The Flickr API, Creative Commons Photos and a Photo Finder for Your Content
Yesterday, I was reading through my feeds and noticed an article on adding photos to your postings to increase visual interest (and, by extension more "sticky"). This rang true to me as magazines and the "Head First" series of books have shown. Often, there are photos (or ads) chosen because they *suggest* something in sync with the article, even if not directly stated in the text. For instance, an article about Minneapolis' winter temperatures might feature a photo like the one on this posting.
The article probably wouldn't mention snow angels or kids at all. However, the photo would clearly make the article more interesting and the photo is also relevant.
Arieanna Foley's original posting discussed using Amazon's photos (of which there are millions). That gives you book covers, DVD covers, etc. which is a great idea. I, then, wondered aloud about using Flickr's API in concert with their Creative Commons search capability to find photos licensed for reuse. If an interface to easily grab a photo wrapped in HTML that properly credited the photographer, you'd have a handy tool for adding these types of photos to your site. Kind of like the one here.
Soooo, what did I do instead of finishing the Christmas letter I was supposed to be writing last night? I built just such a thing. I think I'll be putting up a permanent version of it over at Empire of Blog as a free service, but in the mean time you can play around with the prototype.
It takes a given keyword (needs to be a single word in the prototype) and gets you 25 "interesting" photos from Flickr, based on that tag and licensed according to your intended use. It also presents you with a list of related tags, letting you meander your way through interesting photos. You can preview each thumbnail and, when you find one you'd like to use, grab the HTML to drop it into your content.
I did learn a few things through the process that you're going to want to know if you should choose to take on working with the Flickr API. That's detailed in another post later today.
In the mean time, go and mess with the prototype. I will warn you though, because of what Flickr's "interesting" filter brings to the top, you may get content that's unsafe for work. The vast majority of searches are perfectly OK, but I was surprised more than once at what came back given what I searched for. So, you may want to take a look at home first before you risk content your mother or boss might not be happy seeing over your shoulder.
December 16th, 2005 at 10:07 pm
Neat tool. One thing I noticed, though, is that if the photo I click on happens to be one of mine, the photographer name and link doesn't get populated. It works fine for anyone else's photos returned in the search, just not my own. By design? Or just a strange bug?
December 16th, 2005 at 10:23 pm
Is your "realname" populated in your profile? The first couple of dozen searches I did didn't show any missing, but I'm seeing it occasionally now myself. I haven't dug into the back end to see what's missing, but that's what it's using to fill in the name. I'm thinking I'll have to have it fall back to the username if the "realname" isn't filled in. Can you get me your profile or the tag you used to find your photos? Also, was the licensing right on all of them? That's something I'm concerned be exactly right. I don't want to represent someone's photos as being licensed in a way they haven't set them on Flickr.
December 16th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
[...] Looking for a cheeky image to put in your blog post? Check out this nifty Flickr tool that allows you to search for relevant. It takes a given keyword (needs to be a single word in the prototype) and gets you 25 “interesting” photos from Flickr, based on that tag and licensed according to your intended use. It also presents you with a list of related tags, letting you meander your way through interesting photos. You can preview each thumbnail and, when you find one you’d like to use, grab the HTML to drop it into your content. It even letss you scope the results based on your copyright needs. More info here. [...]
December 16th, 2005 at 10:46 pm
Sure, my account is curiouskiwi and my full name is in the profile. I searched for tag: spiderweb with attribution, non-commercial, share-alike derivatives allowed and one of my photos was included. Each photo I clicked gave me the photo box with the name and clickable link back to Flickr, but mine only said "Photo by:" and no link to Flickr.
December 16th, 2005 at 11:35 pm
There is another on that search that's missing the realname. This is what's coming back from your entry:
[link] => http://www.flickr.com/photos/69005233@N00/49136349
[title] => web
[thumb] => http://static.flickr.com/25/49136349_fa225b67f3_s.jpg
[small] => http://static.flickr.com/25/49136349_fa225b67f3_m.jpg
[medium] => http://static.flickr.com/25/49136349_fa225b67f3.jpg
[ownerid] => 69005233@N00
[owner_realname] =>
[owner_profileurl] =>
I'm going to have to dig more to figure out why both of those last 2 entries are empty on yours.
December 17th, 2005 at 12:56 am
Thanks! Do you have an RSS feed just for comments on this post? I couldn't find one.
December 18th, 2005 at 10:00 pm
Very cool
December 19th, 2005 at 12:46 pm
Brenda, no RSS feed specific to comments for one post, but I'll look into adding it. Until recently, there weren't enough comments on any given post to justify it :). It looks like the problem is now fixed. I'm seeing your name and link when I run that search. I'm thinking that the cache picked up a bad request for your name and then held onto it for the 24 hours before letting it go.
December 19th, 2005 at 2:49 pm
Cheers, J! Working now.
December 21st, 2005 at 6:52 pm
[...] J. Wynia on finding creative commons images for your content. [...]
January 20th, 2006 at 10:51 pm
Wow, this is certainly an easy way to get sharable photos into posts! I won't tell you how I was doing it, (far less elegantly anyway!)
Thanks, will the experiments page show some notification when it is out of prototype stage and you're happy with it?
January 24th, 2006 at 9:46 am
I'll definitely post notifications both on that page as well as here on the blog whenever I update the project. I can't say when that will be. As anyone who follows this site for long knows, my interest in things tends to wander.
That's a good thing for most readers as I bring things to their attention that they wouldn't otherwise see, but has a downside in that I don't always get back to experiments that are half-finished.
However, I usually try to make sure that, like this one, the experiments are at least minimally useable before I shove them out the door, so you can at least use them while I wallow in my adult ADD.
February 12th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
cool tool .. keep up the good work!
March 6th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Note that according to the Flickr terms of use, the photos themselves need to be a link back to the photo's page on the Flickr site.
http://www.flickr.com/terms.gne