The software Downloadr is more than just a tool to backup Flickr accounts. It can perform a search for photos on Flickr using fulltext, users, tags, places, sets, dates, groups and favorites. It can display a maximum of 250 photos per page and download all selected photos at once.

Only Creative Commons photos are searched by default but that option can be disabled in the search form. The easiest way to backup Flickr accounts would be to enter the username and download all photos that are found. This is obviously only working if the user has made all photos publicly available. Private photos cannot be downloaded this way.

There is however another option to download all photos of a Flickr account. Downloadr comes with the means to authenticate a user. Once a user has been authenticated by providing his login details the function Complete Backup can be selected.

This option will download all photos from the authenticated Flickr account to the local computer. The pictures will be downloaded in one go and the program handles even large amounts of photos fine.

The download of the software program will download a file called updatr which has to be executed to download the rest of the program files. Downloadr itself is a portable software program requiring the Microsoft .net Framework.

Aviary is a suite of web based creative tools. Each of the tools has been named after some kind of bird, so you’ll have to get used to nearly 20 names like “Phoenix”, “Hawk” and “Raven”.

All of our tools are based right in your browser or as downloadable AIR applications. Our tools all communicate and relate to each other. To illustrate an example: You can import a swatch from Toucan into Phoenix, while doing complex bitmap processing of a 3D object developed in Hummingbird. Finally, you can take your finished artwork and lay it out in Owl as the DVD artwork for a music CD you and your friends put together in Roc and Myna and offer it for sale in our marketplace, Hawk.

Aviary is still very much under development and is strictly in invitation only beta. You can however sign up with the early “early bird invitations” form and specify what type of tools interest you, such as “image editing” or “desktop publishing”.

I actually have no idea how many of these tools are actually completed or at what stage the project is at. I have received an invite to two, “Phoenix” and “Peacock”, an image editor and pattern generator.

All I can say is that these applications are fantastic. They run from the web but act exactly like desktop software. It loaded fast and I experienced no lags or anything to indicate this wasn’t just a normal program running on my computer. Phoenix is fantastic program and almost matches Photoshop for functionality. In fact some of the example images produced are completely comparable to those produced by the commercial application.

When you receive your invitation you’ll get a user account which provides you with a dashboard and a place to save, store and showcase what you have created and a central place you can access all your applications from.

We are going to remove the arrow of the shortcuts icons first. Hit Windows + R and type regedit. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\LNKFILE and delete the entry IsShortcut in the left pane. Next do the same at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PIFFILE, et voila the arrow is gone.

Making the desktop icons transparent is far easier. We are going to use the freeware Iconoid to do this. Start Iconoid after installation and click on disable drop shadows in the color tab if that button is available. The default setting is that the icon background is transparent which is exactly what we want. You might need to change the default text color as well if you are using backgrounds that have a similar color than the default font color.

Divx Repair is a tool that is very simple to use. Just unzip it to your hard drive and run it from the location that you have unzipped it to. Divx Repair does not need to be installed and does not alter your system files or registry. Double-click Divx Repair to start the program. You can add files with the button Add Files (who would have guessed that, hehe).

The button Repair files starts the automatic repair process which tries to fix bad frames automatically. Only the bad frames will be deleted not the keyframes which means that you should be able to play the movie without errors from now on.

A error report at the end of the repair displays the amount of bad intervals that have been found. If a fix was necessary a new version of the movie will be saved in the same directory as the original movie file.

All the software products are either open source or freeware which have been added with permission of the author of the product. You might know most of the products already but it is still worth checking out for the occasional program that one does not know. Take a look at the list of software that has been included so far. Each contains a link to the developers homepage which is an alternative method to download them.

It is kinda strange that some games have made it into the final distribution, not sure about the motivation to add them to the package. It is nevertheless a great compilation, I found some tools that I have not heard about (yet) and which I will review once I find the time to do so.

Zamzar offers four different format categories which are: document, image, movie and music. Each category has a large list of formats that can be converted into each other. The following can be converted on the website:

• text formats: csv, doc, odp, ods, odt, pdf, ppt and xls.
• image formats: bmp, gif, jpg, tiff, ps
• music fomats: ac3, au, flac, m4a, mp3, wav, wma
• movie formats: avi, flv, gvi, mov, mp4, mpg

As you can see there are plenty of possiblities to convert formats into each other. The maximum file limit is 100 megabytes which should be sufficient for most purposes.

Some days later he managed to do the same with a Blue-Ray movie which means that everything is set to get the warez scene going. I think it is kinda strange that it was always easy to copy games for the Playstation systems and many people think that the success of the Playstation systems could be connected to this.

This got me thinking. Why did not Sony try and dump their discs if they knew everyone would be able to install and use Linux on the Playstation 3 ? Did they all miss it or was it probably something they did not care about or even wanted ? What do you think about this ?

Once you have uploaded an image to the online script you may crop it and select the output size of the rasterized image by simply moving a slider into the exact position you want it to be. An information will tell you how many sheets of paper you need for the size that you have selected. Once you are satisfied with the size you may further customize the results by adding a border to it, selecting the dot size and selecting whether you would like a black and white image, a custom color image or a multi color image.

Once that is done you are set to go. The image will be processed and a pdf file will be created. Make sure you follow the directions of the developer when you print the pdf:

When printing the image with Adobe Reader, choose Page scaling: Fit to Printer Margins at the options window that comes up (Fit to Paper in older versions). If you chose horizontal paper alignment, also make sure Auto-Rotate and Center is selected. Most printers cannot print to the margins of the paper – these settings ensure that all the images will be completely printed. 

Thanks to Hans for this nice tip.

You can edit the code that not only jpg jpeg are saved but also .pgn .bmp and every other image format you add there. They probably add support for more image hosting sites in the future.

Update: The Auto downloader has been discontinued. An alternative for Windows is the Bulk Image Downloader.

The article looks at web applications that enable you to search the site, at plugins for browsers and at external tools. Web applications and browser plugins clearly make the majority of search possibilities.

Web applications:

flickr.com

This one is the most obvious, flickr has a search option build in their starting page, simply enter a tag you would like to find and it displays the results as thumbnails with suggestions for related keywords. Pretty solid results and fast. They also have a advanced search. and a website that displays popular tags.

Associator

Enter a tag and associated tags are displayed.

Flickr random photo browser

Displays six random images every time the page is reloaded.

Lightweight flickr Viewer

Postcard Browser

From the same website as the related tag browser, makes the images look like postcards.

Related tag browser

They are hosting the flickr related tag browser, you enter a search term, click go and you see a thumbnailed results page with related tags forming a circle around them. Nice flash site.

Plugins, Extensions and Bookmarklets:

Flickrfox

A Firefox extension that lets you browse your photostreams in the firefox sidebar.

Flickr Multi-Tag Search Bookmarklets

Search for any or all of the tags you enter using this fine bookmarklet.

Flickr search plugin for Firefox

This is a simple search plugin for your Firefox browser, that allows you to quickly search the public available Flickr tags.

Greasemonkey scripts

Great comprehensive listing of greasemonkey flickr scripts.

Search Plugin:Flickr

Mozilla Search Plugins for Flickr, find people, find tags, find groups and find help are available.

External Tools:

Flickr Auto Downloader

Download photos from specified user or interesting photos, specify size and location to save them. Neat freeware tool for windows.

FlickrDown

Requires Net 2.0, specify a username, tool displays all images and option to download them.

Flickr Explorer

Sourceforge project, photo mass downloader.

Flickr Screensaver

Requires net 1.1., changes your screensavers image with flickr images every 15 seconds.

Flickr Wallpapers

Changes your wallpaper with photos from the flickr website using tags you specified.