Clickykbd’s newest Greasemonkey Script, “Flickr Commons Recommendations“, adds a grid of “recommendations” to the right side of any photo you encounter in the Flickr Commons collection. The photos in the grid are Commons photos that have been recently favourited by people who like the photo you are currently viewing.

Usually these “recommendations” posses a similar quality, despite being from a variety of Commons institutions. So not only does this script help you stumble across many excellent photos you wouldn’t otherwise find, but it also tends to help identify threads that run across The Commons.

For example, Recommendations on a “cute” photo tend to identify other “cute” photos in the collections of other institutions. It is great to see these threads emerge while browsing around, getting lost in The Commons. The associations might be less discrete than those created by tags, but they are no less interesting.

Install Flickr Commons Recommendations

Indicommons staff member and development maestro clickykbd has written a Greasemonkey script that allows people to better browse the Flickr Commons from institution to institution. Greasemonkey is a Mozilla Firefox extension that allows users to install “user scripts” that makes changes to web pages.

Once installed, the new “Flickr Stay in Commons” user script provides the following features:

Browse Commons Tags

The script adds an additional icon to each tag in the list to the right of a Commons photo. Clicking this icon will run a search for the tag across all Flickr Commons institutions.

This is a good way to find many historical photos that are similar to the one you are on, without having to wade through any contemporary photos. Just keep clicking the green circles for a grand tour of The Commons!

Search the Commons

Flickr has a search field in the top right corner of almost every page. The script adds a link to the menu beside this field that lets you use the field for searching The Commons.

With the script installed, you can now run a Commons search from anywhere on Flickr, instead of having to run a search from the Flickr Commons main page or from the advanced search page. When you search The Commons and visit a search result, you won’t have to “back out” to the search page to try a different query. Instead, you can just run the new search from the photo page that you’re currently on.

Keeping It in The Commons

The Commons collection is very well integrated with Flickr as a whole, which is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing in that Commons imagery is included in normal Flickr search results, exposing the collection to Flickr at large. The curse, however, is that if you’re interested in exclusively browsing The Commons collection, it’s very easy to end up accidentally browsing Flickr as a whole.

This script provides the best of both worlds, providing prominent options for Commons searches, while retaining every option for following a tangent into Flickr at large.

Install flickrstayincommons.user.js

Indicommons staff member and development maestro clickykbd has constructed a Yahoo! Pipe that lets people follow Flickr Commons uploads in ways that weren’t possible before. These are truly useful, visually stunning,and flexible feeds.

clickykbd

Flickr Commons Feed

Follow all Commons photos as they are uploaded. This wasn’t previously possible without subscribing to each Commons institution individually.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/FlickrCommonsFeed

Flickr Commons Geo-Feed

Follow all geotagged Commons photos as they are uploaded, with short text descriptions.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/FlickrCommonsFeedGeoShort

This feed looks incredible on a Google Map!

Flickr Commons Tag-Feed

To configure the pipe to do something custom, go to the pipe URL:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/clickykbd/flickrcommonsfeeds

From there you can add additional variables to narrow down the results the feed will provide. For example, try adding “portrait” to the “optional: tags” field, then running the pipe. You’ll see a slideshow of all photos in The Commons tagged “portrait”, and be presented with options to subscribe to the feed.

The Commons feed, tag search “portrait”

This approach can work with any tag, or even with text in descriptions or comments by filling the “optional: text” field instead. You can also increase the number of results in the feed by changing the number after “required: truncate”. Curious what all the other arguments do? Read clickykbd’s documentation on Flickr.