The Next Web

13 tools to spice up your Flickr photos (or the way you view them)

Written on June 12, 2008 – 2:44 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Take your Flickr photos - or the way you view them - to the next level by using any of these thirteen tools. Are you missing a specific service? Post it in the comments and I’ll update this post.

Fotoviewr - four cool galleries

Fotoviewr started out as someone’s pet project to learn how to program using Adobe Flash and Papervision - and you can tell. Although the service looks very promising, it’s not nearly as cool as it will eventually be. It aims to provide a better experience for viewing photos, thus you it allows you to create four cool galleries. Yet it misses vital functions like an embed option, high-res support, and there’s a max of 30 pics. The usability is great though, so keep an eye on it.

www.fotoviewr.com

Tinou Flickr Cover Flow - iTunes revisited

San Francisco-based Vietnamese guy Tinou Bao has built a tool which allows you to create a cover flow slideshow ala iTunes for your Flickr photos. Viewers can browse through the slideshow using the keyboard arrows. Tinou has made quite an effort, as you can specify almost everything that you can imagine, so make sure you have some time available before you click the link below.

www.tinou.com/coverflow

Splashr - dead-simple slideshows

This is perfect for someone who quickly wants to create an embeddable slidehow. It’s not as fancy as the creation of Tinou Bao but it sure does the job right. Splashr outputs your photos by username or tag into any number of different slideshow formats, and then creates a link to the slideshow itself that you can share with all your friends and admirers.

www.splashr.com

Dumpr - get your face on the walls of a famous museum

Dumpr is a site where you can add fun effects to your Flickr photos. You can choose from the following options: Museumr, Amazing Circles, Lomography, Rubik’s Cube, Jigsaw Puzzles, Pencil Sketches, Reflection, Easter Egg, Celebrity Paparazzi, Weave, Lego-ize and Stone Mosaic. The last two are premium options though, so you’ll have to pay a few bucks for them. The picture on the right is an example of the Museumr, featuring Digg founder Kevin Rose and blogger Edial Dekker.

www.dumpr.net (more…)

I hope you like that post!

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animoto, blurb, dumpr, flickr, flickr album maker, flickriver, flickrtoys, fotoviewr, kubickr, moopix, photos, photoscape, piclens, splashr, tinou, tools

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Two Flickr plugins to be even more ‘cool’ and ‘artsy’

Written on February 27, 2008 – 12:16 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

On The Next Web, we try to give our articles a hip and stylish look by using Flickr pics instead of just another logo. Or as a visitor once said in the comments: “Tryin’ too hard to be cool and artsy”. Well, I think we’re doing pretty good job, you may judge for yourself.

Anyway, I’ve stumbled upon two handy plugins that make being ‘cool’ and ‘artsy’ with Flickr pics even easier. One for Wordpress and one for iPhoto.

Flickr and Wordpress

Australian problogger Darren Rowse wrote about Photo Dropper, a Wordpress plugin that finds Flickr Creative Commons licensed images all from within your Wordpress Dashboard. You can choose three different sizes and attribution links are automatically added underneath the images to comply with the Creative Commons license rules. Get the plugin here.

Flickr and iPhoto

Another great plugin that makes it possible to upload your iPhoto pictures. I’ve found it on Jaap Stronks’ blog and was delighted, since it will lower the barrier for me to upload photos to Flickr. I used to just import them in iPhoto, but now I can put them on Flickr with a few clicks as well.

A free iPhoto export plugin for Flickr. This provides a convenient way to upload your iPhoto descriptions, titles, keywords (tags), and ratings along with your photos. It also supports sets (yay!) and preserves GPS tags and other EXIF data. Flickr is a semi-free photo sharing service/site.

Get FFXporter here.

flickr, howto, iphoto, photos, plugin, wordpress

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Want to impress people with your Flickr pics? Use Animoto

Written on February 5, 2008 – 7:45 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck

I’ve been checking out a lot of new companies and services, but this was the first time I took out my credit card to buy a Pro account within 5 minutes! The service is called Animoto and my prediction is that it’s going to be huge! So I have to share this with you.

Animoto will turn your photos into a video clip that will blow your audience away. Yesterday I’ve made a videoclip for the Bowlr event of last Thursday. You can upload your photos or import them from a third party. Imports from Flickr, Facebook, Smugmug, Photobucket and Picasa are supported by Animoto. After importing your pics you can upload any mp3 file or choose a song from their music store.

Their software will analyze your pics and music and compiles a sweet, sexy and impressive video clip for you.

Check out my first video clip: Chaos @ Bowlr 2008 (feat Lupe Fiasco).

You can try it yourself and make a 30 second clip with a free account, but be aware of the consequences. There’s a big chance you get addicted to the service, grab your credit card, click the ‘I’ll pay you 30 dollars a year’ button and start making clips of your holidays, events, marriages and may be even your pet.

Is it all one big hosanna? Well no, it doesn’t support MP4 files meaning that music bought via iTunes cannot be used in your clips. The interface works fine, but you need to upload your photos every time you want to make a new video. All together this is still my favorite web app of 2008.

animoto, photos, Video Interview, web application

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