Thursday, November 5, 2009

The App Garden at Flickr

The hugely popular photo sharing site Flickr has reconfigured its Services page as the The App Garden, a directory of applications built by external developers.  These applications access Flickr images and features (such as tags and groups), and present them in novel ways.  I've mentioned a few of these before (here, here, and here, for example).   Now you can browse a growing number of these tools in the Apps We've Noticed section, or explore them with tags or keyword searches.  There is also information about developers and for developers interested in creating these third-party applications.

Flickr provides its open API (application program interface) to developers so they can approach Flickr content in new and creative ways.  Some cool examples I discovered in my visit to the App garden are Downloadr, for downloading batches of Flickr images at the largest size designated by their creators; Bookr, for creating photobooks using Flickr images; and Flickriver, for viewing a seamless stream of photos on a black background, without having to hit 'next' to reload the next page.  If you are a Flickr user you'll find it worthwhile to spend a little time poking around The App Garden -- you are sure to discover something useful.

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