Flickr smart sets
Posted on September 11th, 2007 in Software, Tips |
I believe Zooomr has smart sets out of the box, but I wouldn’t know because I’m still a happy Flickr customer. I’ve been loving the full-screen plus title/description, “on black” slideshows since they were introduced last summer. One feature that Flickr doesn’t support [yet] is the ability to define rules for a Set and have it auto-generated based on some predefined interval. iTunes and other software has popularized the concept of adding some intelligence to a collection of things, in an attempt to automate the decision making process involved with building a collection.
A Flickr community member and programmer has taken it upon himself, to create a simple user interface that lets Flickr users create and administer some smart sets, after authenticating his application with your Flickr account (a quick process). He’s titled the application Flickr Set Manager.
The “random” smart set is fun for me, because it jogs my memory of pictures that tell stories I’ve forgotten or have become less clear over time. The “least interesting” pictures give me insight into what “doesn’t sell,” in other words, what people don’t click on, which can as interesting as seeing what people do click on. Finally, my “most interesting” smart set is set to auto-generate each day (I’ve setup each to regenerate daily), but mostly stays the same day to day, since I’m getting enough new visitors daily to influence the statistics. The value with this set however, is that it exposes the “most popular” statistics to users other than me, since currently the most popular photo data is available only to the owner under the “Popular” menu option when logged-in.
Viewing the “random” smart set slideshow is a nice trip down memory lane, and a gift that “keeps on giving” every day. I highly recommend the Flickr Set Manager, though if want official support, I think Flickr will add this in the not-so-distant future. Besides smart sets, I’m excited to have read they’re working on video support on Flickr as well, which seems like a more logical place to share my 30-second video clips than today’s general purpose video sharing sites.

One Response
I’ve been waiting for you to explain how you were accomplishing this! Thanks!
Does this work based on tags? For example, I want a set called “Me,” which pulls all photos tagged with “me”.