All tools have in common that they can be used to download public photos that are hosted on Flickr. They differ in handling and features though.

The latest addition is Flickr Photo Downloader, a lightweight easy to use Java application. Everything is configured in the main application interface. Here you can enter the Flickr user account name that you want photos downloaded from.

The download directory is automatically adjusted by the downloader. That’s handy for users who do not want to configure the download location manually, but it is possible for users who want to change it manually to another location on the computer.

The remaining settings are for the photo size, which can be small, medium or large, and the number of pages that should be downloaded by the software.

A click on the download button initiates the process. The download speed depends on the network bandwidth. One issue here is that the program is not displaying a progress bar or indicator. That’s usually not a problem for smaller sized downloads but could be problematic for larger downloads as it is not clear when the downloads will finish. You could look into the download directory to see if there is progress, but that is the only way.

Flickr Photo Downloader displays a message at the end that all photo downloads have been completed.

The program saves the photos by default into the user directory. The dialog has an option to open the folder containing the newly downloaded photos directly. Users who have to use a proxy to connect to the Internet can configure one under the Settings menu link.

The program seems to block downloads if the page count goes out of bounds. Flickr Photo Downloader is a small handy software to download photos from Flickr. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system and available at the project’s Google Code homepage. (via)

SuprSetr basically improves the photo set capabilities of Flickr, and here in particular the organizational process of Flickr set management. When you run the program for the first time after installation (under Windows) you are asked to authorize the application on Flickr to enable access to a user’s photos on the photo hosting site.

The program opens an authorization url in the default browser. This is a specific Flickr page where the user can accept or deny the authorization. Once authorized a list of all existing photosets are retrieved from Flickr. All sets are set to unmanaged at the beginning, which means that SuprSetr has no additional information about the sets that have been retrieved from Flickr.

The main window of the program displays a list of the photo sets. All managed sets are listed first, followed by unmanaged sets in alphabetic order. It is optionally possible to hide all unmanaged sets from the View menu.

The toolbar at the top offers buttons to add, edit, delete and refresh the sets, and to use the filter text box at the top which filters sets by their title. Sets can be viewed on Flickr with a right-click and the selection of Open Set in Browser from the context menu.

To manage sets, double-click one. This takes you to the Set Editor window. The first step is to check the Manage this set with SuprSetr box, the second to define the parameters that become available afterwards. Parameters include tags, date taken and uploaded and sorting.

Once you define the parameters of the set, SuprSetr will know how to search your Flickr stream for photos that match the parameters, and can then update the content of the photoset based on the search results. SuprSetr will add and remove photos from the set to make it match the results of the search. However, SuprSetr will NEVER delete photos from your photostream.

SuprSetr comes with additional tools and options. This includes Twitter integration to tweet whenever new photos are added to specific sets or all sets. Messages can be customized with placeholders:

• %t – This will be replaced with the photoset title
• %u – This will be replaced with the photoset URL. The URL will be shortened with bit.ly
• %c – This will be replaced with the number of photos that were added to the photoset
• %C – This will be replaced with the total number of photos in the photoset

The Tools menu leads to some nice to have tools like FavrTagr which analyzes all photos on Flickr based on the number of favs that they have received. For every ten favorites a new tag will be added in the form fav10, fav20, fav30 and so on. It is possible to create a new set based on these tags.

A second tool that is available is the Set Ordering Tool which can be used to reorder the list of photosets on Flickr.

Flickr users who work with photo sets and need better manageability of their sets can download SuprSetr from the project website.

Users who want to migrate usually want to take their photos hosted on another service to the new service. Flickr or Facebook users can make use of the excellent Fotobounce to do that. Melanie reviewed FotoBounce’s face recognition capabilities recently. The photo organizer is versatile and supports downloading of all photos hosted on either photo hosting service.

Please note that Adobe Air is required to install Fotobounce. Photographers who only want to migrate their accounts can install the program, download all their photos and uninstall it again when the migration completed successfully.

Options to log in to Facebook and Flickr are displayed on the left sidebar after application start. A click on login launches a new window where you are asked to enter your login credentials for the selected service and to allow the application access to it.

A click on the account name after authorization displays all albums of that user on the screen. It is alternatively possible to switch to a photo preview mode instead.

It is possible to download individual albums one after the other, or all photos at once. A right-click on an album or photos displays a context menu with options to download the selection to the local computer system.

There does not seem to be an option to download all photo albums on Flickr or Facebook at once. This could be problematic for users with many photo albums, especially if they want to retain the folder structure on Picasa.

Still, it is a one time operation and the downloading is fast and straightforward. Users who prefer a software that is able to download all photos in one go can take a look at the previously reviewed Downloadr that can backup Flickr account.

Fotobounce can be downloaded from the developer website. The software weights in at an astonishing 70 Megabytes. It is available for Windows and Mac computer systems (inspiration taken from Caschy)

Photo hosting is one of the most popular online services on today’s Internet. The most popular sites like Flickr, Google Picasa or Photobucket limited the free online space to a few Gigabytes at the most.

With the introduction of Google+ comes a change that could change the photo hosting landscape significantly. Google announced today that Picasa is now offering unlimited photo hosting for all of its users.

Here is how it looks:

• Google+ users: 1 GB of free storage space, photos of a maximum dimension of 2048×2048 do not count against the limit. This basically means that Google+ users can upload as many photos to Picasa as they want, as long as the photos do not exceed that resolution.
• Google users: Users without a Google+ account get the same free storage space but a lower maximum resolution that users can upload for free. The resolution that does not count against their photo hosting space if the maximum resolution is not larger than 800×800 pixels.

All photos that are uploaded to Google+ by the user are automatically resized to 2048×2048 on their longest edge. Both accounts have in common that videos of a playtime of 15 minutes or less do not count against the storage space as well.

Users who reach the storage limitation of their Picasa account will have their photos automatically resized so that they do not count against the storage limit.

Another interesting aspect is that this is not restricted solely to Picasa. All Google products and services that allow you to upload videos and photos benefit from the same rules. This includes blogger or Google Maps for instance.

The big question is this. Is the move towards unlimited photo hosting space a try to get Google account owners to switch to Google+, or is it less related? The thing that speaks against a promotional feature is the fact that users cannot simply sign up for a Google+ account at this point in time, as it is invite only. The thing that speaks for it is the close proximity to the Google+ launch, and the fact that Google needs to make their service attractive as possible to be able to compete with the heavyweight Facebook.

What’s your take on this?

Update: PhotoBucket got rid of photo hosting space restrictions exactly a month ago.

Want to know where Michael Arrington, Techcrunch founder was on January 23? In a building near the San Francisco airport. What did he wear? His urban spoon tshirt. Everyone can extract those information with the help of the software.

Creepy can also search for usernames on Twitter or Flickr. The software needs to be authorized before it can be used to search for Twitter users, the Flickr search on the other hand works right of the box.

The people tracker extracts the geolocation information from various sources.On Twitter,geolocation information added by mobile device tweets are used as well as IP address to location lookups if the web interface was used to write a message. For photos, both EXIF tags and geolocation information that are accessible through the image hosting services API are used

Creepy is actually making use of more services, not only Twitter and Flickr. It uses Foursquare as well but only for check-ins currently that are posted on Twitter, and more than a dozen image hosting services including Twitpic, Twitgoo or Img.ly.

The service displays the location of the user on Google Maps by default. This can be changed in the options to one of the other available services.

The effectiveness of the tracking depends largely on the user’s knowingly or unknowingly use of the service’s geolocation feature.

Is the use of the application legal or ethical? The geolocation data is freely accessibly, all that Creepy does is provide an optimized interface that collects and displays all relevant information directly.

Privacy conscious users may want to test Creepy by searching for their own accounts to see if they reveal any information that they do not want to reveal to the public.

Creepy can be downloaded from the developer website over at Github.

Yesterday Flickr announced that they have extended the feature to allow all users, new and existing, to sign in to the service with either a Google ID or Facebook ID.

What does it mean? It means that it is now possible to link a Flickr account to either a Google or Facebook account and use the information from that account to log in from then on.

Flickr users who do not use other Yahoo services can effectively remove the Yahoo account from the list of active accounts, if they choose to do so.

All that needs to be done is to click on the Facebook or Google button on the Flickr sign in page. This opens the login prompt of the selected service where users need to enter their username and password. They then need to select Sign In to connected on the next step to link the Yahoo account with the selected account on Facebook or Flickr.

• Sign out of Flickr from the top right of any page.
• Sign back in.
• You will see Google & Facebook sign-in buttons. If you don’t see them click “Sign in with another account”
• Enter your Google or Facebook login info.
• Now you should see this screen to enter your Yahoo! ID.
• This is where you will setup logging in with Google or Facebook

The Flickr team has added another interesting option. Flickr users who use Facebook or Google as their login ID can share their public photos automatically on Facebook when they upload them to Flickr. Users who like the option need to configure the connection with Facebook in the Flickr account settings.

(Flickr blog, via)

Another popular choice are wallpaper rotators that change images regularly. These images are either taken from a local pool of images or from an online source.

Flickr Wallpaper Rotator, as the name suggests, uses Flickr’s photo library as the resource.

Wallpapers are either found through the use of tags or by specifying a Flickr user. The wallpaper rotator supports multiple tags and offers to sort them by factors such as relevance or data of publication. Photos can also be selected from a particular user only.

Wallpapers are rotated every six hours by default and stretched if their resolution is smaller than the desktop resolution.

The wallpaper rotation is flexible, allowing users to design the rotation interval from mere seconds to months. Wallpapers can also be tiled or centered.

Desktop wallpapers are rotated in the selected interval. Users can use the get new wallpaper option to manually get a new wallpaper that is then used as the background image until the next image is downloaded automatically by the application.

Flickr Wallpaper Rotator needs to run in the background for the wallpaper changing. An Internet connection is required as well to download the wallpapers from Flickr. It is theoretically possible to kill the application after it has changed the wallpaper as the new wallpaper will remain even after the application has been closed.

The developer should consider adding an option to exit the application after changing the wallpaper. The Windows Task Scheduler seems to be the best option for users who want to automate that process right now.

Flickr Wallpaper Rotator requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. The program needs elevated rights at least on Windows 7. A download is available at the Codeplex project page. (via)

The userscript Image Search Preview changes that for users of the Firefox web browser. The userscript does not seem to work in Google Chrome after installation. Image Search Preview by default will display the original image on hover on the same page.

Users who only want to view the images can do so more easily just by hovering over them in the image search results. The script is currently working on a number of sites, including the popular image search engines Google Images, Bing Images, Yahoo Images as well as Flickr.

Larger image previews is just one of the features that the userscript brings to the table. It can for instance be configured to display direct links to the original images on the thumbnail pages. This makes it possible to download images directly from a search results page or image listing page without visiting the site or page the image is hosted on.

Firefox users need to change the preferences of the userscript for that and a few other features available. To open the preferences users need to click in the search box on a supported website and press the keyboard combination Ctrl-Y or Ctrl-P.

A configuration menu is opened with options to enable direct links. Other options available are to set a maximum height or width for the image previews, a background color for images with transparency and a delay before the image is shown (to avoid accidental previews if the mouse moves over an image preview area).

Firefox users need to install the Greasemonkey add-on before they can install the userscript.

Element Photo Gallery is a desktop application for Windows that is not as heavyweight as Picasa or Windows live Photo Gallery. The 2 Megabyte program can manage multiple albums on the system easily.

New photos are loaded by selecting a folder or photos directly. Import works pretty much automated from that point on. Users with photos in many different folders will notice that an option to crawl subfolders is missing during import, each folder has to be selected separately.

element photo gallery

Photos are scanned and displayed as thumbnails in the program interface. A double-click opens a larger view of the selected photo, with options to change or edit the title, time taken or description. The same menu offers basic photo editing options like adjusting the colors, size or dimensions of the photo. And the notorious red eye removal is available as well.

photo editing

The photo preview window offers additional options to zoom in and out of the current photo, rotate it or navigate to the next or previous photo in the photo album.

On the publishing side, there are options to burn photo albums to CD or DVD, post images to Flickr or Facebook, email them to other users, create a basic HTML web gallery or print them on a local printer.

Finally, there are options to search the photo collection and to view a slideshow of the photos in the selected album.

Element Photo Gallery is a lightweight photo management software for the Windows operating system. It offers a lot that users want to see, without going overboard with the feature set.

It is probably best suited for medium sized photo collections. The program can be downloaded directly from the developer website over at Element Software. The program requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 installed.

Windows 7 for instance comes with an option to add a selection of wallpapers to one theme, to cycle automatically through them over time, which is commonly referred to as wallpaper juggling. The intervals can be set between 10 seconds and 1 day. Another feature that has not received the attention it deserves yet are RSS desktop wallpapers.

The integration of RSS wallpapers has been another step towards greater personalization, even though the feature has not become that popular yet. The main reasons for this are that most Windows 7 users probably do not know that the feature exists, and those that do probably do not know how to create RSS wallpaper feeds in Windows 7. This article acts as a guide to explain how to create Windows 7 RSS themes easily.

We will be using Flickr RSS feeds to create the Windows 7 RSS themes, but the information can easily be used to create RSS themes from other photo sources or wallpaper sites as well.

The major requirement for the RSS feed is that the photos are added as attachments to the feed. We recommend to make use of the RSS preview feature in the web browser to see if the photos are attached, if they are the RSS feed can be used for the RSS theme in Windows 7, if not it cannot be used as the photos cannot be downloaded and integrated then.

Step 1: Finding an appropriate RSS feed at Flickr

Open up Flickr. We recommend a browser like Firefox that displays the availability of RSS feeds in the address bar.

rss feed icon

A click on that icon displays a preview of the RSS feed in the browser. Note that the photos are attached in the feed.

rss wallpaper

A good starting point are tags and groups which mostly come with a compatible RSS feed.

For this tutorial, we have decided to use the Wallpaper 1024 Minimum group at Flickr. One major problem is that it is not possible to find groups or tags that use the exact desktop resolution of the computer desktop.Most wallpaper sites, like Interfacelift for instance offer feeds for the exact resolution.

Before we can use the RSS feed we need to create a theme template. The following template remains the same. Create a new text document on the computer desktop and paste the following contents into it.

[Theme]
DisplayName={themename}

[Slideshow]
Interval=1800000
Shuffle=1
RssFeed={rssfeedurl}

[Control Panel\Desktop]
TileWallpaper=0
WallpaperStyle=10
Pattern=

[Control Panel\Cursors]
AppStarting=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_working.ani
Arrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_arrow.cur
Crosshair=
Hand=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_link.cur
Help=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_helpsel.cur
IBeam=
No=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_unavail.cur
NWPen=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_pen.cur
SizeAll=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_move.cur
SizeNESW=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nesw.cur
SizeNS=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ns.cur
SizeNWSE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nwse.cur
SizeWE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ew.cur
UpArrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_up.cur
Wait=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_busy.ani
DefaultValue=Windows Aero
Link=

[VisualStyles]
Path=%SystemRoot%\resources\themes\Aero\Aero.msstyles
ColorStyle=NormalColor
Size=NormalSize
ColorizationColor=0X6B74B8FC
Transparency=1

[MasterThemeSelector]
MTSM=DABJDKT

Additional information about each variable can be found at MSDN, for know we concentrate on the two parameters that are important for the creation of RSS themes.

There are two variables that we need to change. First, at the very top the DisplayName. Change {themename} to your theme’s name, e.g. wallpaper 1024

Next, locate the RssFeed= variable and replace {rssfeedurl] with the RSS feed url of the Flickr Group RSS feed, in this case http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=40961104@N00&lang=en-us&format=atom

The new theme should look like this now:

[Theme]
DisplayName=Wallpaper 1024

[Slideshow]
Interval=1800000
Shuffle=1
RssFeed=http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=40961104@N00&lang=en-us&format=atom

[Control Panel\Desktop]
TileWallpaper=0
WallpaperStyle=10
Pattern=

[Control Panel\Cursors]
AppStarting=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_working.ani
Arrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_arrow.cur
Crosshair=
Hand=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_link.cur
Help=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_helpsel.cur
IBeam=
No=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_unavail.cur
NWPen=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_pen.cur
SizeAll=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_move.cur
SizeNESW=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nesw.cur
SizeNS=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ns.cur
SizeNWSE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nwse.cur
SizeWE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ew.cur
UpArrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_up.cur
Wait=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_busy.ani
DefaultValue=Windows Aero
Link=

[VisualStyles]
Path=%SystemRoot%\resources\themes\Aero\Aero.msstyles
ColorStyle=NormalColor
Size=NormalSize
ColorizationColor=0X6B74B8FC
Transparency=1

[MasterThemeSelector]
MTSM=DABJDKT

Save the text document as wallpaper1024.theme. A simple double-click will activate the theme. A theme can also be added to the available themes by moving it into the theme directory in Windows 7. The full path is given below.

Windows 7 displays a Subscribe to RSS Feed notification during installation, make sure to select Download Attachments so that all attachments are downloaded and changed in intervals.

subscribe to rss feed

Again, there is a black screen in the beginning and it may take a few moments before the first desktop wallpaper is shown. It is now possible to customize the theme further in the personalization control panel applet. Options are for instance to click on Desktop Background to change the interval in which pictures are changed, or the picture position.

Below is the RSS theme that we have created. Feel free to post links to your RSS themes in the comments.

wallpaper

Lastly, a few tips to manage themes more efficiently. Windows 7 identifies themes by their name. If you run into troubles make sure to rename the theme in the template – and not the file name, so that it is recognized as a new theme by the operating system.

Themes are stored in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes, you can delete installed themes from there easily.

Flickr in a recent blog posting announced that they have created an improved way of sharing Flickr photos with friends on Facebook.

All that it takes now is to connect the Facebook and Flickr account to automatically post information about new photos and videos uploaded to the Flickr photo hosting site on Facebook.

facebook flickr

Only public images that are rated safe will be posted on Facebook after they have been uploaded to Flickr. Images marked as Friends/Family or Private won’t be sent. There is a ten minute delay to give the user enough time to edit the photo before it gets shared.

To connect Flickr and Facebook go to this page and follow the instructions. You are asked to log into your Yahoo account first. The following page is then loaded automatically.

flickr facebook connect

A click on the connect button loads the Facebook page with the Facebook account login prompt. A confirmation message is displayed in the end notifying the user that the two accounts have been linked.

link facebook yahoo

Information about new public photos that are uploaded to Flickr are from that moment on shared on Facebook. The only option to avoid that uploaded photos are shared is to set them to private or friends and family during upload.

In this article I am going to introduce you to the GNOME Flickr uploader Postr. It’s simple to install and simple to use.

Features

Postr offers some fairly straight-forward features such as:

• Simple user interface.
• Common attributes for photos.
• Nautilus integration.
• Session management.

Installation

Installation is simple, thanks to the fact that Postr is located in your standard repositories. Just follow these directions:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool (such as Synaptic, Ubuntu Software Center, Packagekit, etc).
2. Search for “postr” (no quotes).
3. Mark Postr for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it! You are ready to set up Postr.

Linking to your account

This of course assumes you already have a Flickr account. To open Postr click on Applications > Graphics > Flickr Uploader and Postr will open. When you first run Postr a small window will appear with a link asking you to Login to Flickr. Click that link and your web browser will open to the Flickr login page. You have to walk through a couple of steps on that page. If you do not finish the authorization steps on the Flickr site Postr will not gain access and will return an error 108. Once you have done that click the Continue button on the Postr window. You will know you have successfully linked to your Flickr account when the Upload button on Postr is no longer grayed out.

Adding and uploading photos

Figure 1

This is very simple. To add and upload photos follow these steps:

1. Click the “+” symbol (see Figure 1).
2. Navigate to the directory housing your photos.
3. Select the photo(s) you want to upload (use the <Ctrl> button to add multiple photos).
4. Click Open.
5. Click the Upload button.

Your photos will then upload to your Flickr account.

There are, of course, other methods of uploading to Flickr. Thanks to Postr’s Nautilus integration you can also upload like this:

1. Open up Nautilus.
2. Navigate to the location of your photos.
3. Right click a photo you want to upload.
4. Select Upload to Flickr.
5. When Postr opens click the Upload button.

That’s it!

You can of course add information to your photos before you upload them. You can also add photos to sets, send them to groups, and set privacy settings from within Postr. NOTE: You can not create sets from within Postr. You will have to create those on your Flickr page. Once you have sets created, you can then add photos to the sets before you upload them.

Final thoughts

If you are a frequent Flickr user, you should do yourself a favor and start using Postr. It’s simple to use and will save you time.

Developers have found ways to reduce the number of those elements on the image hosting sites. Add-ons like Adblock Plus or NoScript reduce the clutter on those websites so that it is easier to access the images on those websites.

Show Just Image is a userscript that supports almost 100 different image hosts among them popular sites like Flickr, Fapomatic and Photobucket.

The script redirects image requests on supported image hosting sites from their standard pages to the actual address of the image so that the image gets loaded in the web browser without the surrounding page.

Flickr images will for instance be automatically displayed in their largest size in the web browser. The script seems to handle image requests on all supported image hosts the same way.

The script redirects the initial request from the original page after it has been loaded so that the full size image is loaded and displayed in the web browser.

The script is fully compatible with the Firefox web browser. The Greasemonkey add-on needs to be installed. It might also be compatible with other web browsers but this has not been tested.

Downloadr is a top of its class application as it provides all the functionality one would expect from a downloader with ease of use that makes it possible to start downloading photos from Flickr in just a few clicks.

It supports authentication when needed but can also be run by users who do not have a Flickr account. A search can be conducted by entering tags, a username, fulltext or places with additional filters like dates or creative common photos available.

50 Flickr photos are displayed per page by default which can be changed in the options. All it actually takes to download the photos is to select some or all that have been returned by the software followed by clicking on the Download selected button. Downloadr will always download the largest available photo size from Flickr.

Photos can be previewed in a larger size in the application. Information about the photographer, tags, exif data and photo are retrieved and displayed in the preview window as well.

A right-click on any search result displays various additional options including related tags that can be searched for, loading the photo page on Flickr or searching for additional photos taken by the user who took the photo.

Authentication is required before private photos can be downloaded. A handy backup option is provided to backup all photos in just a few clicks.

Exif and IPTC data is automatically written so that the information are preserved in the photo downloads. The developer of the Flickr photo downloader has created a screencast that demonstrates the functionality.

Downloadr is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems including 64-bit editions. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5.

There are basically two options to access Flickr if it has been blocked in the computer network or on the local computer system. The first option are proxy servers, the second an alternate url.

Proxy servers are used by millions of users a day to access websites that have been blocked in their computer networks. They are especially popular to access blocked social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace but also other popular websites like Youtube or Flickr.

Proxies tend to get banned fast by network administrators who basically need to check the traffic logs to find and ban the proxy servers used by company employees.

More interesting than using proxy servers – which can also pose a security risk if the user wants to log into Flickr – is the use of an alternate url that provides full Flickr functionality.

All that needs to be done is to replace www.flickr.com with www.flickr.mud.yahoo.com. The latter will open the same page that the default url would open and users can perform all activities on Flickr normally.

The alternate url might be blocked in some networks as well depending on the rules used to block the photo hosting sites. It will not work if the word “flickr” has been blocked in urls or page titles but it will work fine if the admins have only blocked partial urls like *.flickr.com. (via My Digital Life)

It works with direct connections of the photo frame but also memory cards and other storage devices that might be used to update the photo storage on the digital photo frame.

The program itself is easy to use but not so easy to setup as it requires quite a bit of configuration before it can be used. The software comes with a configuration utility that needs to be executed during the first connection.

This tool scans the connected devices and tries to identify the digital photo frame that is connected to the PC. The user has to pick a drive letter manually if that fails.

Probably the most difficulty parts of the configuration are the selection of the frame type and setting the api key, authentication token and shared secret under Flickr Options. The developer of Flickr2Frame has published a tutorial that walks the user through the process of getting those information and entering them into the software.

The main software program will then download photos under the selected label and user account from Flickr to the designated storage space on the device. if the digital photo frame is connected directly it will automatically move them in the right directory (erasing all files in that directory first) so that they can be displayed afterwards. An option to keep the photos that are already in the directory would be really nice to avoid losing photos this way.

Flickr2Frame is available at the Codeplex website. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 and requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 or higher to be installed on the computer system it is being executed on.

But there are also extensions that are created by Google and Slideshow is one of them. Slideshow is an excellent extension for viewing image and photo slide shows on the Internet. The extension is currently compatible with the following four popular photo hosting websites: Flickr, Google Picasa, Facebook and Google Images.

The slide show extension will automatically recognize additional photos on pages on the supported websites and display those photos in a thumbnail bar at the bottom of the screen. A click on any of the thumbnails will load the photo in the slideshow view. This recognition process takes a while depending on the number of photos found on the website.

The photo slide show extension will also display a slideshow icon in the Google Chrome address bar that indicates that a slideshow can be opened that displays the photos hosted on that page.

The user viewing the slideshow can load new photos with the mouse by clicking on them in the thumbnail bar at the bottom of the screen. It is furthermore possible to use the left and right cursor keys on the computer keyboard to navigate in the slide show instead.

A click on the x icon next to the image name will close the slideshow and return the user to the page the slideshow was launched on. Slideshow is an interesting extension for the Google Chrome web browser, especially for users who regularly visit at least one of the supported websites. The photo slide show extension is comfortable to work with. Only the lack of supported photo hosting websites and the delay until the slideshow controls are displayed are something that Google should be working on.

Slideshow for Google Chrome is compatible with version 4 of the web browser. The extension can be downloaded from the Google Chrome website.

Update: The Chrome Photo Slide Show extension is no longer available on the official web site. A alternative is the Slideshow for Facebook, Flickr, Google Images extension which is also available at the web store.

The user needs to authenticate the application at the first startup after entering the Flickr username or email address. The process is painless and should take less than a minute to complete. It does involve logging into Flickr with the default web browser to allow Destroy Flickr access to the user data.

Destroy Flickr comes with all the functionality needed to manage a Flickr account from the computer desktop. It can be used to view uploaded photos, download uploaded photos, take a detailed look at specific photos, look at photos of contacts or the popular category at Flickr.

The application uses a very slick interface with lots of effects that look really great but do not slow down the application. It’s main use on the other hand is definitely the upload and download capabilities that are provided which makes it more comfortable to work with photos without having to open the Flickr website.

Destroy Flickr needs Adobe Air installed on the computer system. This does make it a cross-platform application on the other hand.

Update: Destroy Flickr seems to have been discontinued. The web page of the product returns a 404 error now. There does not seem to be a similar product available.

ZFlick is just one of those applications. It has been designed for Adobe Air and can be executed from the local computer system after startup. The interface displays just a search form at the beginning which can be used to initiate a search for photos at Flickr.

The application will then display 50 thumbnails of photos that are related to the search term entered by the user with the option to browse additional pages with the controls on top. The exact number of matches and pages is displayed next to the controls to give the user an overview of the photos that have been found.

A click on a thumbnail will load a larger view of the photo in the application. It is from here possible to open the photo on Flickr directly or drag and drop it to download it to the local computer system. A left-right click will return to the thumbnail view again.

The photos that can be downloaded are not of the largest size which is really the only criticism that users could have. An option to change the default photo size that gets downloaded would be appreciated.

ZFlick requires Adobe Air which makes it a compatible with different operating systems including Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Flickr Drive Shell is a similar plugin for Windows Explorer which can display the photos hosted at the Flickr photo hosting service. The program will display a new Flickr Drive icon in the My Computer window in Windows Explorer. The service needs to be authorized which is done by entering the username in the popup window that is being displayed after clicking on the icon for the first time. This will lead to the Flickr website where the user needs to login to authorize the desktop application.

Flickr Drive will work like any other drive after the authorization. It provides access to the private photos of the user and access to the two public folders Today’s hot tags and Today’s hot photos. The photos are displayed as thumbnail images in Windows Explorer with options to interact with the photos that are displayed. This includes copying, printing and viewing photos, moving them or even editing them in the default Windows image editor.

Photos can be easily copied to the associated Flickr user account which can then be accessed from the Flickr website normally. This is actually a very comfortable way of adding files to Flickr. Flickr Drive Shell is available as an executable and source at the developer’s website. The program is compatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7. (via Techie-Buzz)