OK, this is it…
Posted on May 19, 2005
Filed Under Cool, Meme, Pictures |
Ready or not I am stoked to unveil Delivr.
Delivr is a super simple service to create your own custom digital postcards. Obviously it is not the only site in the world to do this, but Delivr is unique in a few ways:
- It is powered by the Flickr API, so the number of images available is HUGE and growing daily…how many other ecard sites have a library of 600,000+ images, with 1000’s more added every day? This might just make Delivr the biggest ecard site online.
- All images are licensed under the Creative Commons, and all images are fully attributed, both in preview and in the sent postcard (try it). Delivr does not use images with a NoDerivs license.
- The postcards you can create with Delivr are much more classy than your average ecard…no annoying flash animation or tinny muzak.
- You can even use your own images to create postcards just by searching on your tags.
I hope you like it…feedback and questions welcome.
BTW, for those of you interested in how it works I can add that we use the getRecent interestingness API to populate the index page with all the recent images and this is cached for 30 mins 24hrs, while the Search API is used for user defined queries and these results are cached for 24 hours also so we shouldn’t be too hard on the API.
UPDATE: An anonymous commenter just asked what assurances there are that Delivr isn’t just an email address harvesting program. Unfortunately my spam killer plugin ate the comment before I could approve it (unintended irony). But to answer the question…no it doesn’t store email addresses at all. Once you’ve sent a postcard that’s it. There really isn’t anything I would say or do to prove that the system wasn’t harvesting email addresses, except to point out that I would have to be the dumbest spammer alive to provide links back to my own personal blog, on which you can easily find information which wouldn’t make it hard to track me down. And I while Delivr is NOT affiliated with Flickr, they do link to the site from their Services page so I guess they feel confortable enough that it is not some front to a spamming operation. That’s all.
UPDATE: Just got asked a question which prompted me to update this post. Delivr now uses the interestingness API from Flickr, which I think you’ll agree provides a much more interesting range of images to choose from.
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20 Responses to “OK, this is it…”
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Delivr Flickr Postcards
Delivr is a new digital postcard service with a difference: it uses the Flickr API to turn hundreds of thousands of nicely tagged Flickr images released under the Creative Commons license into virtual postcards. Delivr was developed by Charles at…
Excellent app Charles! I’m going to make sure lots of people find out about this… :)
i keep wanting to pass the word on, but the search doesn’t seem to be working.
Delivr Flickr Postcards
Delivr is a new digital postcard service with a difference: it uses the Flickr API to turn hundreds of thousands of nicely tagged Flickr images released under the Creative Commons license into virtual postcards.
Delivr Flickr Postcards
Delivr is a new digital postcard service with a difference: it uses the Flickr API to turn hundreds of thousands of nicely tagged Flickr images released under the Creative Commons license into virtual postcards. With more than 600,000 nicely indexed…
UPDATE: And Flickr have just informed me that the Search API is infact down for some fixes and will be back up tomorrow…we’ll be rocking then.
Thanks for the comments folks. You’re help in spreading the word is truly appreciated.
We’ve got some trouble with the Flickr Search API at the moment, which is a bit frustrating, but that’s what you get for launching something based on something else which is still itself in beta :)
I’ll posting more info as this problem is worked out.
Cheers
Nice one Charles - this is going on the Services page today :)
http://flickr.com/services/
Hi Charles -
Thanks for a great app! I just posted a little review on my site (http://www.ambermac.com) - and I plan to demo Delivr on a show I host on G4TechTV Canada/HOW-TO Australia (http://www.callforhelptv.com).
Nice work ;).
-Amber
I am trying to experiment with your Delivr app using my flickr images, but I only get one photo when I do a search under my flickr name. I thought that might be because I have a Creative Commons liscence for Attribution/Non-Commercial/No Derivs as the default CC on all of my images, and maybe that one image for some reason is different. So I tried changing the CC on two other images in my stream, and they still don’t come up with I try the Delivr search. Do you know why? I’d like to be able to include a link to Delivr on my blog somewhere, so my blog readers can send certain of my images as e-cards.
Charles, you helped me solve my problem (above) — it actually was the CC license that was causing the problem — I think it just took a little time for the Delivr search to find the photos I had changed to remove the “No Derivs” part. So the key is, your photos must NOT have “No Derivs” on the CC license or they will not show up in the search. Thanks - it’s an interesting app. Now I need to figure out how to put it on my blog in the sidebar and I’ll start spreading the word. Good luck.
Hi,
I was just wondering (out of ideal (or idle even) curiosity) how delivr picks the photos that appear on it’s home page. The fact that there is a set amount that don’t seem (maybe I’m doing something wrong it is very early) to change if you refresh the page, captured my interest - are they filtered for interstingness or something?
BTW. I just love this app. it’s by far and away the best way to send qaulity e-cards. There’s just such a huge pool of amazing images.
Diccon
(Hmmmm, I wonder what the ideal curiostiy would be - not the kind that killed the cat I guess).
Hey, thanks for your comment. The photos on the front page are updated only every 24 hours. I set it up this way because (I think) this is how often the interestingness pool updates on Flickr.
Orginally it just used the get_recent API (filtering for CC licenses), at which time it updated every 30mins. But it does now use the interestingness API (again filtering for CC licenses).
The trade off is less frequent updates to those home page images, but a much more interesting range of images to start with.
Cheers
Hi,
Thanks for you speedy response; the crux of which I understood (not techie enough to understand the implications of what an API does (or even what an API is) but that is unimportant).
A couple of q’s/suggestions (with the above muppet-warning noted);
Is it not possible to interrogate Flickrs interstingness database to give a random selection when you refresh the delivr page? In much the way you get when you click the “refresh” tab on flickrs interestingness page. I’ve noticed that you can always get back to ‘todays’ selection (ie the one that loads when you first open the page) by amending the address bar slightly to remove the ‘/?’ at the end of the address (not sure what the relevence of this is , I’m rambling a bit I apologies).
Would it possible to enable a user to save some of their favourite images in some way. One possible solution I can think of (although not being techie I don’t know how easy this would be) would be to allow the program to search through a users favourites folder on flickr - that way as you are surfing through flikr you can always mark an image as a favourite and then easily retrieve it for use as an e-card.
Sorry, The answers to the above q’s are prob’ ‘No’ or ‘I don’t have that much time on my hands’.
Anyway as I previously said the program is great and an instant favourite - this is shown by the fact I want to contribute; I’m not generally moved to actively contribute to anything much.
Be Lucky.
Diccon
Like your work Charles and have linked to you - for what it’s worth!
This is a SUPERB service! Please keep expanding it. I hope that you can make it work economically as well.
Issues:
It only displays one picture out of all my pictures even though I’ve removed the Non-Derivs. This picture was the first one I used to create a card. So my first attempt was ok…but I can’t do any more.
Also, if I designate the picture as public and not non-deriv, it still doesn’t show up when I search using tags.
can i ask how do you decide to have a picture in delivr? I found my picture in that website and i wanted to know why you posted it.
Maybe when you post a picture in delivr it’s also a good idea to tell to the photographers that you have posted it.
By the way, thanks for choosing my pictures.
Good luck with your works.
Giacomo Cosua.
Hi Giacomo,
Thanks for your comment.
Actually I don’t decide to post any images. The whole thing is run automatically. The start page displays the latest images that Flickr itself has identified as interesting, while the search feature looks for all images tagged on flickr with those keywords.
The most important thing to remember is that the system filters out any copyright images so these will not be displayed. It only uses images that are available under appropriate creative commons licenses.
Cheers
Charles
Hi,
I found delivr a really interesting mashup, and a way better e-postcard system than any other (mainly because the Flickr community creates so many images to choose from… There’ll always be something appropiate to send).
Anyway, I know of some friends who got upset about some of their photos showing up here, and me myself, though I like my images to be CC and to give people the chance to edit them or use them in their art, I’ve thinked of some which I would like to be able to tag as non-delivrable (that is, without changing their license).
And so… Maybe an interesting addition would be to give users of Flickr that option, maybe by having a “nodelivr” tag be parsed in the application or something like that…
Just an idea
Cheers for the good work,
BloOwITt^
Hi BloOw,
Thanks for your comments. Glad you like Delivr.
Can you help me understand why you would want to license your images under a CC license but not want people to access them on Delivr?
Cheers
Charles