mrjoro.org - Projects : flickr

I am a frequent visitor to flickr, using it to share photos and participate in a photographic community. Of the many great things about flickr (some of which I cover on my home page), one of the things I like the most is the hacker spirit of the community. There's a Flickr Hacks group where people can discuss extensions to flickr and tips for getting the most out of it, and there's a public API.

Though I've used a lot of these extensions--particulary Geobloggers--I've mostly just dabbled in implementation.

Greasemonkey Scripts

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows users to install scripts on top of existing web pages, to modify the behavior of the web page. The following Greasemonkey scripts enhance flickr. You must do the following in order to use these scripts:

If you are not using Firefox, you will need to download and install Firefox.
If you have not already installed Greasemonkey. you will need to install it.
After you've installed Greasemonkey in Firefox, you'll need to install one of the scripts below. If you're running in Windows, just right click on the link and click "Install User Script...". (Other platforms likely have a similar mechanism.)

Multitag Search

multitagsearch.flickr.mrjoro.user.js

This script allows for easy searching for pictures related to the picture you are currently looking at on flickr. It does this by making it easy to search for photos that share multiple tags with the current photo.

For example, say I am looking at a photo of a rainbow in San Jose. I notice that it is tagged with "rainbow" and "geotagged" (the second meaning that it is tagged with the latitude/longitude where the photo was taken).

Seeing this photo, I wonder if there are any other photos of rainbows that are also geotagged. Using this script, I can easily click next to those two tags, click "public", and I find out that there are, though maybe some I wouldn't have expected.

Curious, I click on that photo, find a few tags I'm interested in seeing more of, and then continue my exploration.

Basically, the script adds small "[+]" links next to each tag. You click on this link to add the tag to your search. Once you have selected all of the tags you want to include in your search, you click on another link to say whether you want to search the public photos or just the photos of the current photo's uploader.

This works with Firefox 1.5 and GreaseMonkey 0.6.4

In Situ Permissions and Licensing

insitupermlic.flickr.mrjoro.user.js

This script makes it easier to change the licensing and permissions options from the flickr photo stream page. Flickr normally requires you to go to a new page to set either one of these and, in the case of licensing, you will get returned to the photo's page instead of back to the photo stream. With this script, clicking on the permissions or license icon under a picture in your photostream provides a drop-down box. Once you make a selection, a request is made to flickr without leaving the current page. The current page is then reloaded so you can see the new status.

This also adds an icon for photos that do not have Creative Commons licensing, making it easy to add a Creative Commons license.

This does not yet work with Firefox 1.5 and GreaseMonkey 0.6.4