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Yahoo-owned social photo site Flickr went dark Tuesday at around 8:50 a.m. PDT. The outage, which remains ongoing at time of this initial post, is keeping users from accessing all parts of the site, however photos that had been embedded on third-party sites are still able to be viewed.

An update on Flickr’s official blog, timestamped at 9:51 a.m. PDT, says “all hands are on deck,” and the problem will soon be resolved. That was followed shortly thereafter by a post at 10:05 a.m. PDT saying that that outage “shouldn’t be too much longer!”

Flickr’s last major outage, which took place back in February 2007, resulted in the company revealing some details about the immensity of the photo sharing site, which at that time was serving close to a billion photos a day.

More details as they come…

Updated 10:55 a.m. PDT: A Yahoo representative had no details on the nature of the outage, but it appears to be a problem with the Web servers rather than a data issue. Yahoo updated the Flickr blog to inform users that photos embedded into a Web site should still be appeared on those sites.

Updated 11:35 a.m. PDT: Flickr is back up and running.

Updated 12:01 p.m. PDT: Flickr released a statement on the outage.

“Flickr regularly makes routine updates to the site – and once in a blue moon we hit a snag in the road. Flickr is now back to normal and no data was lost during this morning’s outage. Members who might have been uploading at the time should have received an error message, but should be able to share photos and videos now. We continued to serve photos to 3rd party sites throughout the service interruption. Thanks for bearing with us and feel free to let the team know if you continue to experience any issues.”

Correction 11:35 a.m. PDT: This story initially misstated that embedded images could not be viewed during the outage.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

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Flickr hit with Tuesday morning outage

Those of you who hate the recent arrival of Yahoo’s logo on Flickr now have an easy way to erase it–and get a number of useful features–as long as you’re using an edgy version of Chrome.

Fittr Flickr lets you click 'EXIF' to expand a box below the image to show photo details.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Chrome extensions let people customize the browser’s behavior, and the Fittr Flickr extension from Gmail programmer Dan Pupius whips Yahoo’s photo-sharing site into shape. Some people use extensions for using Delicious bookmarks, banishing ads, and filling out forms, but this is my favorite Chrome extension so far.

The Yahoo logo is ugly but not too bothersome in my eyes. Instead, what I like best about Fittr Flickr is its keyboard navigation options. Once the extension is installed, you can type “?” to see the options, but the two I now use a lot are “.” and “,” to navigate forward and backward through a person’s photostream. Typing “s” will star a photo as a favorite, and in a nice Google touch harkening to the vi text editor, “/” will put your cursor in the search field.

To use Chrome extensions, though, you must be using the developer preview version of the browser, since extensions are something of a work in progress. (Click to download for Windows or Mac OS X.) I’ve had to restart Chrome sometimes to enable the last two extensions I tried out.

Another nice feature for pixel-peepers such as myself is the addition of an EXIF button below the photo that reveals camera, lens, and exposure details without navigating away from the photo. Nearby are direct links to the small, medium, and large version of the photos.

There are some other nice tidbits, too, involving viewing photos against a black background, comments, and other matters.

Yahoo has to make Flickr appeal to a large swath of people, most of whom probably don’t care about these options. But for me, they unlock some of Flickr’s potential.

Firefox users who want similar technology can try Dustin Diaz’s Quickr Flickr script, which requires the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox to be installed before the script can be added. Greasemonkey fans also can use a number of scripts that will un-Yahoo the logo.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

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How Chrome users can scrub Yahoo logo off Flickr

Flickr galleries let members 'curate' a presentation of up to 18 photos and videos.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Flickr has added a new feature called galleries to showcase photos–and this time not just your own shots.

Galleries, announced on Monday, lets Flickr members assemble collections of up to 18 photos. The photos are shown on the page along with the gallery curator’s comments.

Flickr has a reason for the 18-image limit: it wants to emphasize quality, not quantity.

“While it might seem like an arbitrary number, we want to give our members an opportunity to engage in activity that is similar to what a curator of a gallery or museum might undertake,” the company said on its gallery FAQ site. “Even a sprawling retrospective of a genre or specific artist wouldn’t include every single piece of work available. A curator takes the time to choose a selection of artwork that together becomes something in itself.”

Unfortunately, Galleries does not lift one limit I see for Flickr. It’s good for sharing photos with others, but not so good for assembling multiple members’ photos from group events–say, a family’s photos from a vacation or attendees’ photos of a wedding.

That use seems well-aligned with Flickr’s vision. As a half-measure, Flickr users can create unusual tags to link photos from multiple people, but that’s kind of nerdy, doesn’t offer a lot of control over presentation, and is open to problems with other people using the same tag.

Of course, a member might have concerns about having his or her photos included in somebody else’s gallery. But Flickr provides a mechanism to remove a photo from a specific gallery and a preference setting to keep a user’s photos out of galleries in general.

Overall, the idea of Galleries reinforces some of the social and exploratory aspects of Flickr that help it rise above just a place to stick your photos online. I just hope that the average folks out there can figure out the distinction between Flickr’s sets, collections, galleries, and photo streams. Heaven forbid they add albums to the mix.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

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Flickr adds new photo-sharing idea: Galleries

As a heavy Flickr user, half the time I’m accessing the site from my phone instead of my computer. So when Flickr got its very own iPhone application late Monday night (download link), I was excited to give it a spin. What I found though, is that despite some of its niceties, there are certain things you can only do on the mobile Safari version–many of which are important.

This in itself is odd. After all, native iPhone apps almost always do things Web apps can’t, like store data locally, or make use of on-board hardware. This app does a little bit of both but is missing a few features that I think make viewing and managing your Flickr photos a more compelling experience in Safari’s browser.

For instance, browsing photos cannot be done in landscape mode from the get-go. You’re limited to viewing little thumbnails, then having to click on the image to load it again before being able to view it sideways. The need to do this every time there’s an occasional photo in landscape mode can be a bit tiring, although you’re encouraged to just stay in the full-screen mode. This isn’t so bad if you’re on a good connection, but if you’re on EDGE, or a spotty 3G connection it, can drag on as it takes time to load each image.

But that’s just a small quibble. My real complaint is that the app doesn’t let you make any changes to photos you’ve already uploaded. For instance, you cannot rename a photo or video or give it a description unless you’re uploading it. You’re also unable to add tags or change its privacy level and licensing rights. This could get you into a sticky situation if you, say, uploaded a photo as public that you later wanted to change to private. Such an action would have to be done back over on the mobile Web version.

Flickr's Web version sits on the left, while the new Flickr app is on the right. (Click to enlarge)

(Credit: CNET)

The app’s built-in search is also limited compared with what the mobile Web version offers. There is no advanced search that can restrict results down to what type of media you’re looking for, what format it’s in, and whether SafeSearch is on, which can limit what you’re seeing. You also cannot search through items you’ve bookmarked or just photos from family members.

The app also doesn’t let you truly explore photos other people have taken unless you know them. One of the very best features to come to the mobile Safari version is that it can find out where you are, then show you photos close to your current position. This can be a great way to find things to do or places to go, but the mobile app does not have it. Nor does it have photos from Flickr’s explore section, which picks some of the most interesting shots, and makes them readily available.

So should all these things keep you from using it? Of course not. The app does some things the mobile site just can’t, like pull in dozens of little thumbnails at a time without a page reload. It can save past searches and capture photos and videos that can be uploaded within the app. It also makes it much easier to share photos with friends through e-mail, something that normally required forwarding a link, or copying and pasting an image into an outgoing message.

The other good news is that Yahoo is listening. The company has recently gotten much better about making improvements to its mobile applications based on user feedback. Both the Yahoo IM app and Yahoo Mobile apps for iPhone have received updates that have either added or fixed features. Yahoo also has extra incentive to treat this app with care since the iPhone has already trounced all other camera phones and continues to dance with Canon’s Rebel XTi dSLR to be the most popular camera on the photo service.

What may be interesting to watch play out is whether the app begins to release features that can be used only by paying Flickr pro users. Since there is currently no advertising and the app is free of charge, such a strategy would add incentive to pay up without having to release a separate standalone application.

As for the features that aren’t there yet, patience is a virtue. A Yahoo representative told me that Flickr was “well on the way to designing and implementing” the next version of the app and that fixing many of these gripes is “very realistic.” In the meantime, you can be like me and begrudgingly use both tools.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

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Flickr versus m.Flickr: Which one should you use?

Flickr has adopted a less severe way of handling copyright infringement claims after a small firestorm of controversy erupted about a photograph of President Barack Obama modified to look like The Dark Knight’s rendition of the Joker comic-book villain.

Previously, certain copyright infringement complaints were met with the removal of an image, and if the complaint was overruled, the Flickr member who posted the image was allowed to repost it. After the Joker Obama case, Flickr decided to merely replace the image in question with a message, a move that means the discussion below the image is preserved and that eases republication if the removal is overturned.

The Obama Joker image still is widespread on Flickr.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The move illustrates the complexities that have arisen in the digital era where photos can be transferred and modified with ease. Copyright law is a much older concept than the Internet, though it’s been renovated a bit relatively recently with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Under the DMCA, a party holding copyright to a photo or other work can request that a Web site remove content posted by a third party that infringes that copyright; the Web site can avoid liability in the matter if it takes down the work in question when it receives the notice of infringement. The DMCA also includes a provision to let the third party that published the content challenge the claim.

The Joker Obama image was swept up in this DMCA process in August. The resulting discussion led the Yahoo photo-sharing site to change its policy Tuesday:

“Upon receipt of a complete NOI (notice of infringement), the U.S. Copyright Team will replace the image with a new static image that bears the following copy: ‘This image has been removed due to a claim of copyright infringement,’” said Heather Champ, Flickr’s director of community, in a comment.

The change was the suggestion of a Flickr user, The Searcher, and Flickr said it liked the idea.

The Obama Joker image was posted on the Flickr site of Firas Alkhateeb, who told the Los Angeles Times he created the Obama Joker image using Photoshop and a Time Magazine cover photograph. The Obama Joker image spread farther after somebody else created a poster with the image and the word “socialism.”

Flickr, though, removed the image after it received a DMCA notice of infringement, Champ said in a forum posting.

Among those to criticize the move were Thomas Hawk, an outspoken critic of what he sees as Flickr censorship and the chief executive of Flickr rival Zooomr. He argued in a blog post that the image qualified as a parody under the fair-use provision of copyright law that permits some uses of copyright material.

“Whatever you may or may not think about this image and its appropriateness, the image would absolutely and unequivocally be considered parody and parody has always been one of the most effective defenses against any copyright complaint,” Hawk wrote.

Added TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington, “In the past Flickr has deleted accounts of users who are critical of President Obama, but as far as I know nothing like this was done to users who were critical of Bush. It’s clear that the Flickr team wanted to take this image down.”

However, image copying and modification permissions can vary according to context. While creating a parody from an image might be permitted under fair use, copying that parody might not be.

And there’s evidence some original rights holders aren’t involved. Photo District News reported that Time and DC Comics both said they hadn’t send Yahoo the DMCA notice, and that the office of the original Obama photographer, Platon, wasn’t even aware of the controversy.

Hawk also quoted the DMCA notice Flickr sent Alkhateeb letter that identified the infringement complainant to be Edward Przydzia.

Yahoo hasn’t detailed its rationale for removing the image, saying its privacy policy forbids it from discussing particulars of the situation. However, it did indicate politics were not involved.

“There appears to be a whole lot of makey uppey going in the news and blogosphere about this event,” Champ said in a forum post. “We very much value freedom of speech and creativity…I’m not sure how complying with the law has led to the idea that we (the Flickr team) have a particular political agenda.”

Originally posted at Deep Tech

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Flickr treads more lightly in copyright matter