Power Tips for Using Flickr

We make a lot of use out of Flickr. It is one of the best community sites and photo sharing servces online. You can make it work even better with a little effort.

We use Flickr to do a couple of main things:

  • post and share photos
  • find photos to link to them

First thing is to use Firefox (huh? download it here.) to browse Flickr and get the Greasemonkey add-on. Greasemonkey (GM) allows you to add GM scripts that will automate tasks and rework your view of web pages. Yeah, it is cool enuough really. In fact there are tons of GMscripts to consider, but I will stay on the Flickr ones in this post.

The other really xlent tool to add to your Flickr experience is Cooliris. It is a viewing tool that will generate that fluid carosel view of a set of images. It works on any web page, but I find it most useful on image gallery pages.

Then of course there is the Flickr Uploadr tool which makes posting batches of photos really easy. You can also set your Flickr account to automatically post images when you email them. This is very handy for iphone posts.

Useful GMScripts (install greasemonkey firefox add-on first and restart firefox before installing below scripts):

  • Autopage — endless stream of photos. Runs directly on Flickr so it seems a better alternative to Flickr River (which is very cool btw).
  • Move Comments Up. This puts the comments box directly under the photo, saving time to scroll around.
  • Steeev’s Power Tools — tons of scripts here for administering groups and large contacts. Mult-group sender is very good. Steeev has a lot to offer here–but maybe also be careful not to overload your add-ons as some of them may junk up your page or even conflict. I think best to only keep the ones you really use often installed.
  • No Awards. Get rid of those really dopey awards that clog your page.