A few months back, I ranted about the issues with Flickr, after I migrated my photos from Yahoo Photos, which was closing down. On my free account on Flickr, I was limited to:
- uploading 100 MB worth of photos in a month
- displaying a maximum of 200 photos at any given time
- having three sets at maximum [sets are equivalent to albums]
- if the account remains inactive for 90 days, it will be deleted
The last two of these bothered me most. I decided to move to picasaweb, but not finding a way to do so, I sought help from the visitors to this blog. I received ample sympathy, and a lot of helpful advice too.
The suggestions were as follows:
http://manishrjain.googlepages.com/flickrfs
http://greggman.com/pages/flickrdown.htm
http://www.flickrleech.net/
http://sunkencity.org/flickrbackup/
I went to the flickrfspage first. A quick scan through it made it look rather difficult to do, so I decided to check out the others. I might have been mistaken in my perception, but I decided to revisit this option after evaluating others.
Next, I tried flickrleech. It seemed pretty easy to use - it could find photos on the basis of username, userid, etc. Though it made me rather sceptical too - since if it worked, it also meant that anyone could download anybody's photographs, in full size too. Quite a violation of copyrights! Still, since was no harm in trying it, so I provided the required inputs. Result - nothing, nil, zero. Perhaps because my photos were private.
On to Greggman's flickrdown. It seemed somewhat promising, but the caveat was, it was available only for Windows and Mac. I was trying out this thing from office [hey! dont tell my boss!!], and I have a UNIX based workstation. So this was out, though I could always try it from home later.
Down to my last choice, I opened the sunkencity flickrbackup page with a sinking heart. A little bit of good news, at last. It was an open source software, hosted at sourceforge.net [which is quite a respectable, I mean reliable, source - I do not want to download viruses along with software!] Btw, inspite of all the disadvantages, there is one advantage of UNIX systems - you have no fear of viruses :-) Further, the software was in Java, so it was platform independent. I downloaded the s/w, unzipped and untarred, and was greeted with some jar files. I have had only a little programming experience with Java, and that was way back in college, so I wasn't sure what to do with the Java files. I wondered that even if I did manage to execute the correct binary, how would it interact with the browser. I tried to search the page for the documentation, or even two lines of "how to", but no help there. After asking around in vain, and some trial and error, I found the key:
java -jar FlickrBackup.jar
Simple, eh? [I also needed to include firefox in my path.] It opened a dialog box, and flickr page in the browser, and required me to authorize it to access my data. It was then I learnt that Flickr has provided hooks that one can use and write programs to customize Flickr! [though don't ask me how.]
To end the story, I did get my photos back, though I got multiple copies of some, and with strange names. But of course, they didn't bother me too much :-)
- uploading 100 MB worth of photos in a month
- displaying a maximum of 200 photos at any given time
- having three sets at maximum [sets are equivalent to albums]
- if the account remains inactive for 90 days, it will be deleted
The last two of these bothered me most. I decided to move to picasaweb, but not finding a way to do so, I sought help from the visitors to this blog. I received ample sympathy, and a lot of helpful advice too.
The suggestions were as follows:
http://manishrjain.googlepages.com/flickrfs
http://greggman.com/pages/flickrdown.htm
http://www.flickrleech.net/
http://sunkencity.org/flickrbackup/
I went to the flickrfspage first. A quick scan through it made it look rather difficult to do, so I decided to check out the others. I might have been mistaken in my perception, but I decided to revisit this option after evaluating others.
Next, I tried flickrleech. It seemed pretty easy to use - it could find photos on the basis of username, userid, etc. Though it made me rather sceptical too - since if it worked, it also meant that anyone could download anybody's photographs, in full size too. Quite a violation of copyrights! Still, since was no harm in trying it, so I provided the required inputs. Result - nothing, nil, zero. Perhaps because my photos were private.
On to Greggman's flickrdown. It seemed somewhat promising, but the caveat was, it was available only for Windows and Mac. I was trying out this thing from office [hey! dont tell my boss!!], and I have a UNIX based workstation. So this was out, though I could always try it from home later.
Down to my last choice, I opened the sunkencity flickrbackup page with a sinking heart. A little bit of good news, at last. It was an open source software, hosted at sourceforge.net [which is quite a respectable, I mean reliable, source - I do not want to download viruses along with software!] Btw, inspite of all the disadvantages, there is one advantage of UNIX systems - you have no fear of viruses :-) Further, the software was in Java, so it was platform independent. I downloaded the s/w, unzipped and untarred, and was greeted with some jar files. I have had only a little programming experience with Java, and that was way back in college, so I wasn't sure what to do with the Java files. I wondered that even if I did manage to execute the correct binary, how would it interact with the browser. I tried to search the page for the documentation, or even two lines of "how to", but no help there. After asking around in vain, and some trial and error, I found the key:
java -jar FlickrBackup.jar
Simple, eh? [I also needed to include firefox in my path.] It opened a dialog box, and flickr page in the browser, and required me to authorize it to access my data. It was then I learnt that Flickr has provided hooks that one can use and write programs to customize Flickr! [though don't ask me how.]
To end the story, I did get my photos back, though I got multiple copies of some, and with strange names. But of course, they didn't bother me too much :-)
6 comments:
vowww, good to hear tht u finally got 'em. I use flickr too, but i just use it to display pics on my blog. That;s bcos wordpress has an easy integration with flickr. So i keep only one set, which I display in my sidebar. For my personal pics ofcourse i use Picasa. Ad I think i have transferred my yahoo photos to photobucket.
All's well that ends well!
Iam a flickr addict and It wouldn't be wrong to say it has revolutioned the way we store our pics .I'll add my 2 cents here (purely my POV)
1. Flickr is undoubtedly the best online SPOC for enthusiasts who want to learn about photography and get a high watching other works .
2. Unlike most think ,it is not a bulk storage medium like Yahoo photos used to be .It could have been ,but Yahoo doesn't want to go that way .Just think of this ,if every user puts an average of 100 pics in a year ,they have millions of users ,look at storage costs, scalability costs,the infrastructure cost and you know as they say there are no free lunches .Every good thing comes with a price .Once you get addicted you wouldn't mind the money for the passion. $24 for a year .Holy smokes , that's too cheap (saying their way).Isse jyada ka to ham mahine mein pizza kha jaate hai.
3. For an amateur there couldn't be a better site to showcasing your work.Flickr has almost every amateur and professional photographer submitting its pictures in it .With proper licensing(creative commons) you can actually sell your work .I personally know several dozen people who do it.I got 80$ for a picture ,I didn't mind losing it at all .
4.There are hundreds of gizmo's,scripts and plugins that you can use with flickr .
5 . You can actually have a fan base of thousands of like minded people ,You can set your own price for a picture ,you can publicize your web page,even newspaper hire flickr photographer for their photojournalism assignments .I know a couple of them
In the end, I think for mass storage,their are other websites .For pure fun of learning and sharing and getting inspired by photography ,Flickr is the best at this moment .
Iam glad you got your pictures back and you would always will , there are so many people(developers) who are getting rich making by-products for flickr .you have something for everything,you name it
pardon the grammer and punctuations .The comment flew from my hands before i could have a second look
As long as you got your pics, :)
congrats mate.
@Maverick: That is another advantage with Flickr. And from what I found that they will continue to display your pics on the blogs, even if they dont display it in your flickr account (i.e. if it is not amongst your latest 200 pics). So, every software is designed for a specific purpose, and people will vouch for it :-). It's just that it didnt meet my requirements :-)
@Gil: True, though it did give me a little trouble, though not much :-)
@VJ: First of all thanks a lot for sharing your perspective. I really appreciate that you have discussed in detail the advantages offered by Flickr.
I will definitely agree that it is a great site for photographers, specially the amateur ones. And I also appreciated the fact that they have enabled users to plug-in their software [I marked it in bold :-)]
You are right, that for the capabilities and facitilies they are offering, the price is not high. But again, my set of requirements are different. I am using a photo sharing site exclusively to store photos and share them with friends, many of whom I might be getting in touch with after a long time. Therefore, I would like to display all the pictures I uploaded, and also, my account could lie dormant for much longer than the stipulated three month period. Therefore, Yahoo model was fine for me. Now I have uploaded pics at picasaweb, and I think it is great! The best part was that uploading was very simple, one-step process.
The enormous cost of supporting millions of users for free services is a very good point. Yesterday itself I was wondering how does Google manage to post such commendable profits - they offer so many services, and > 4GB of space per account. Anyways, in case of Flickr, they are not saving on space by imposing a limit of 200 pics at a time, since older pics are not deleted, they are still archived.
P.S. I didn't notice any particular problems with punctuation and grammar. And I think that yours is better than many :-)
P.P.S."Isse jyada ka to ham mahine mein pizza kha jaate hai" - speak for yourself. I have restricted my pizza consumption to once a month :-D [though it is for physical, rather than financial health ;-)]
@Raj: Thanks for the help!
Post a Comment