Flickr API

Oliver just posted about the Flickr API, which I must say looks promising. I've looked at Flickr a bit and it seems like an interesting idea.

There are a few caveats though:

• I really dislike the fact that they do not support IPTC tags (or EXIF for that matter). All decent photo management software uses them and having to retag, classify and annotate each images I upload is just plain annoying
  
• The point of the Organizr is beyond me. You can flick through a timeline and view images, but that it is. What is there to "organise"? You can drag images but there is no place to drop them, or rather dropping them anywhere doesn't seem to have any effect. Because it doesn't support EXIF it can't even place the photos on the timeline based on their capture date.
  
• With Google's purchase of Picasa it is only a matter of time before they will come with a free version complete with 1Gb of storage. Although Flickr hasn't yet revealed any pricing, the limits on the "free" version are not that good. 10Mb upload per month, and it only keeps the last 100. OK, 100 is fine when you are just showing off your work and you can pay for the "pro" version take will store most of your images. 10Mb per month however is paltry. That would amount to 4 decent sized photos per month.
  
• Lastly, I really don't like the fact that the full resolution version doesn't get stored. The largest size is nowhere big enough for printing for instance.
  

They should also come up with a way to integrate with printing services like Shutterfly and Fotokasten is they want to make it compelling to use I think.

We'll see how this turns out in the months to come.

Comments

[Oliver Thylmann]

Some things I agree with but here are some points:

- You can add keywords to all your images and I presume they show up in the Organizr
- I don't think your full resolution images are not uploaded or stored in the free account, but they are just not shown
- You can have more than 100 pictures, but not in your shoebox. I haven't fully grasped the concept of the shoebox yet though ;)

EXIF I agree with. Maybe they could scan EXIF for "Keyword" or something and ad that. This could be used then if it were a standard.

[Tao]

If you can support EXIF you can also support IPTC. You are not supposed to modify EXIF ever, as it is supposed to be a truthful record of what came from the camera.

If Hans and me get something working in terms of a gallery plugin we will be using IPTC to classify and tag images. That way all you would need to do is put images in a folder. The thingy will do the rest. By doing it that way any decent photo app can be used to control the gallery. iView for instance can be made to FTP stuff somewhere directly.

[daen]

Um, they _do_ support EXIF data - photos have a link under them saying, for example, "Taken with a Casio Exilim Z3". Not sure you can _do_ much with it, but ut's there.