Tag Archives: flickr

Yahoo! Silences Rebekka In Photo Theft Outrage

Thomas Hawk has news of a bizarre decision from Yahoo! over at Flickr regarding the theft of Rebekkas work

So what’s got me pissed today? What’s got me pissed today is that according to Rebekka, Flickr has removed her image from their site. That’s right. Not only did they remove and kill her image and her *non-violent* words of protest, but they censored each and every one of us who commented on her photograph, who offered support to Rebekka, who shared in her frustration by wiping every single one of our comments off the face of the internet forever.

According to Rebekka, Flickr’s explanation?

“Flickr is not a venue for to you harass, abuse, impersonate, or intimidate others. If we receive a valid complaint about your conduct, we will send you a warning or
terminate your account.”

WTF?!?

So a flickr photographer gets ripped off. Dares to complain about it. Has an outpouring of support on the internet over it and Yahoo decides censorship is the way to handle this? This is the worst I’ve seen from Yahoo yet.

Many of us worried when Yahoo! took over Flickr. It seems some of those worries might be well founded.

Popular photographers like Thomas and Rebekka are people who built Flickr into the community it is (yes community, not just a picture hosting site). Even if they were not known at all, Yahoo! should be helping them not silencing them. To pour injustice on injustice is …. well, regardless of right and wrong, it’s bad for business.

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JPG Magazine Imploding?

Recall JPG magazine, the glossy magazine that took contributions from Flickr users? It seems there has been a corporate falling-out and Derek and Heather (the founders) are leaving …Derek tells his story

Unfortunately, issue 10 will be the last one that Heather and I will have a hand in. We are no longer working for JPG Magazine or 8020 Publishing.

It’s a great shame, the magazine had a lot going for it. Probably still does. But you have to think a magazine founded on community support is at the mercy of that community. A community that loves Derek and Heather …

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Nested Sets Coming To Flickr

I have long wanted to organise my Flickr sets into some sort of hierarchy. It seems Flickr have heard the transatlantic whining and set about giving us the ability to put sets in sets.

Thomas Hawk quotes Stewart Butterfield:

“We’re doing the final testing and design tweaks now :) ” and “You’ll be able to go five levels deep (beyond that seemed a little silly, but we’ll see how people end up using it).” .

I’m sure this will be a much used (and abused) feature. It got me thinking though how cool it would be to have much more control of the layout.

Right now your flickr page is organised pretty much chronologically as a stream. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the ability to perhaps put up a welcome message? Highlight your best stuff as well as your recent stuff? Your top tags? When a visitor arrives at the moment there is nothing to orient them, unless your recent stuff is good they are unlikely to go much deeper.

I realise the way most people find my flickr photos is through my blogs or through flickr groups, but I think more people would promote their Flickr URL if they mutated into something more useful.

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Flickr Rethinks Contact Limit

Thomas Hawk has reported that Flickr has rethought the cap on Flickr contacts. Now reciprocal contacts will not be counted towards the limit, allowing people to amass larger numbers of contacts.

More info at Thomas’ blog post.

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Flickr Losing Lustr

Flickr have decided to downgrade their service. First downgrade won’t affect most of us, I don’t know many people who will be too upset with this one:

the new maximum number of contacts is 3,000 contacts (good luck with that), and each photo on Flickr can have a maximum of 75 tags.

It’s the second that has me upset:

On March 15th, 2007 we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.

I hate hate HATE Yahoo! logins. I don’t use Yahoo! services, any of them, despite my ISP being affiliated with them.  My hope is that Flickr have a change of heart, or at least don’t further break their up to now excellent service with further backward “improvements” otherwise when my paid membership is used up I will be one of the many leaving. Restricting contacts etc, that just confirms their madness, but inflicting the sucky Yahoo! user account (and all that entails) just … annoys, irritates, blows.

It’s not the end of the world, certainly not the apocalypse you would think reading the forums, and believe me I feel for the Flickr dudes and dudettes who are taking the flak right now for this.

Thomas Hawk has done a great job rounding up the members reactions.

Flickr needs to reverse the asinine decisions made today to force people to merge their accounts with Yahoo and to place new limits on your contacts and tags.

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Flickr ups space limits, Christmas Easter Egg

ho ho ho meFlickr has dropped an early Christmas present, upping accounts space limits

unlimited uploads — the two gigabyte monthly limit is no more (yep, pro users have no limits on how many photos they can upload)! At the same time, we’ve upped the limit for free account members as well, from 20MB per month up to 100MB (yep, five times more)!

I’m sure this will come in very handy and is a welcome improvement. While most people I know on the basic accounts do not really reach their account limits very often it can be frustrating the one time they need more. This will make the chance of this happening even more rare.

Much more fun is the Christmas Easter Egg (if there is such a thing!), add a note to a photograph in your Flickr stream saying “ho ho ho hat” or “ho ho ho beard” for a festive treat.

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