Tag: Yahoo!

Free PHP5 Script to grab YOUR flickr Photos

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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 🙂 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! 🙂

flickr, php

Damn Youhoo, flickr!!

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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? 😉 )

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 😉 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 😉

flickr

Flickrhoo!

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I’ve been meaning to say this for a while. Are there any Flickr users out there who are a bit pissed off that now, when you click to sign in, you have to go to a Yahoo sign-in page, where you have to find the link to the old Flickr sign-in form?

Also, when you want to comment on a photo and sign in to do so, the link used to take you back to the photo you wanted to comment on after logging in. Now, due to this Yahoo! sign-in interstitial, the link back to the photo I wanted to comment on is lost. Very annoying. I paid for this service.

I’ve always been very happy with Flickr, as it gets the pictures I take ‘out there’ as opposed to in the various self-hosted galleries I have set up over the years. They get seen more.

I’d love to know what’s going on inside Yahoo! since the big reshuffle announcements. I also wonder what’s going to happen to Flickr. Have I missed something?

flickr

Yahoo!’s Tech Mom Looks at Second Life

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Dory Devlin, Yahoo! Tech’s ‘The Mom’ has a post here about Second Life, since hearing of ‘Adam Reuters’ (Adam Pasick) being ’embedded’ as a journalist in Second Life for Reuters – they have a dedicated site at http://secondlife.reuters.com. There’s a hearty discussion thread building on Dory’s post! Lots of ‘I don’t get it’ posts and lots of ‘I make money!’ posts.

Recently, Adam posted a story that the US Congress are launching a probe into the virtual economy that exists within Second Life (and a follow-up here). Many people make quite alot of money in this virtual world. Some even more than the employees of Linden Lab, the creators and curators of this new ‘metanation’ which I inhabit.

It’s an interesting discussion – and one which will have to be addressed soon, whether we like it or not. I heard about a year or so ago of someone who was trying to go through his taxes and wanted to deal with the money he was being paid to look after someone’s character in a different game. His accountant and the taxman had no idea what to do, so shrugged and ignored it.

I think it’s bound to change. But I wonder how the various global tax offices decide to deal with it. There will probably be virtual tax havens you could log in from, to avoid paying. We’ll see. What about if Linden move all their servers offshore? How about Sealand? That’s a ‘very Second Life’ place 😉
In the next week or so, we’ll hit the 1 million users mark in Second Life. (Currently stands at 983,621) That will be a big day which will no doubt garner headlines all over the world – then more users will come – and more money will be exchanged – etc, etc… 😉

Doctoe Schnook and I (Koz Farina) hope to start a podcast purely about Second Life soon. Stay tuned! 😉

News, Second Life, secondlife