December 5, 2004
Flickring the Zeitgeist
Although for the last month or so, I’ve been buried in a variety of teaching and administrative duties, I have found the odd moment here and there to get completely addicted to Flickr, the most compelling web-based application I’ve run across in a long time. Flickr is a photo sharing service. While the services it provides subscribers (unlimited storage, generous uploading allowance, the ability to easily integrate with blogs and RSS) are not in themselves revolutionary, two of the other features of Flickr are particularly intriguing in terms of artistic practice. The first is that Flickr has built their system with the Creative Commons in mind. As you upload your photos, it is simple to select and tick off a CC: license, making photos available in what is already for other use to use in what is already the most extensive Creative Commons photosharing database. The second is that the system allows for easy metatagging, and most flickr users take advantage of it. So you can imagesurf Flickr by keywords, and not only by more obvious criteria, such as color (red), style (blackandwhite) place (Chicago), or date (1969), but also by more conceptual tags (unhappy). Any picture can be tagged with multiple phrases. The result is both an exceptionally useful public resource for anyone interested in sharing and remixing image content, and a fascinating portrait of the zeitgeist. Although the full service costs about $5 a month, the free version is also fairly generous, allowing users to upload 100 photos.
December 5th, 2004 at 7:16 pm
The “unhappy” link is broken.
December 5th, 2004 at 7:33 pm
Thanks, Malcolm, I fixed the stray return that was in there. Although now when I click I get that “Flickr is currently closed … [and seems] to be experiencing a technical fault.” Ah well, the Internet is always broken, you just have to hope that you and the things you want to look at aren’t on any of the broken parts.
December 5th, 2004 at 8:15 pm
Hmmm . . . bogus. They’ve been adding a bunch of features in the last couple of days. Maybe they broke it in the process and are currently running madly around Vancouver searching for a PHP wizard. Those links should work at some point.
December 6th, 2004 at 2:17 pm
Implementation is now, amusingly, a “Flickr-based” project, according to several blogs. Well, it is a good way to track how effective your slideshow was, Scott…
March 21st, 2005 at 9:45 am
Flickr has just been acquired by Yahoo!. Hopefully this is a good thing.