flickr

I use and enjoy Flickr. But with each passing month it worries me more that when I visit a photo page on the Yahoo photo-sharing site, it looks essentially identical to when I first started using it four years ago.

Flickr has typical online photo site abilities to upload, share, and print photos. What sets it apart, though, are features that make Flickr a community: discussions in comments below photos, groups for like-minded photographers to share their work, and social networking attributes that let people stay on top of their contacts' doings.

Flickr revamped members' home pages starting last September, … Read more

Flickr announced Tuesday that it has improved its search tool. The site's search results page now allows users to see small previews of photos and get details on those pictures without being forced to visit the individual photo page. It's a nice improvement.

But if you're looking for something a little different, these Flickr alternatives are worth checking out.

Bubblr Aside from the fact that it lets you search for photos by tag or user name, the real focus of Bubblr is to help you create a comic strip that you can publish for the Bubblr Archive.

When you search for pictures on Bubblr, it displays your search results next to the search box. From there, you can either go to the photo's respective Flickr page, or drag and drop images into your comic strip. When you create a comic strip, you can also add dialog bubbles to tell a story. When you're ready, Bubblr lets you publish your comic strip to its archive. I was pleased with how well Bubblr worked. Search was quick, dragging images worked beautifully, and the finished product was great.

Compfight Compfight allows you to search Flickr by tag or text. So, if you choose to find photos by the tags associated with images, simply input a keyword, and Compfight will do the rest. It displays several images matching the query.

If you're looking to search Flickr based on the text associated with pictures, Compfight will do that, too. In my experience, changing how you search will change the results quite substantially. When you click on an image, you'll be brought to its respective Flickr page. Thanks to a simple search box and little clutter, Compfight is easy to use. I liked it.… Read more

Yahoo-owned photo sharing site Flickr has a new search results page that marks a subtle, but important change in the way users can find the photo they're looking for.

Similar to the way most search engines display an array of thumbnails, users can now parse through small or medium size previews of photos, and view detailed information about the shot without even having to visit its photo page. It's also a lot more straightforward in how it directs users to various other parts of the service such as groups, other users, and photos with similar tags. These suggestions … Read more

Back from my mini-trip down to Southern California for the weekend and I certainly made heavy use of my phone while down there. One of the main ways was as my surrogate camera. I made the conscious decision to leave behind my Canon for this trip and see what it would be like to rely solely on the Palm Pre for any photo opportunities.

I have to say, that it performed admirably at this task. One thing I did run into was that I started getting tired of lightly smudging my screen with my fingers having to press the touch … Read more

Yahoo widgets are designed to bridge the gap between the Web and your desktop. After you search through the company's listing of widgets and find what you like, you can download them onto your desktop.

But what if you're a social-networking fanatic? Certainly, being on the Web works fine for you, but Yahoo widgets might make it just a little easier to satisfy your desire to stay connected. Here are some Yahoo widgets that help you network with your friends right on your desktop.

Facebook Notifier Facebook Notifier tells you what's going on with your friends so you don't have to keep checking the social network to find out.

After you install Facebook Notifier, you'll need to authenticate your profile. From there, you can see status updates from all your friends. You'll also get real-time updates when messages filter in, you're poked, or you have some wall posts to check out. Whenever you click on one of those options, you'll be brought to the appropriate Facebook page in your browser to perform the desired action. Facebook Notifier won't give you as much control as other services in this roundup, but if all you want to do is see what's up with your friends, it's a good place to start.

Facebook(er) Facebook(er) is a neat app. After you install it on your computer, the widget allows you to change your Facebook status, check your messages, update your friends with events, and more. You can also view pokes, requests, and group invites. It's like having Facebook on your desktop. Plus, thanks to a nice design, you should be relatively happy with how easy it is to perform those basic tasks.… Read more

I recently went on a nice, long vacation, and the first thing I did when I got back was to upload some of the best 200 or so photos I had taken.

As an experiment, I uploaded many of the same shots to two services--Flickr and Facebook. Both let users tag photos, so I wanted to see which ones would get tagged first, and not by me.

The winner? Facebook.

Just an hour or two after having uploaded to both services, all of my 88 shots on Facebook had been tagged. The most amazing part is that very few of them were tagged by me. Right after my upload, I tagged a handful of them, which in turn alerted those users to view the shots. From there, they (not me) went on to tag some more of my photos, continuing the cycle.

Flickr, on the other hand, was a different story. I uploaded close to 200 photos to the service. There were still the same shots of the same people, but there were also additional shots of landscapes or nature. Of those shots, only a handful were tagged, and only by one user--my colleague Stephen Shankland, whom I had pestered to look at my artistic capturing of sand castles. His tags weren't even of people; instead, he added descriptive keywords about the photos.

Now, to be fair, I have far more friends on Facebook than I do on Flickr--more than eight times the number to be exact. But in terms of photo usage, my Flickr activity far outweighs what I do on Facebook. I've only created 37 albums on Facebook which contain a total of 532 photos. On Flickr, I have 101 photo sets (Flickr's nickname for albums) which total 3,438 photos. More importantly, anyone on Flickr can see the photos I've uploaded, not just people I've put on a friends list.

In terms of use, the sites are quite different, too. Facebook may have gotten into the photo arena a little later than Flickr, but it's quickly outpaced it. The company says it's getting 900 million photos uploaded each month from its more than 200 million users, whereas Flickr's official numbers put that number somewhere around 90 million uploads from some 40 million registered users. Just keep in mind those 200 million Facebook users are probably not using the site specifically for photo hosting like they are on Flickr.

So why are Flickr users so hesitant to tag other people's photos? There are many reasons, but the biggest is that the two tagging systems are just plain… Read more

Yahoo has released a feature that lets people post Flickr photos to their Twitter accounts.

The Twitter2Flickr feature requires that you enable Flickr as an approved application that can tweet under your username.

Then, when you click the "blog this" link above a photo at Flickr, you're presented with the option to twitter it. The tweet will come with a "flic.kr" shortened URL.

Flickr has a large number of users, and its use is amplified by the fact that other sites can make use of Flickr data through an API (application programming interface). The … Read more

Flickr has made significant efforts at improving its mobile interface over the last year, and has just put out a useful update for iPhone and Android users which builds on that. Through the wonders of the latest iPhone firmware update, the built-in Safari browser can finally acquire the user's location information and pass it off to sites that request it. Google's Android platform has had this as well, but with both operating systems now supporting it, Flickr has gone ahead and added a pocket-sized version of its nearby photo viewer.

Now, whenever visiting the site you can view … Read more

After watching other photo hosts create simple tools for Twitter users to post pictures, Flickr has finally wised up and pushed out its own solution. By divining the popular photo service with access to your Twitter stream, you can now post individual shots there right from Flickr, complete with a fancy Flic.kr shortened URL.

Instead of adding a new button to do this, Flickr users simply set up Twitter as if they were adding another blog to post photos to. Clicking the "blog this" button takes you to a page where you can type in the remaining … Read more