October 26, 2005
Printing, at last!
Ok, so right after I say that I probably won’t post unless something big happens at Flickr, they announce photo printing. I’ve been wanting this so badly that I was thinking about ways to make an easy link for people to be able to buy prints of my photos from an online photo service (like Shutterfly).
Here’s the skinny… first, you have to go set your printing preferences. There are all sorts of levels on this, so you can only allow yourself to print your photos or you can allow everyone to be able to print them (and everywhere inbetween). Once you’ve done this, a button appears above the image to order prints. It looks like you can’t specify this preference on just one photo or a group of photos, which would be nice (all of the photos from a party or roadtrip). Your shopping cart is kept right within the Flickr site so you can browse around and pick which photos you want. You get ten free prints, so get a couple to test the photo quality (I’m going to do this soon myself). You can have them ship the photos to you or you can pick them up at your local Target store in as little as four hours (for an extra nickle per picture, but no shipping fees).
As if that’s not enough, you’ll see that they’re rolling out a “pilot program” of partner programs that will allow you to “do more” with your photos. The first one is a CD/DVD printing service from englaze. For $10 you can get a CD with an archive (of up to 50) of your Flickr photos. Each 100 photos after the first 50 costs another $4 (let’s see, if your images were 1MB per image, it’d cost you $38 to fill up a CD with 700 images). To get a larger capacity DVD costs $35 for the first 1000 and $10 for every 1500 after that (that’s a whopping $65 for a full disc of 4700 images at 1MB per file). Needless to say, I am less than impressed with this pricing. Hell, for $65, I’d ship you a DVD with your photos on it. I’d even throw in an invoice explaining that approximately $2 of the price went into materials and shipping, $15 for labor, and the other $48 was pure markup.
The other service that Englaze is providing is a DVD with a slideshow of your Flickr photos. This one costs $20 for 50 photos and $5 for every additional 100 photos. Their site has a preview of what the slideshow will look like. It looks to me like the effects range from zooming out to panning to…well…zooming out and panning at the same time. Not that I’m asking for star wipes or anything. I just can’t imagine watching hundreds of photos do the same inane zoom for very long. The site also gives you a bunch of HIGH-larious MIDI files (be sure to check out “Reflection 1″, those MIDI pan pipes are making Zamfir cry) that you can choose from to lay over your zooming pictures. This will ensure to drive anyone mad who dares to view your slideshow DVD. Worth 20 bucks? I’d say so.
The third feature is actually kinda cool. You can order a sheet of stamps with one of your photos printed on them. That’s right, real US Postal stamps. I assume that a few of you out in cyber-land still use the US Postal Service. Why not send your letters in style with one of your sweet photographs of your cat? The stamps are large (1 1/2 inches by 2 inches) and you can adjust and crop your photos to suit your whims. The only drawback to this is that you’re going to pay an extra $10 for every $7 of postage. It’s a pretty cool idea though and I’m sure there’s a decent segment of the Flickr crowd who will get these stamps printed. I just wish the stamps said something about Flickr on them. That’d be a cool way to evangelize.
So in conclusion: thumbs up on the photo printing and the stamps, but the whole CD thing is overpriced and pretty useless, if you ask me. Not a great thing to start your “pilot program” with.
A short break
I know that it was only recently that I was complaining about my slow blogging, but I’m about to do it again. I’m getting married this Saturday and will be obviously preoccupied both leading up to that and then for a while after. I’m getting back late next week from my honeymoon, so I’ll start updating regularly once I get back. I may do some shameless self-promotion and post some travel photos next week, if I take any that are particularly cool. Otherwise, I will probably only post if there’s some exciting news from Flickr that I feel that you, my friends, should hear.
October 19, 2005
Only Eleven More Months!
Avast, me hearties! Just in case ye scurvey landlubbers forgot, eleven months from today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrrrrr! *cough*…. Anyway, it turns out that the pirate guys have a Flickr account and there’s a Flickr Group devoted to ITLaPD photos. In a few weeks, I’m going to visit the Pirate museum in Salem. I need to read up in Pirattitude! before I go.
October 17, 2005
Slow blogging
I have been spending the weekend helping my fiance move her stuff up to my place. Besides, there hasn’t been that much news in the Flickr world, except for the Flickr Blog being eight days behind this blog. 
October 13, 2005
Yom Kippur
My Get Fuzzy calendar has notified me that today is Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement). I’m not sure what is a traditional wish on Yom Kippur…so Merry Yom Kippur, everyone!
October 11, 2005
Photo printing (almost) from Flickr (almost)
Today, Stewart Butterfield announced that you can now print your Flickr photos straight from QOOP using an API application. From the announcement:
The crazy printing cats at QOOP are continuing to refine their service for printing Flickr photos in books and posters* in advance of its official launch – they’ve added a way to select particular photos in large sets to include or exclude which gives you more control. Looking nice!
Now, before we get all excited, we need to realize something. QOOP is not offering to give you prints of your photos. You can only get sets of photos printed in book or poster form. There is no way to get 4″x6″ prints right now. Stewart said that they were working on something else top secret, but no hints as to what that would be at the moment. Why they would let you print books and not individual prints is a little baffling to me. Either way, the books and posters look pretty cool.
If you’re itching to print your photos straight from flickr, you may be out of luck for now. If you’re using Firefox and have the Greasemonkey extension installed, you can try out the Flickr/Shutterfly Integrator script by Danny Dawson. If you’re using any other browser, or you don’t want to use Greasemonkey, you can’t say I didn’t try to help you. 
I’m really hoping that this secret plot between QOOP and Flickr involves getting us easy photo printing from our Flickr pages. That’d be downright nifty.
October 10, 2005
The Endless Beta
An interesting article about public betas that last forever. One of the sites he specifically talks about is Flickr.
The Endless Beta by François Joseph de Kermadec
Some say it is a good thing, it shows respect for the consumer, a desire to continually improve and remodel a product. I say it is silly, insulting and counter productive – but don’t take my word for it.
October 9, 2005
Columbus and Coit Tower
Tomorrow is Columbus day. I hope that you’re enjoying your day off. I don’t get one.
October 6, 2005
Pro. A Gallery App
Pro is a cool application that will display your photos in a cool professional looking format (hence the name). It is written by Cary Dunn who used a mix of Flashr and phpFlickr to accomplish a really neat app.
How is it different than other gallery apps, you might ask. Well, first of all, it’s designed to look slick and professional (as mentioned above). Also, the page is hosted on Cary’s site and doesn’t do thumbnail views (except when you mouse over the bar at the bottom). It is basically just a slide show, but a very cool one. The cross-fading and resizing effects for different aspect ratios of images are spiffy. You’ll have to go check it out to see what I mean.
My Pro site: http://www.mykards.com/pro/proAlbum.php?id=danco
