Flickr

Yes, it's true... I've redesigned my photoblog once again. Though I should have known it better, I used Wordpress as backend for the "old" photoblog. The template/theme was actually pretty fancy, but managing a photoblog with Wordpress is hell!

So I searched for a better solution. One requirement was the possibility to fetch photos from my flickr account. After some investigation I found a plugin for Pixelpost (which I used as photoblog already some time ago) which is able to import photos from flickr into it's local installation. So I gave it a try.

After some tweaking (the documentation of that plugin is horrible) I got it running and it actually worked pretty well. Anyways I was missing some stuff- e. g. the script did not import the exif information of my photos into the local database. Also geolocation data from flickr would be nice to display in the photoblog. So I sat down and added some functions to the addon, which "fixed" these issues. The script is now able to import and translate exif information from flickr, as well as it is able to grab geolocation data from flickr (if available).

As template I used "Pixelfy". I was very pleased with the basic layout. Some tweaks and adjustments to match my needs were done in very less time. I only had to do a couple of CSS changes, layout adjustments and also add the new parameters which I introduced with the flickr-import stuff.

To make the story short... my new photoblog is ready and I _really like it (I think I can stay with this at least a couple of month now ). Have a look at it and let me know if you like it or not: http://foto.grafie.net

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Yay! Another big step into "Pixlr goes Multiplatform" has been done. I just finished my first tests with the Ipernity API and I was already able to authenticate Pixlr with my Ipernity account.



The Ipernity API isn't that big yet, and most of the methods I need for Pixlr, aren't avail. yet - but according to the Iperntiy-Team, it will be expanded soon!

The biggest step for Pixlr to be usable for many different platform has been finished by me yesterday. I completelly wrote my own interface to the Flickr API. This means that Pixlr doesn't depend on the 3rd party module Flickr::API anymore but uses Pixlr::API::Flickr now. But that's not the big news... instead of calling Pixlr::API::Flickr, it now calls Pixlr::API( 'service' => 'flickr' ); this makes Pixlr easily extendable to other platforms (like Iperntiy or Zooomr). I also just finished the first beta of Pixlr::API::Ipernity and did some tests - which all worked fine. I'm curisous to test out all the other functions/methos with Ipernity - looking forward to it

On this way, a big thanks to Christophe from the Ipernity-Team for being so kind to offer me an API key for Pixlr

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Wie die meinsten von euch schon mitbekommen haben, zensiert Flickr "jugendgefaehrdende" Bilder auf Grund der deutschen Gesetzgebung fuer deutsche Benutzer. Das ganze wird seit einigen Tagen bereits heiss diskutiert und z. Zt. sehe ich immer mehr meiner Flickr-Kontakte zu Ipernity wechseln. Auch ich spiele mit dem Gedanken zu wechseln.

Dank Phil's Tipp hab ich mir bereits Anfang der Woche meinen Account dort gesichert Das look&feel ist sehr aehnlich zu dem von Flickr. Einige zusaetzliche Features die Ipernity bietet sind auch sehr nett. Z. Zt. bin ich mir noch nicht sicher ob ich dorthin wechseln werde, aber die Chancen stehen nicht schlecht

Hier findet ihr meinen ersten Ipernity Blogeintrag zu dem Thema.

Update: Zum Thema API... ich hatte das Ipernity Team angeschrieben, ob es eine oeffentliche API gibt. Sie haben mir zurueckgeschrieben, dass es eine gibt und das sie zur Zeit an einer Dokumentation dafuer schreiben. Diese soll in ca. 2 Wochen veroeffentlicht werden - ich bin gespannt!

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Yay! I did a bunch of work on Pixlr today. Actually a comple rewrite of the main parts of the code. There are not much new features, but the code has been cleaned up and optimized massivly. Pixlr now also has a - yet simple, but working - installation script. The KML-Google Maps feature has been added to this release as well.

Find the latest download here.
The changelog can be found here.

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Flickr sperrt uns aus! Seit gestern werden für deutsche Nutzer keine Bilder mehr angezeigt, die als 'moderate' oder 'restricted' markiert sind! Es gibt keine Möglichkeit das umzustellen. Weitere Infos hier und hier.

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As I'd like to see more people using my Pixlr photoblog, I am currently setting up a little website for it. Find it here: http://www.pixlr.org

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Pixlr v0.1.3 is out now. Main changes are:

- some cosmetic corrections / cleanups
- email notification feature for comments

Download: pixlr-0.1.3.tar.gz (md5)

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I've done some further work on Pixlr - my flickr-based photoblog application - and put together a package as the first release. You can download it here (md5sum).

Have fun trying! Suggestions/Bugreports are welcome

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I am currently searching for a name for my Flickr-based photoblog software. And that's where I need your help Please provide interessting/funny/cool names for my photoblog. The current name I've choosen is "Postr" but I think there might be a much better one So please please help!

The name should fit the following requirements:
- It should be unique and shouldn't be in use, yet
- It should show the coherence between the photoblog and flickr

You've got the chance to leave your suggestion in the comments until tomorrow afternoon.
Thanks in advance for your help!

The decision has been made. I'll call it "Pixlr" - big thanks to ff for the suggestion

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I've done some more work on my FlickrPhotoBlog and added a bunch of features.

The following features are working now:
- Integration of a specified flickr set into my old PixelPost template
- Integration of EXIF and Geo data into the template
- Direct link to Google Maps with geo location data
- Direct link to Flash Earth with geo location data
- Direct link to the flickr page
- Comment function (show local comments as well as flickr comments)
- Akismet integration for the comments
- RSS feed
- ATOM feed with thumbnails
- An overview page where you can quickly browse through the photos (Just added)

ToDos for v0.1:
- Code optimization + first release (Done - 2007-06-03)
- "About" page (Done - 2007-06-02)
- Make everything (xHTML, RSS and ATOM) valid (Done - 2007-06-02)
- Covert everything to UTF8 (Done - 2007-06-02)

ToDos for v0.2:
- Email notification for local comments
- Admin-Interface for comment management
- Session-Management
- Code optimizations

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As I am pretty bored of administering my photoblog in addition to my flickr account, I thought it would be nice to have a photoblog that gets all its data from my flickr account. So I wrote together some lines of perl to get such photoblog set up. As the flickr API is not always the fasted, I built a two level system again. A backend that reads the photos, exif informations and the geo data from a specified flickr set and writes them into a PostgreSQL database - and a frontend that presents the photos based on the pixelpost template which I am using in my current photoblog.

Not everything is already final, but a first beta is already done. Have a look here.

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There is currently an interesting case of copyright infringement running through the internet. Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir, a gifted photographer from iceland, noticed that some of her photos, which she posted in her flickr stream, have been stolen by a company called "Only-Dreemin" and that this company used her photos for making revenue (for sure w/o her approval). After she noticed this, she wrote a comment in her flickr stream and told about this story.

This comment started a big discussion and as there were a bunch of not so nice postings in this discussion, the flickr staff made a mistake and deleted this thread. This for sure caused a big disgust against flickr and their "censorship". The flickr staff noticed their mistake and send official apologies to Rebekka and the community. Hopefully the company who stole her pics will see their mistake as well...

Now you are wondering why I'm reporting about this story? Well, it's mainly because I was impressed what a single "agony" can cause over the internet. Many many people inside and outside of flickr were mad because of the infringement. Blogs and news sites were full of this story. And it makes me really happy, that a single "call to the masses" can cause such a rebellion.

Find more about the sorry in Rebekka's blog and in the flickr forums.

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YAY! The flickr devs finally added a feature I've already been waiting for a long long time: flickr Collections. Collections are kinda subsets which can be built up to a depth of 5 collections. Now I finally can create a nice hierarchy within my flickr account. Thanks guys- great work!

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I just played around with memcached and it's Perl module Cache::Memcached. Pretty cool stuff. I think this can be very useful for my ordr interface. As all photo informations are stored in a PostgreSQL database, it will be very "expensive" when reading one and the same entries from the DB with every page load. Memcached will hopefully help, to relax the database and also to speed up the page (though I don't think that it'll be slow at all ).

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As some of already know, I am currently rewritting my ordr interface. I want it to be more effective and high-performance as well as it shall get a nicer and more userfriendly interface. To make it short- I wanna make it a bit "Web 2.0"- that's why the new release will be "ordr 2.0" ("beta" of course ).

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