The world as frankps sees it!
Posts tagged Flickr
What happened yesterday on Flickr?
I normally have inbetween 100 and 200 views of my pictures a day. Best day before yesterday, was a day with 700 views. Yesterday I had stunning 5,823 picture views. I had to check if there was an article on my blog that suddently had gotten equal lots of hits, but no. Flickr’s own statistics also show that no particular photo had gotten more then 3 views.
So what happened?
A 500px Review
1Development of Flickr seems to have more or less stalled. Another problem with Flickr these days is that it takes hours to find good pictures. Flickr is becoming more like Facebook. Lately I’ve seen lots of photographer migrating to Google+ with Picasa. What’s cool with Google+ is that there are lists of Google+ registered photographers. And there’s lots of them and it’s easy to subscribe to their feeds and pictures are presented in a nice way. Google+ has so far not become the success Google wanted it to be, but it fast became the preferred social network for photographers.
But there’s now a new kid in town, a online portfolio site called 500px.com. It’s only aiming for your best photos, and is in my opinion not aiming to store your family or holiday photos. Nor does it have privacy functionality, like only letting your friends/family see a photo set. But except from that, I am really impressed. 500px has nearly mastered the essential features that I am looking for as a photographer wanting to share my work and explore the work of other photographers. It’s design makes it pleasant to browse through, and isn’t overwhelming by keeping features to a minimum. The vast majority of work displayed on 500px.com is high quality, similar to photos you would see in magazines or art galleries. Because they are targeting a professional level audience they are able to stand out from competitors.
500px is a company based in Canada so they are bound by Canadian Copyright law which is very close to US Copyright law. In other words, the terms of use is pretty much the same as for Flickr.
I’m for now only using their free account, and they are letting me upload 20 photos a week free of charge. The system is easy to use and works well, so long as you have a supported web browser. Safari and Internet Explorer work fine, but I have some issues with Chrome when it comes to navigating the portefolio view. The images are presented in a beautiful way, and there is great rating system for those who want to use that.
I have not had the chance to look at the PRO version of 500px (Awesome account), but you upgrade to many more services including unlimited everything, personal domains, etc. for US$50 per year.
The social nature of 500px will attract many people. The images posted on 500px are available for rating and comment. The rating system could be better in that you should be able to see who rated your images. You should also be able to disable ratings or block people that you don’t want to interact with.
500px has a basic search functionality, but this could probably improved to include search in the EXIF metadata. I would like to be able to search after photos taken with specific cameras and lenses. I also miss that you cannot add location to the photos you have taken.
I’ve saved the best for last. The reason why I started looking in to using 500px, was it’s iPad app. I have never seen photos been presented in a better way on a tablet. The first week I was only browsing through others photo, but the last days I have started uploading photos. Only bird photos for now. There is also unofficial 500px apps for Android.
Who wants Google Maps, after seeing this?
0I have just seen Blaise Aguera y Arcas is an architect at Microsoft Live Labs, architect of Seadragon and the co-creator of Photosynth, demoing augmented-reality functionality in Microsoft Live Maps. I have been using Microsoft’s map service more and more lately, as it works brilliantly here in Oslo. There are some important things that I miss, like being able to embed maps in to blog posts. I partically liked that Microsoft has been working together with the Flickr developers on some of the new functionality, and I hope that Flickr soon start using Live Maps instead of the now outdated Yahoo Maps on their service.
Here’s the TED talk, enjoy:
Microsoft’s Silverlight technology impresses me. It is used in their map service, so I hope that it will be available as plugin/extension for all major browsers soon.
Outdated Flickr Maps
0
One of the few things that I really dislike with Flickr, is the use of outdated maps. I don’t know if that is a common problem, only a problem in Europe or in Norway. But I more and more often see that the maps that I’m using to geotag my photos with, are outdated. So also today. This weekend I was downtown making some photos of the Opera House in the harbor here in Oslo. The map provided from Flickr (Yahoo Maps?) must be at least 6-7 years old. Perhaps even older! So my question is, what is the update frequency on maps and satelite pictures in Yahoo Maps?
Another thing is the automatic naming of the places. It is also often horrible wrong. So also this time. Flickr mistakenly adds St. Hanshaugen to the map and the picture, which is a kilometer away and a quite different part of Oslo.
Here are some more pictures that according to Flickr and Yahoo Maps don’t excist:
iMapFlickr
0The map service is perhaps the weakest service on Flickr, and I have been looking for alternatives. This week I found one. iMapFlickr lets you easily create custom Google Maps from your geotagged Flickr Photos, and it, of course, let you embed the maps to your website or blog. You can even link the maps up on Facebook or Twitter. And best of all, it’s free!
iMapFlickr is a great mashup tool with customizable map settings (photo size, map height and pin style), and you can save your maps for later use as well. The tool is one of many Flickr tools that are available at Flickr App Garden.
I learned about possibility of Combining Map Flickr and Flickr on Digital allows for easy Online Mapping on Digital Photography School.