fastr, a classic flickr game

One of my favorite flickr games is fastr. Fastr tests your tag guessing skills by displaying photos from a particlar tag one at a time. You play against all the other users on the site and the first to guess the tag gets the most points. I love it because it is simple and it brings out the competitive side in me because I know I'm playing against other people. Fastr was one of the first flickr games to come out and its truly an oldy but goody. Check it out!

flickr + pictionary = flictionary

Here is a great flickr mashup that uses flickr to implement the game pictionary. It works well and is a wonerful time waster. Check it out!

Favorites Explorer

Favorites Explorer is a great app for browsing through your favorite pictures on Flickr. It allows you to arrange your favorites by the flickr user that posted them making it easier to see other people's favorites. The idea is that if you've marked somebodies photo as a favorite then you will probably like their favorites. Its another great way to discover photos on flickr. Check it out!

Inspect Flickr Users With flickrInspector

If you want to get information about a particular flickr user, flickrInspector is an excellent tool. flickrInspector provides all the information about a flickr user thats publicly available including photos, favorite, tags, score an most interesting photos all on one concise, well designed page. Check it out!

flickrInspector is a non-commercial website, that displays publicly available data about single flickr users. flickr itself is probably the most amazing photo sharing site. this is by no means an official tool by the makers of flickr (or yahoo), it's just what i, nils k. windisch aka netomer programmed in my free time to enhance user experience.

Edit Flickr Images Online

Preloadr is a tool you can use to edit your Flickr photos online. If you have a photo that needs some touch up or tweeking this is the app to use. You could use Photoshop (which is outrageously expensive) or some other image editing desktop software such as GIMP but Preloadr will do most anything that you'd want to do to your flickr pix. You can crop, rotate, add text, histogram, scale, move, resize and more with Preloadr. If you are a seasoned Photoshop veteran you will be happy to know that Preloadr has a very Photoshop like interface complete with layers. And no download or installation is required, its all run from your browser and is completely free. Preloadr is one hell of a flickr application!

Retrievr

I have no earthly clue how they did this, but Retrievr is an absolutely amazing application that searches flickr based upon drawings that you create. For example, draw a smiley face and it will return pictures of people or other animals smiling. Dray a frowining face and it will return pictures of people/animals frowning. The more artistically inclined you are, the better results you will get, but it works even for the most crude drawings. Check it out!

Related Tag Browser

One of my favorite things to do is surf Flickr using random tags that pop in my head. I could spend hours doing this. Related Tag Browser is a nice way of browsing tags on flickr. The best part about it is the interface, it uses flash to display photos and tags in a very unique, fun, intuitive and user friendly way. Check it out!

Flickr Toys

As many of you know, Flickr has one of the most extensive web APIs out there today. In geekless terms this means that they provide tools for allowing programmers to access their system in order to build upon it and create great new applications based on Flickr. There are so many great web apps and mashups that leverage the Flickr API that it will be the subject of many posts to come on Flickr Hacks, but I wanted to let you know about a few of them now:

FD's Flickr Toys is a collection of some very cool Flickr tools. I've spent alot of time playing around here. Make sure to check out the Photo Wall and if you are in the market for a digital camera, check out the Top Digital Cameras tool which will tell you which cameras are the most popular for taking pictures on Flickr.

Fastr is a very addictive game that where you are pitted against other players by trying to guess which tag that a group of pictures represents. Fastr also comes in widget form so you can put it on your myspace page or blog.

Badgr is a great little widget for displaying your flickr picks on your blog. You can read more about it on my sister blog, Myspace Hacks.

Splashr is a great little tool for creating cool presentations and slideshows with your flickr pictures.

... and there are many many more to come!

Geo Tagging Your Photos

Last week Flickr introduced the highly anticipated Geo Tag capabilities so that you can now associate a location with your photos. Its extremely easy to get started doing this, all you have to do is log into your flickr account, select the "manage" link, and then select the "Map" tab. Now geotag your photos by navigating around the Yahoo! map, zooming in/out and dragging photos onto the map. Flickr allows you to both privately and publically tag photos.

What makes geotagging so cool is that it provides you with a whole new way to view flickr photos. Now you can navigate a map of all your (and other people's) photos zooming in and out to get more precise locations for pictures to view. You can associate a photo with any latitude/longitude coordinates which allow you to get extremely precise tagging photos only a few feet apart. This will make it easier to connect with other flickr users in your area that have similar interests. Not to mention it gives you a way to easily access photos of a particular place.

Here are a couple very short videos (less than a minute) that will have you geotagging your flickr photos like a pro in no time:

Geotagging your flickr photos.
How to explore photos on the map.

Whats really amazing is that over just one week of this feature being released there are already over 3 million geo tagged photos on flickr!

Flickr Leech

Flickr Leech is a great mashup application that allows you to search for and view a large number of thumbnails at a time, making it faster and easier to look at pictures. I love looking at tons of photos and I have a pretty smokin fast internet connection which makes Flickr Leech a pretty ideal app for browsing Flickr. Flickr Leech allows you to search through photos by user, set, pool, tag and favorites. Check it out!

Welcome to Flickr Hacks!

Here you will find articles and resources that will help you get the best out of your Flickr experience. Flickr Hacks is in no way associated with Yahoo! or Flickr. Thanks for stopping by!