O'Reilly's latest book is aimed at those wanting to get the best out of the Flickr online photo management and sharing site. Flickr Hacks - written by Paul Bausch and Jim Bumgarden and with a forward by Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake - is claimed to be "the new, must-have collection of clever tricks, tips, and tools for anyone who wants to push the limits of what's possible with Flickr".
Among the tricks that are said to be explained in the 368-page book (SRP £17.50) are:
* Posting photos to a blog
directly from a camera phone (as
many London-based Flickr subscribers did during the London tube
bombings in 2005, according to O'Reilly)
* Using your own photos or collaborating with strangers in the Flickr community to make mosaics, collages, sliding puzzles, slideshows and ransom notes
* Setting random desktop backgrounds and creating custom Flickr screensavers
* Geotagging photos and mapping contacts
* Building a colour picker with a dynamic colour wheel of Flickr photos
* Feeding photos to a web site and subscribing to custom Flickr feeds using RSS
* Talking to the Flickr application interface using a web browser, Perl, or PHP
* Using your own photos or collaborating with strangers in the Flickr community to make mosaics, collages, sliding puzzles, slideshows and ransom notes
* Setting random desktop backgrounds and creating custom Flickr screensavers
* Geotagging photos and mapping contacts
* Building a colour picker with a dynamic colour wheel of Flickr photos
* Feeding photos to a web site and subscribing to custom Flickr feeds using RSS
* Talking to the Flickr application interface using a web browser, Perl, or PHP
Several sample hacks are available online - including how to post pictures from a cellphone; view Flickr photos on TiVo; and make a Flickr-style tag cloud.
For more information about the book and authors, check out this link. To tell us your own tips for Flickr - or for different favourite photo-sharing sites - dive over to the HEXUS.community.
Flickr Hacks
Paul Bausch and Jim Bumgardner
ISBN: 0-596-10245-3, 368 pages, £17.50/$24.99
