indicommons » Flickr API

Mapping the Commons’ Images

zyrcster — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 10:00:21 +0000

Flickr member Paul Hagon creates a fabulous mash-up, illustrating the power of the Commons. Here, Flickr meets Streetview, using the Flickr Commons’ images of New York in the 1930s from the New York Public Library. Paul also mapped images from the Powerhouse Museum, the State Library of New South Wales and the National Library of New Zealand.

Paul Hagon’s Street View Mashups:

Batch Date Changer

striatic — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:00:52 +0000

Indicommons.org isn’t just about about blogging about Flickr Commons–related news, showcasing Commons-related research and community-generated “subcuration”. We’re also active in creating new tools to follow, search and sort the Commons collections.

Our Chief of Development, David Wilkinson, recently responded to a request from the Brooklyn Museum to improve their Flickr upload workflow. Commons institutions like the Brooklyn Museum tend to upload sets of images to Flickr as “private”, add initial metadata and then eventually switch the photos in the set to “public” in order to expose them to the Flickr community. A problem with this method is that during this switch the photo upload dates remain in the past and the photos do not appear in many of Flickr’s recent uploads feeds.

To address this issue, David created a web application that uses Flickr’s API in order to update the upload dates of every photo in a set. This allows institution staff to update upload dates as they switch a set of photos from private to public, allowing the photos to appear freshly uploaded. The Batch Date Changer allows Commons photos receive maximum exposure while lightening the burden on institution staff.

This application is currently being used by the Brooklyn Museum and will soon be made available to all Flickr Commons institutions.

Flickr Commons Power-Feeds

striatic — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:00:35 +0000

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.