New Embed Options

I see that WordPress.com blogs now have more ‘code’ options to go with the ability to embed YouTube and Google videos. They have added SplashCast and DailyMotion. (I’ve only heard of one of those, and then only recently)

I’m eager to find out what the process is for getting on that list, as I have some podcast widgets on the horizon πŸ˜‰

Was it financial?

Where my blip.tv option? πŸ™‚

Eric Says It Like It Is

From the Gigavox network:

New media savant Eric Rice, founder of Slackstreet Entertainment and co-founder of Hipcast, enthusiastically explores the future of podcasting and evangelizes breaking the rules. Rice looks back at the short but explosive history of audio and video podcasting, examines the current tech culture’s view of podcasting, and then probes future potential interplay with blogging, mainstream media, virtual worlds, and music.

Word.

Yahooflickr! Ruckus!

In response to John M who asks :”I’m totally confused by the animosity here. Like Chris, I can’t see that it makes any material difference whatesoever. What gives kosso?

You know what? It’s weird I can’t put my finger on it exactly. Why I feel peeved at all this, after recently renewing my account fee. Oh.. hang on!! πŸ˜‰

It probably has something to do with me not really liking Yahoo’s web stuff that much recently, and particularly all the ads that have appeared over the years. I was a Yahoo! user a looong time ago. I liked it (and them) a lot more back in the day. But this complete and utter blind hunger for ad revenue is kinda screwing my experience a bit.

At least it certainly feels that way.

I CAN see the technical reason why they would want to streamline stuff – in a way. But also I can see programmatically how they could get over or around it.

It’s the fact that I pay flickr for this hosting, in a world where more and more, hosting will be offered for free – IF you don’t mind the ads squirted in here and there.

You are correct though – there is no ‘material’ difference here. But that’s not what they have damaged. They have knocked some of their users’ passion and loyalty.

I love flickr.

Free PHP5 Script to grab YOUR flickr Photos

UPDATED: To support Curl, if it is installed. It appears that some servers have the ‘fopen’ wrapper disabled, preferring Curl – which is faster too ! )

OK, so I have just knocked up a PHP5 script which, WITH SOME MORE WORK (on your part) will grab all your photos from flickr, should you want to move away from them.

This script takes your screen name and then lists all your photos, with the original photo file url, the title, description and any tags, comments and geocoding data too.

That’s as far as I go – the script is not doing any downloading at all – I leave the rest up to you πŸ™‚ You could add the details to a database, store images anywhere you like, ftp them somewhere – it’s up to you to get the PHP to do what you want.

If I get the time, I will create a desktop version which does the same thing. The tricky bit might be deciding on a static xml format for all the rest of the data – maybe a big RSS file would do. Or OPML. Or both?

Here is the PHP5 SOURCE.

NB: You MUST have PHP5 with simplexml and fopen wrappers or Curl activated (Some webhosts prefer you to use Curl, so they deactivate file_get_contents)

Enjoy! Feel free to use this code and hack and mash it up at will. Please add to the comments of this post, if you do extend it. Cheers! πŸ™‚

Damn Youhoo, flickr!!

Merge This!Well, it seems like the time is nearly upon ‘old skool’ flickr users like myself where we will be FORCED to ‘merge’ our accounts over to a Yahoo! account.

I expect this story to hit TechMeme later today – looking forward to seeing what others have to say about it, beyond the 500 700 or so responses to this news so far on the flickr help forum. It’s times like this that TechMeme is so invaluable.

UPDATE: BBC News now has a story on this

STILL NO SIGN of it on TechMeme, which I find very odd at this time of day

Judging by the responses to this, people are not too happy at all. And can you blame us? We PAY for this service. If I merge my account, will I still be subjected to the constant onslaught of advertising banners which Yahoo! riddle their systems with? Fair enough, these ads make them money, but we are PAYING customers. Do ‘regular’ Yahoo! Photos users have to pay for their hosting?

I think this a BIG BIG mistake.

I have had a Yahoo! ID for years, but rarely, if ever use the messenger etc these days. So many better systems have emerged since. I have a very old ICQ account somewhere too.

Not that long ago, when Yahoo! introduced the ‘360’ blogs, they placed links on those ‘old skool’ Yahoo! profile page, trying to get you to create one of these ‘blogs’. The trouble is, they don’t tell you that once you have done that, you will not be able to see your ‘old’ profile page ever again. It’s gone. Then, you can’t revert and change your mind. You’re stuck with it.

Usually I really like what Yahoo! do for users, but this completely sucks.

I think it’s time I wrote a script to pull all my photos out from my flickr account soon. Who knows, it could prove to be quite popular.

PS: If there’s anyone out there who runs a server hosting facility, please do get in touch – We can build a system pretty quickly to ‘merge’ OUR PHOTOS to a new system – Hell, I could even let you use your flickr usernames and passwords if you like. Same url structures, widgets (to a degree) – just a different domain.We can build it to be what users want. It’s not that hard to do – in fact I’d say their Flash based Organization features are the most complicated bit. The only way I could do this, is by working with a web-server hosting farm ‘guru’ with the hosting infrastructure already in place. (Hey Libsyn! Fancy getting into the photo hosting game? πŸ˜‰ )

PPS: Kris from Zooomr should be very excited around about now. There’s an opportunity screaming at him right about now.

PPPS: Here is link to a Google search for flickrbackup. Some useful stuff here.

– I nearly have a system working here to download all my photos πŸ˜‰ Now, the question is, where and how to move them – apart from back home here, on my hard disk.

Word from the Blogosphere (seeing as Techmeme still hasn’t woken up to this yet)

http://ipadventures.com/?p=1591
http://grahamcase.com/?p=120
http://flickrville.com/2007/01/31/reactions-to-flickrs-announcement/

UPDATE: Techmeme now has a thread on the subject, after Thomas Hawk, the CEO of Zooomr weighs in about it πŸ˜‰

A Question Of Tagging

OK. So I have recently built a new tagging system for podcast.com (which is inches away from a big overhaul) and a few other sites I build, and I wanted to ask you a question:

Which would be the preferable ‘delimeter’ to post multiple tags?

Spaces (with quotes to enclose multiple words)? Eg: cat furry “my pet” “eats mice” – As seen in flickr

or

Commas : Eg: cat, furry, my pet, eats miceΒ  – As seen in WordPress?

I personally think commas is easier, but how about you?

It’s about time I got round to podcasting again

Yes it is. When I get round to it, expect alot of ranting and ‘release’ over the first few episodes, until I find my voice, so to speak. So, apologies in advance. Heh.

I’ll let those crazy, loveable people who actually read this blog know when and where pretty soon. As you can see, I’ve been busy ‘in this area’ quite a bit recently – cerebrally. πŸ˜‰
I’ve always been an advocate of ‘do the hardest things first’ – if you can do that, then naturally everything else will be easy πŸ˜‰ The best thing being, when things are easy, more ideas come πŸ˜‰

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