Flickr Uploader 1.0 Opens Your Desktop To A Whole New World...

[mtnbluet 0]

...of photos and new found friends. New Friends, that is, if you participate in the Flickr forum and share your photos with others.

Now, since you read the former reviews, you have just gotten Picasa2 and are having fun bringing out the best in your photos. But, you wonder, does a place exist where you can share your photos automatically, or almost automatically? Why not download Flickr Uploader 1.0 and let the fun begin. However, you know the saying that nothing is free. Well this is true here, if you measure cost in time. In order to get Flickr Uploader 1.0 to work you have to download the 12.3 MB Yahoo Widget Engine 3.0 ( a link to it is at the same site you downloaded Flickr Uploader 1.0). No problem if you have DSL or cable, but a big delay if you have dial-up. You also will need Windows XP or 2000 or greater; the older Windows operating systems will not do. The Widget Engine generates a multitude of widgets on your desktop. It feels like an invasion, even though in reality there are only 5-10 widgets most connected together. My recommendation is that unless you have a powerful computer, right click on the widgets and close them. It is nice to have the temperature displayed and the stock market prices on your desktop, but not at the expense of valuable computer system resources. After a bout of authorizations, finally the Flickr Uploader 1.0 is sitting on your desktop taking up about two thirds of the window. (Oh, after you take the tour and authorize it to connect with your Flickr online site or space, it will shrink to about one tenth of your desktop. Not intrusive at all.)

The Flickr Uploader 1.0 brings the internet to your desktop. Think of it as one huge slide show. You can interact with it through the icons in the upper left hand corner of your photo. There are icons to allow you to see the previous or next photo, see a photoâs profile or tag it as a favorite. In the upper right hand corner of your photo are 3 additional icons for finding photos or sharing them.

After the right clicking on the first one, a Choose Photo Source menu drops down. Here you can choose pictures from your Favorites, your Sets, your Groups, and your Contacts. You can also check the Interestingness of the photo as well as Everyoneâs Photo. Lastly, you can get information from Flickr Widget Help or even Sign out from Flickr here.

Sets are a way to organize your photos. Sets are not copies of your images, but merely pointers to them, so you can view some of your images together in a specified category of your choice. Groups are an entirely different cat. Groups are actually groups of people all interested in a specified topic or subject matter. As a member of Flickr, you can choose to join an already established Group, or if you are interested in a more specific niche, you can Create a Group of your own. Of course, since this Group resides in Flickr, there are some rules and regulations to the establishment and maintenance of a Group. One group I found was a tiny Homesteading group, but I also found another group with considerably more interest: Cold process soaps. In a group, you would naturally upload or share your pictures pertinent to that group and some discussion and dispersal of good information can also result. For example, a person was interested in making cold-process soaps and another group member directed her to a specific website that gave individual and group lessons about many aspects of soap,s including cold process soap making. Groups can be private or public. This particular Cold Process Soap group is public.

When you allow public viewing of your photos, an Interestingness number or spot is attached to your photo. One (1) is the highest ranking and goes down steadily from there. There has been some discussion as to what propels these rankings, but just when people think they have it figured out, it changes. For example, a person could have a picture rated with a high ranking for daysâshould mean that many people are enjoying viewing it---and all of a sudden it drops to an obscure place. Just as Google has rankings that are generated by their closely guarded secret algorithms that they tweak from time to time, so Flickr has a algorithm that adjusts Interestingness as well. (Personally, I think the word Interestingness is a bit long and tedious. They should probably rename it to something like Happy to make is more perky and interesting. J)

The second icon of the 3 icons in the upper right hand corner of Flickr Uploader is the mysterious eye. In reality, it only means that this opens up the Photo browser. Here you can organize your photos, quickly creating or viewing batches of photos as a slideshow. In addition, if you ar logged in you can choose from your own photos or your friends photos. This is accomplished with a little browser window popping up within your Flicker Uploader widget. Here you can click on Choose Photo Source and filter your photos and then pressing the Display in Frame button will bring up the pictures as a segment of the slideshow.

Finally, the 3rd and final icon that we have been all waiting for, the Uploader icon. Although it appears to be hiding, once you recognize that the picture of a rounded rectangle with a upward arrow underneath it means Upload, you will always be able to spot it and to open it. Here we can handle each and every photo before we upload it into Flickr. We can add a title and description to it. This is important as some websites are taking public pictures from Flickr members and offering them free to be put on people's cell phones. Flickr has assured their members that they have no part in this stealing of their pictures. By having a title, you can keep track of your pictures, demanding them to be taken down from other sites if need be. Of course, you can select Private here and you wonât have that problem, but then sharing the pictures is half the fun at Flickr. Sets can be made here of your pictures and Tags can be put on as well. There are about 70 tags to choose from. Some important and some whimsical. Your choice. There is even a place here to drag and drop the pictures into for ease of transference. Uploading 6 pictures on a slow DSL connection took 3 minutes. Not good, not bad-just reality. We all do not have good internet service, especially when we have to rely on phone lines installed many years ago.

After you upload your pictures onto the Flickr site, you are set to live in a world of photos.

So what can you do? When you are on your account in the Flickr website you have a menu that goes across the top of the browser. You can start to Organize your pictures, you can go to You(your account-has your pictures in it, etc), you can look at your Contacts, join or visit Groups or pick Explore to go exploring. Exploring means looking into all the free services that Flickr offers and continues to add to.

Now do be aware that you can upload only 100MB of photos each month. This refers to bandwidth, and not storage space. If you need more than that you should sign up for their Pro services. However, for amateur photographers or for those who choose to make their photos lighter, this 100MB limitation will do just fine.

The only complaint I have about Flickr is when I want to show pictures to others I only have three choices: Public, Private-family or Private-friends. Please correct me if I am wrong, and I would so love to be wrong. This means I have to know my family and friends in order for them to see the private pictures. I could not give a friend or, say this forum, the authorization code to show it to whomever they wish. If I could give out an authorization code, like Piaza2 does, many people could see it, but not just anybody. As it is, I have to make these pictures Public if I don't know exactly who I am sharing the pictures with. This needs to be changed.

For all those who are thinking, this is all well and good, but there is Yahoo! Photos. I will keep and share my photos from there. In a short period of time, probably one month is left, Yahoo! Photos will close and only Flickr from Yahoo will remain. The owners of Yahoo! Photos felt that this is old outdated technology and so must make way for all the new technology that Flickr does have and will have. In the future Flickr will allow for video sharing and other technology that is on the cutting edge.

Yes, the cake keeps getting better and better and better.

[Cyril 0]

wow that sounds like some hekka good software for pictures 0.0