I wish the Comments You’ve Made page and feed on Flickr had a Friends And Family Only filter. I have had to unsubscribe from it because at present I get a zillion comments a day on photos I once left a comment on and, to be honest, no longer really care to hear about.
I’d like to get comment notifications back for photos from friends and family only.
The day I have been dreading for nigh on a year has arrived. Since Yahoo! bought Flickr there has been the impending merger of not just their cash coffers but of their sign-on systems. That day will be the 15th of March and from the looks of it you must comply.
Like Photub I am stuck in the unenviable position of not having my ideal Yahoo! sign-on. I used to have it but since I rarely used Yahoo! I ignored it and eventually forgot it. I spent a good few hours trying to convince Yahoo! to couch up the account but it all hinges on an uncomfirmed postal code that I cannot remember. All the other details I provide to Yahoo! are correct, it is just 4 digits of a postal code which are preventing me.
Why Yahoo! can’t just send a new password for that account to the email on record which I know and own and control and check every 5 minutes, I don’;t know. They won’t. They want a piece of irrelevant data (Yahoo! have never posted me anything, why do they need my postal code?) Not too mention the account has been inactive for at least a year now. Can’t they kill it?
It isn’t the end of the world and it just means I need to sign up some bastardised Yahoo! account name but it isn’t ideal either.
A bitter sweet day for Flickr. It will feel strange signing into it with YahoosChihuahua411Pwned.
While away my Flickr pro. account expired. It isn’t serious as they keep all your data until you renew. It is frustrating though as I have a few gigs of photos to upload from my travels but I dare not as I fear they will be subject to non-pro. account restrictions (like no original version kept.)
Sadly the renewal process is flawed. It uses PayPal which while very useful has some policies that may be in the interests of safety but are in the path of utility. I have a zero sending limit on my PayPal account. Flickr says it can process credit cards without a PayPal account but if your credit card number is in PayPals database then you have to use your PayPal account. Except I cannot because of the zero sending limit. Removing my credit card number from PayPal does not get around this problem. Obviously PayPal are still tracking all cards even if you have removed them.
To increase the sending limit PayPal debits your account with US$1.50 and in your credit card statement prints a code that you then enter into PayPal.
As we all know though credit card statements either take a month to appear or, if you have online access, about 4 days.
So for the simplest act of wanting to renew my Flickr account I have to go through this 4 day process with PayPal. Not happy.
Interesting. In the past month or so I have had 4 hits from professional publishers wanting to use photos of mine they found on Flickr. I am not a professional photographer, don’t advertise my photos and have had fewer hits in the past year than the past month. I wonder if Flickr is becoming a viable stockphoto choice for publishers?
Glickr is hilarious. Give it a tag, your Flickr screen name and then select the photos. It will produce an animated GIF. Lots of fun with tags like the above which is my One A Day set.
Check out the mapping features for Flickr. Very cool. Above you can see a broad view of Europe with clusters of photos (the more you zoom in the more it shows, clever feature.)
And here you can see me dragging photos onto the map which will then tag my photos with their location. Dead easy and very slick.
My only concern is that I won’t keep it up. Everytime I add a photo will I got to the bother of going into the Organizer and dragging photos onto maps? Maybe when I upload new photos there can just be a simple drop-down listing previously located areas for my photos.
Still, good job Flickr and Yahoo!
A typically sad web discussion is going on over this photo. A Flickr user posted it and invited comments from a notoriously harsh “critique” group. The group made many disparaging comments to which the “photographer” generally responded with “you idiots.”
The joke is that this photograph is by Henri Cartier-Besson, a famous and respected photographer.
Now the poster feels pretty smug over this turn of events but I think both sides are on equally loose footing. The critiques were largely poor, most going for technical issues that have nothing to do with art. The poster shouldn’t feel so smug though as the photo is not that great and is resting on the name of the celebrated photographer rather than its own merits.
What is really sad is to see previous critiquers back pedalling when they should be sticking to their critiques. If they felt that it was too blurry then it shouldn’t matter whether it was Cartier-Besson or Donald Duck that took the photo.
I’d hope Henri would want his photos judged individually and not have to rest on his name.
Flickr have redesigned, cleaning up their pages in the process and giving a fresh spin to it all. It is an interesting mix of web-app and website.
They have also jokingly gone from BETA to GAMMA.
Daily bits...