Flic.kr URL from a full-length address. If you want to link people to your main Flickr photostream page, you can also use the address http://flic.kr/username, which is shorter than http://flickr.com/username by three characters.

Educate Yourself with Flickr

Flickr is more than just a photo sharing site; it’s a community. That means that you can link your account to friends and family, and that there are thousands of user groups, where people share photos and carry on discussions. Many of these are very topical (“Live Music”) for instance, but there are others that can be very educational for the up-and-coming photographer. Here are some examples:

Beginners Digital Photography: General purpose discussion for those new to digital photography.

Nikon Digital Learning Center: An educational group sponsored by Nikon, and focusing on Nikon gear.

Canon DSLR User Group: The flip side of the coin—A group focusing on digital photography with Canon cameras.

Photoshop Support Group: A forum for photographers to talk about Photoshop

Adobe Lightroom: Similar to the above, but focusing on Adobe’s Lightroom product.

And that’s just a small sample of the educational groups on Flickr. If there’s something you’re interested in or have questions about, just do a group search[http://www.flickr.com/groups/] and chances are good that you’ll find just what you’re looking for.

4 Different (and Awesome) Ways to Browse Flickr

Even if you’re not a professional photographer or active Flickr contributor, you can still have fun browsing the millions of photos uploaded by other users. In fact, you don’t even have to register a Flickr account to enjoy other people’s photographs. Flickr’s native search and Explore feature are decent for casual browsing, but here are some cool sites that let you find exactly what you’re looking for.

Multicolr: You may have heard of Flickr Color Picker, a site that lets you search Flickr photos based on color palette, but Multicolr does the task better. Not only can you choose from 120 starting colors, you can add up to 10 colors to the mix to find an interesting image that incorporates those tones.

Spell with Flickr: This search site lets you find photos that feature specific letters, so you can spell out words or phrases with random user photos. Handy for writing ransom notes!

Findr: Tags are useful for identifying pictures, but search results can be difficult to navigate. This site lets you filter searches with related tags, narrowing down results until you find exactly what you’re looking for.

Retrievr: Retrievr lets you pick a color and draw a picture in a window, after which it’ll try to find Flickr results that match the shape of drawing. The technology behind this site is still experimental so it doesn’t work 100% of the time. But when it does, the results are very cool. Alternatively, you can upload an image for the site to process and find similar-looking photos.

Access Flickr on your Smartphone

You don’t take your photos sitting at your desk, so why should you only be able to access Flickr there? You’re not, of course, thanks to the wealth of Flickr-API-powered smartphone apps, available on all the major platforms. There are lots of offerings, but here are our favorites for each service:

iPhone: Flickr

The iPhone has the honor of being the only smartphone platform which currently has an official Flickr app. When you consider that the app is free, fast, and as feature-packed as any of the competition, it’s hard to recommend anything else. Did we mention that it’s free?

Android: Pixelpipe

There’s no official Flickr app for Android, but there is Pixelpipe[http://pixelpipe.com/], a multi-platform program for uploading content from mobile devices to more than 100 different online services, including Flickr. The app’s not quite as slick as the iPhone’s, but the huge number of supported services, and the low price point (a dollar for the full version, free light version) makes this an easy recommend.

Windows Mobile: m.flickr.com

Ok, so you’re using a WinMo phone. We feel for you. Fortunately, no matter what platform smartphone you use, you can access Flickr’s mobile site, m.flickr.com. And actually, you’re not missing out on too much; Flickr’s mobile site is a fantastic example of how a mobile site should be made, giving you quick access to your photos, as well as those of your contacts, the day’s most interesting photos, and those taken nearby. Unfortunately, you can’t upload photos with the website, but you can still use the upload-by-email function.

5 Sweet Firefox Flickr Plug-ins

There are dozens, if not hundreds of Firefox plug-ins that integrate Flickr with the browser. But as is the case with most Firefox Add-ons, installing too many can bog the browser down. Here are our picks for the five most essential ones that are worth installing.

FireUploader: This extension is an all-inclusive file manager that lets you upload and download to a variety of file sharing and social networking sites, including Flickr. You just have to log in and authorize the add-on with Flickr to use its simple file browser window to manage batch photo uploads.

Cooliris: Formerly known as PicLens, this add-on lets you browse Flickr images on an infinite 3D wall (as well as images from other image sites). It’s a really cool way to browse large galleries and view image searches. Alternatively, you can also visit picturesandbox.com to get a similar photo landscape for searches.

Uploadr: Don’t confuse this with Flickr’s official Uploadr desktop app. This independently developed Firefox add-on lets you right-click to upload images you find on other websites directly to your Flickr account. Think of it as using Flickr for image bookmarking.

Better Flickr: Like Better Gmail, this is Lifehacker’s custom compilation of Greasemonkey scripts for Flickr, packaged in a Firefox add-on. It adds convenient interface features like a photo magnifier and thumbnails enhancer to make the Flickr homepage easier to use.

Flickr Original: If you like to archive photos, this lightweight extension is for you. It lets you view and download the original size file for any Flickr photo, granted the user is sharing it with the public. Sure, you can replicate its functionality by browsing the Flickr website, but this will save you a few clicks.

Have any essential Flickr tips we didn't mention? Post them in the comments section below!

Flickr Plants Seeds for New "App Garden", Better API

Ryan Whitwam — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:16:12 -0600

The Flickr API is nothing new, but the photo sharing site is now bringing it more front and center. Flickr has unveiled their new “App Garden” that provides a better interface for finding useful photo apps. The new page is more compact than the old API interface. Each app gets a thumbnail preview that links to an individual page. Here, users can tag, discuss, and favorite an app.

There are still a few missing features, though. Flickr is about sharing, but there’s no way to share a list of your apps with friends. It also doesn’t take advantage of Flickr’s friend activity feed to show off what apps you’re using. However, the recommendation system does allow users to recommend individual apps. If you’re a Flickr user, do you like the new interface?

Firefox Add-on of the Week: Better Flickr

Florence Ion — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:30:00 -0500

Frequent Flickr users who utilize the popular photo-sharing site for its social networking perks will appreciate the Better Flickr plug-in for Firefox. This add-on incorporates an assemblage of useful Greasemonkey scripts to super-power your Flickr experience with essential features like adding a link for replying with a user’s name, icon or both for easily replying to the appropriate person within a comment thread, tacking on a short URL link in the sidebar, and including links to view the photo in various other sizes.

Greasemonkey scripts add more options when you're leaving a comment on someone else's photo.

Each script, written by a myriad of individual authors, adds on a minor feature to Flickr’s already simple site interface. Better Flickr also includes an Instant Zoom function, which is only available after the entire photo has been loaded. For low quality photos, this option doesn’t work too well, though high quality photos taken with a high-megapixel digital camera or DSLR will no doubt be pleasing with the crispness of the zoom render. While some features may have their limitations, Better Flickr often “betters” itself with updates to include more useful tweaks, especially since it’s already part of a family that has helped enhance other popular web destinations, such as YouTube, Amazon, Google Calendar, Reader and Gmail.

We've highlighted some of the features to give you a better idea of where they're placed once you install the add-on.

Download Better Flick here

Every Tuesday, we pick a new Firefox Add-on as our favorite of the week. Have an Add-on that you can't live without? Send suggestions to fion [AT] futureus.com with "Firefox Add-On" in the subject line.

Western Digital Unveils WD TV Live HD Media Player

Ryan Whitwam — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:41:28 -0500

Western Digital has announced the second iteration of its TV connected media player. The new WD TV Live HD takes all that was awesome about the old, and adds some new tricks. The box still has wide codec support for playing files from USB drives, but it now also streams content from Youtube, Pandora, and Flickr. Users can also connect network drives to the new version to view files.

The WD TV Live HD, as the name would suggest, outputs 1080P HD video via a HDMI 1.3 port. Composite and component are also available. If you need to get video off that USB drive and on to your TV, the WD TVs provide an attractive alternative to media center PCs. The new WD TV device has an MSRP of $149.99.

Users Scream in Horror as Yahoo Brands the Flickr Logo

Paul Lilly — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:16:58 -0500

What a rough year it's been for anal retentive geeks who like the Internet just the way is, thank you very much. Still flabbergasted over Ikea's decision to switch its font from a customized version of Futura to Verdana, members of the Defenders of Things That Don't Matter organization (which doesn't really exist, but should) found themselves reeling once again, this time over Yahoo branding Flickr so that it reads "Flicker from Yahoo!"

How could Yahoo be so callous to the dozens, maybe even hundreds of Internet users who would predictably be taken aback by the insignificant change? According to company CEO Carol Bartz, techy hipsters and "middle America Yahoo" just don't go hand-in-hand.

"When you get outside New York and Silicon Valley, everyone loves Yahoo," Bartz said to a roomful of journalists and bloggers a few days ago at the unveiling of Yahoo's $100 million marketing campaign 'It's Y!ou.' "I just want to transplant all of you guys out of your cynicism. What is wrong with you guys? Go be cynical about frickin' Google. You got me pissed off."

Some Flickr users are pissed off too. As one commenter in Flickr's forums put it, "it really does feel like Yahoo is kidnapping the once awesome Flickr name by forcing itself on the logo." Others have called the logo change "stale" and "very ugly." Makes you wonder how Flickr user shhexycorin could possibly be "indifferent" when so many others are obviously perturbed.

Freeware Files: Five Unique Alternatives to Adobe AIR's Best Apps!

David Murphy — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:30:00 -0500

Do you hate Adobe AIR? I sometimes do. While the applications based on Adobe's framework can be pretty neat to use, there's something about their similar look and shared frameworks, not to mention features, that just can just drive me up the wall. Plus, every new Adobe AIR-based application has to be installed and run through Adobe AIR itself. While it's a handy way to make sure that you're running the most up-to-date version of the application, the Adobe AIR platform isn't very conducive to portable use. Actually, you can't stick AIR-based applications on a USB key and run them at all--the host computer would still need Adobe AIR for these apps to function.

That's but one minor complaint about the AIR platform. There are more, but this week's freeware roundup isn't intended to be a slam on these Adobe apps. Rather, I'll be taking a look at some of Adobe AIR's more popular applications and offering up unique freeware alternatives that don't require use of the AIR platform to work. Not all of the listed applications will support portable use out-of-the-box, but you can use the popular Mojopac Free program to store and access all of these apps on any USB device of your choosing.

Adobe Air: TweetDeck / Seesmic Desktop
Alternative: digiTweet

Not going to lie: In a perfect world, there would be no Twitter apps for your desktop other than TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop. Each varies ever-so-slightly in features, but both are incredibly powerful applications that open up a wealth of functionality for interacting with the Web-based Twitter service that you wouldn't find just by heading over to good ol' Twitter-dot-com. But both apps are built on the Adobe AIR platform. For an open-source alternative to either, be sure to check out digiTweet. While it's not as pretty as, say, TweetDeck, digiTweet nevertheless offers compelling features like multi-tab search for specific words or phrases; individual category boxes for elements like @ mentions, direct messages, and categories; and a customizable API refresh rate so you don't blow past Twitter's hourly use allowances.

Download it here!

Adobe Air: Klok Time Tracker
Alternative: ManicTime

I've covered ManicTime before, but it's worth mentioning again as it's one of the better alternatives to the Adobe AIR-based Klok Time Tracker. Both programs deliver a great graphical layout of how you're spending your time at your computer. So what's the key difference? In Klok Time Tracker, you have to input your daily routines manually--you click on various categories of work you've set up in order for the program to begin its tracking and graphical analysis of your day. In ManicTime, however, this all occurs automatically. In fact, the program is so meticulous in its recording of the exact applications and windows you have open, that it's almost maddening to track what you're doing if you're a compulsive window-switcher like yours truly. Suffice, if you use ManicTime, you will know--down to the second--exactly how you've wasted your day at your computer.

Download it here!

Adobe AIR: DestroyFlickr
Alternative: Cooliris / Photology

Here's the deal: DestroyFlickr is an Adobe AIR-based app that's like a combination of Cooliris and a Flickr uploading tool. The app helps you quickly scan through flickr sets and pictures using an interface that's far more intuitive (and pretty) than Flickr's default series of HTML pages. Cooliris, by itself, is an awesome browser plug-in that replicates this functionality across not only Flickr and your computer's desktop, but a ton of sites across the Web as well. The problem is that it contains no way to actually interact with Flickr accounts the way DestroyFlickr can--Cooliris amps up the browser part of the equation at the expense of being able to upload your own photos. For that, try Photology: It's gallery-based browser for photos and photo-sensitive search filters are restricted to desktop use only, but you can take what you find and upload it to Flickr at the click of a button.

Download Cooliris here and Photology here!

Adobe AIR: Font Picker
Alternative: AMP Font Viewer

Fonts. Can't live with 'em, can't print out signs for your roommate without them. While you could use the Adobe AIR-based Font Picker to see which particular font (of the hundreds on your system) would best suit the text you're typing out, it's worth your while to investigate the alternative AMP Font Viewer instead. Font Picker is but a list--a helpful list that allows you to eliminate fonts you don't want to consider choosing for whatever it is you're typing--but a list nevertheless. AMP Font Viewer not only handles the installation and uninstallation of your fonts, but it allows you to assign your installed fonts to categories of your choosing. You can also make a printout of all your fonts (if you're crazy) or use the included scratchpad to see exactly what each little font looks like for the text you're creating.

Download it here!

Adobe AIR: Doomi
Alternative: DeskTask

Remembering tasks is one of the more useful ways to use your PC. I just try not to think about the fact that my thousands-of-dollars-system has now become one giant digital display for post-it notes. Or, at least, that's what you get when you download Doomi. It's a pretty to-do list for your desktop, but that's about it. You enter items, you click on the check box when you've completed them, and... yeah. DeskTask also pops up your list of to-be-accomplished tasks onto your desktop for easy viewing, but the app integrates with Microsoft Outlook to display your tasks and calendar items without any additional input. In fact, that's all it does. So if you have Outlook, this is the perfect alternative to Doomi for task management. If you don't, you could always check out Remember the Milk?

David Murphy (@ Acererak) is a technology journalist and former Maximum PC editor. He writes weekly columns about the wide world of open-source as well as weekly roundups of awesome, freebie software. Befriend him on Twitter, especially if you have an awesome app or game you're dying to recommend!

Flickr Loses Your Photos with No Remorse

Paul Lilly — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:54:14 -0500

Maximum PC readers have long had the importance of maintaining backups beat into their heads, but apparently photo-hosting service isn't a subscriber to the magazine. How else do you explain losing thousands of user photos with no way to restore them?

Or at least that's the case if you believe a purportedly scorned user who claims to have had his Flickr account hacked and then terminated. According to Morgan Tepsic, a photographer and soon-to-be art student in Taipei, Taiwan, he woke up to discover three concerning emails in his inbox:

[redacted]@hotmail.com has been added to your account!
Your password has been changed!
Your account has been terminated!

After contacting the Yahoo-owned service about the security breach, Tepsic said he was told "it isn't possible to restore the content of the account." Flickr did offer to restore his screen name and URL, "but unfortunately the images, comments, and other content isn't recoverable."

There's a lot more to Tepsic's customer support nightmare, which you can read here, assuming you're not offended by big, bolded F-bombs.

Image Credit: Zazzle

China Blocks Social Networks in Bid to Hide 1989 Tianamen Square Massacre Remembrance

Mark Edward Soper — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:09:10 -0500

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Tianamen Square massacre in Beijing. Tianaman Square was home of the Chinese student freedom movement, the "Goddess of Democracy" statue, and the location for the iconic photo of the student staring down a row of Chinese People's Army tanks. However, if you use the Internet in China, you probably won't see anything about this event this week - unless you're clever.

Starting Tuesday, the Chinese government shut down access to virtually all search engines and social networking sites, including Twitter, Flickr, Bing (Microsoft's new search engine), Live.com, Hotmail.com, Blogger, and others. All YouTube videos are also being blocked, as are BBC World News reports on the anniversary. These actions should come as no surprise, because China has previously censored Skype and blocked access to iTunes when it offered a pro-Tibetan album last year during the Beijing Olympics.

The Techcrunch UK website reports that some users are bypassing China's restrictions by using VPNs, and third-party apps that use the Twitter API (TweetDeck, Twhilr, and Seesmic Desktop) are working.

Have you encountered the 'Great Firewall of China' or other country-specific restrictions on Internet access? How did you deal with it? Hit Comment and share your stories.

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Freeware Files: Five Unique Alternatives to Adobe AIR's Best Apps!

Adobe Air: TweetDeck / Seesmic DesktopAlternative: digiTweet

Adobe Air: Klok Time TrackerAlternative: ManicTime

Adobe AIR: DestroyFlickrAlternative: Cooliris / Photology

Adobe AIR: Font PickerAlternative: AMP Font Viewer

Adobe AIR: DoomiAlternative: DeskTask

Flickr Loses Your Photos with No Remorse

China Blocks Social Networks in Bid to Hide 1989 Tianamen Square Massacre Remembrance

Simpsons image courtesy of TechCrunch UK.

Adobe Air: TweetDeck / Seesmic Desktop
Alternative: digiTweet

Adobe Air: Klok Time Tracker
Alternative: ManicTime

Adobe AIR: DestroyFlickr
Alternative: Cooliris / Photology

Adobe AIR: Font Picker
Alternative: AMP Font Viewer

Adobe AIR: Doomi
Alternative: DeskTask