/dev/null/kevin

Flickr launched its new video service today (Tuesday 08 April).  For me this is awesome because I already use flickr for my photos.  Like most people, my digital camera also takes decent quality videos and it is very nice to have them in the same stream as my photos.

There are two features that really make flickr better for personal video clips over YouTube.

1. Better image quality - See below.
   


2. Can download the original - I liked Google Video for this same reason.  It's very valuable to have off-site backups of your photos and videos so now I have both in one place.
   

Of course, with only a 90 second limit, YouTube, and other services, are still better for longer and professional vids.

Compare the quality of the same video uploaded to both YouTube and Flickr.

YouTube:

Flickr Video:

Update: Found one strike against Flickr: The embedded video doesn't appear/play in Google Reader. If you don't see the Flickr video window try here.

Update 2: According to Kellan of Flickr, this is a known problem.  You can work around the Google Reader problem by subscribing using the RSS feed and not the Atom feed. 

Is there any real value in flickr collections?  Please tell me what I'm missing.

A flickr set is a group of pictures.  I can view a set together, make a slide show, and edit the set together.  It's a very useful feature.

A flickr collection is a group of sets and it provides some organizational structure for sets that are related.  I can add or remove sets from a collection, as well as add a description.  The collection also gets a special mosaic badge made up of images from the various sets. 

However, other than those very basic features (which I admit, have some value), it seems that collections should allow me to  do so much more:

• No collection tools - With a set I can perform multiple actions on the whole set, but there are no actions for a collection.
• I can't view the whole collection as a slide show.
• I can't edit the whole collection.
• I can't add tags to a collection.
• I can't view the whole collection as a stream.
• I can't load a collection into the flickr organizer.
• Collection mosaic icon is useless.
• The mosaic's URL changes if I edit the mosaic (select different images) - This means I can't use the mosaic for anything like a thumbnail for a link to the collection's page.  If something exists, but I can't use it, does it have any value?
  
• The mosaic icon doesn't even appear on the collection's own page!

If you're going to spam my flickr comments just to get me to click on your link, it's best to use different comments each time.  Several of my photos were given this "compliment":

Wow great photo. What a special moment.

What were they hawking?  Toilet paper.

I don't want to see that special moment.

flickr.com kept getting a massage all Monday night.  It went down several times as I was trying to organize some photos of our Hawaii trip.

 From flick's blog:

Note that it's now 9:40pm PST and flickr is down again.  Sigh.

I hope this massage has a happy ending.

UPDATE:

Guess things aren't getting better:

Tags: flickr