With it’s rich and diverse set of photographs from all over the world Flickr in itself is a fascinating service. Now add a captivating interface for browsing the spellbinding images hosted to flickr and you get a truely enchanting service. Here are some alternate interfaces which make Flickr more enjoyable.
CoverFlow – Just as the name suggests this service pulls images from flickr and displays them in an interface similar to Coverflow used in apple products (iTunes, iPhone etc). You can view photos based on photoset, tags or username.
FlickrVision – This is basically Google Earth/Maps meet flickr. It comes in two flavours the 2D Google Map mashup and the 3D Google Earth mashup.It displays latest geotagged flickr photos in real time. Just sit back and watch while the globe spins around and displays latest pictures pulled from all corners of the earth.
retrievr – This is one of my favourite. First you need to draw a simple figure or sketch and then retrievr would pull images which bear some resemblence to your drawing from flickr. It doesnt do any facial or object or text recognition. It tries to match your figure with the most prominent shapes occuring in the photos present in its database. Due to this you would often get surprising and fun results.Regardless of the quality of matches, I found retrievr to be extremely addictive and an excellent boredom killer.
Color Fields Color Pickr : This mashup displays images based on their prominent colour and subject matter. You just need to pick a colour and subject matter to get started. To quote Jim Bumgardner – the developer
To those that question the utility of this little application, let me point out that it is a toy — like all the stuff on my website. Its purpose is simply to provide wonder and delight. Nothing more, nothing less. Isn’t that enough?
Tag Galaxy : Ever since its release a week back this Visualization has been getting a heck of a lot of attention. In fact its been all over the blogosphere. So chances are you have already heard about it. If you havent check it out now, as its the best Flickr Visualization I have seen. When you enter a tag it displays the entire set of results as a planetary system. Near the centre is Sun representing the entered tag and other planets – representing related tags, rotate around the Sun. Clicking on any of these objects zooms you in to a 3D rotating globe pastered with images.
Did you enjoy these services? Which one is your favourite. Do let me know. And if you are in mood for some more Flickr Visualizations then check out Tilt Viewer, Postcard Viewer, FlickrTime and Flickr River. Another alternate way to browse Flickr is provided by the software solution Piclens which I covered here.
this is cool