This curly purple "thing" was an installation at the Copenhagen Light Festival, held back in February. The real name of the lightwork by Hans E Madsen & Frederik Dahl Hougs was "Pressure", and changing colors and impulses should symbol something about "digital stress". Well, I just think it was nice :-) Standing at the waterfront of Copenhagen Harbour on the quay next to Christian IV's Bridge, you also had view back towards Børsen and Christiansborg as depicted here. There's a couple of more shots from the light festival on my Flickr.

Btw., if you do an image-search on "Curly Purple" you pretty much only get some hairstyle shots. I wonder if it is possible to "interrupt" that search? :-)

Meta: Copenhagen Light Festival 2021, February 14th 2021 19:05. Canon EOS 7D Mark II on tripod, EF-S 15-85mm @ 15mm, f/5.6, 1 sec., 100 ISO.

Try my 16-photos virtual tour in Copenhagen Street Food market and recreational area, Reffen on Refshaleøen. I spent a great deal of my time at Reffen this summer and brought my VR 360° camera a couple of times. Photos are all from a few days in August.

The tour/photos are hosted on my new account at RoundMe.com. Later I will post some of the photos on Flickr too, however Flickr doesn't offer creating tours or other of the more advanced 360-panorama features utilized here. You can also see the tour with a VR headset, f.ex. with Google Cardboard. There's an app for RoundMe, but it hasn't been updated in a long time, and it looks like the smartphone optimized website works just as well, if not better. In my short experience also with phone placed in a VR headset.

The photos are some of my first shots with the Xphase Pro S which I purchased last year to replace my Panono (Yes, I've been a bit slow getting started with the new cam). I expect to write more about the Xphase in another post, but in short it offers even better quality and resolution than the Panono, but workflow tend to become rather cumbersome.

Some "snapshots" from the tour:

Go ahead, take the tour! :-)

When I first released a beta-version of xIFr back in July 2019, I didn't announce it here, because I expected to follow up with "final" version shortly after. However, I first found I needed a little break from coding, and after that unexpected events was stealing my spare time and energy for some time. But now, half a year later, I'm finally ready to "officially" announce my browser extension:...

xIFr 1.0

xIFr is a webbrowser extension to view Exif and other meta data in image files. It's far from the first Exif viewer made for Firefox or other desktop webbrowsers, and xIFr is also a "fork" of one of the other add-ons already available. But I felt I could make something that worked better than the existing offers.

Most current Exif reader addons operates in one of two ways. The first kind opens a window with Exif data from an image, launched by right clicking directly on the image (<img> html element) on the webpage. The second kind can be executed "globally" for the webpage (eventually from a toolbar button) and will display Exif data for found images inline on the webpage. The problem with the first kind is that on modern webpages you can rarely right-click directly on an image element. Very often images is "shielded" behind a layer, or image is actually a background property of another kind of html element. The second kind will maybe work more often. But it will also sometimes break the page it is running on, because it directly modifies it to display the meta data of the photos.

xIFr is a variation of the first kind. But thanks to a new API feature introduced in Firefox 63, I have been able to construct it so you can bring up the browser's contextmenu to launch it, by right-clicking pretty much anywhere on a webpage. xIFr will usually guess which image you were thinking of no matter if you actually was clicking directly on an image element, or you were clicking on a layer over it. And it can also find images that aren't actual image elements on webpages, but are background property of another kind of element. Technically xIFr is searching up and down the DOM tree looking for the likely wanted image close to the element your right-click was registered on. I call the feature for "Deep Search"...

Yes, xIFr is "guessing". But it rarely goes wrong, and is in my opinion much more useful and versatile than other Exif readers I have tried. Besides that, it is also among the best looking ;-)

Currently the only "browser addon store" xIFr is available to install from is Mozilla Firefox Addons. In principle xIFr is a "cross browser compatible" WebExtension, also compatible with f.ex. Google Chrome, Opera and the new Chromium based Edge. But at this time only Firefox offers the API-feature used to make the "Deep Search" functionality, so when installed in other browsers, xIFr can only be launched when you can right-click directly on an image element. But if you want to try it in Chrome or another desktop webbrowser, there's usually a Developer-feature in browsers making it possible to install an add-on directly from the local filesystem. Download the extension (zip-file) from GitHub if you want to install it in your browser this way.

Update, April 2020: I have created a little Introduction page to quickly try the features of xIFr, and maybe compare it with other Exif reader browser extensions.

I recently stumbled upon a little demo showing how simple it is to construct an "adaptive layout image wall" using CSS Flexbox. And I thought it would be fun to combine the techniques with a feed from my own Flickr gallery...

Unlike the demo on CSS-tricks, which dynamically adapts itself to screen/browser dimensions or column width, my blog has the advantage (and disadvantage) to be fixed width. So I have further simplified the CSS-code in my "Flickr Wall" below, which displays latest additions to my "FlickrBadge album" on Flickr.
Update March 2021: My blog used to have a fixed width layout, but I have now made column-width "slightly responsive". But still I do not find it necessary to add any of the viewport optimizations from css-tricks post.

Feeds from Flickr is generally not only available in the usual RSS and Atom formats, but among other formats also available in JSON and JSONP format. For the pure-frontend implementation here, JSONP was the natural choice to avoid cross-origin errors. Complete source-code (CSS, Javascript and HTML) for my implementation follows below the wall...

CSS:

<style>
ul#fwall {
  display: flex;
  flex-wrap: wrap;
  padding: 0;
  list-style-type: none;
}
ul#fwall li {
  height: 195px;
  flex-grow: 1;
  margin: 0; /* To reset value set in my global stylesheet */
}
ul#fwall li:last-child {
  flex-grow: 10;
}
ul#fwall img {
  max-height: 100%;
  min-width: 100%;
  object-fit: cover;
  vertical-align: bottom;
}
</style>

Javascript:

<script>
let fwitems = null;
function flickrWall() {
  if (fwitems) {
    let fwall = document.getElementById('fwall');
    fwitems.forEach(function(item) {
      let elem = document.createElement('li');
      let link = document.createElement('a');
      link.setAttribute('href', item.link.replace('/in/set-369431','')); // Remove the "/in/set-369431" because I want links to be in "photostream context", not in "album context".
      link.setAttribute('title', item.title);
      elem.appendChild(link);
      let image = document.createElement('img');
      image.setAttribute('src', item.media.m.replace('_m.','.')); // Default photos in feed are 240px wide XXXX_m.jpg photos, but I want the 500px wide XXXX.jpg photos.
      image.setAttribute('alt', ' [Image: ' + item.title + '] ');
      image.setAttribute('loading', 'lazy');
      link.appendChild(image);
      fwall.appendChild(elem);
    });
    fwall.appendChild(document.createElement('li')); // End with an empty item.
  }
}
function jsonFlickrFeed(photos) { // Function to be called from JSONP feed (https://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/photoset.gne?nsid=10259776@N00&set=369431&lang=en-us&format=json&nojsoncallback=0)
  fwitems = photos.items;
  window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', flickrWall, false);
}
</script>
<script defer src="https://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/photoset.gne?nsid=10259776@N00&set=369431&lang=en-us&format=json&nojsoncallback=0"></script>

HTML:

<ul id="fwall">
  <!-- Photos will be inserted here -->
</ul>

PS: I have noticed that some very aggressive privacy blockers (read: Ghostery) might block reading the JSONP feed. If that happens, there's no delicious photos to be seen...

Update January 2021: I have made different wall implementation with adaptive width showing new additions to a Flickr group, on my otherwise pretty dead Planet 7D site.

Hvordan stemte de siddende danske medlemmer af Europa Parlamentet om de nye EU Copyright Direktiver (Artikel 13/17 og artikel 11/15)?

Følgende oversigt fra SaveYourInternet viser hvordan, og det er faktisk et sørgeligt syn:

Dog befriende at se 74-årige Margrete Auken som en der i mine øjne ser ud til at have modenhed og overblik på IT-området.

Selvom de kommende medlemmer ikke kommer til at stemme om samme artikler igen, kunne det nu være rart nok at kende alles holdninger på området. Er der nogen der har spurgt de nye kandidater?

Update: Hvis man tjekker de andre lande, så danner der sig i øvrigt et billede af "parti-politik", idet medlemmer af Greens/EFA og GUE/NGL oftest har stemt imod de nye copyright direktiver (I de par lande jeg tjekkede i hvert fald).

Jeg har skiftet webhotel. Det er billigere end det gamle, men det er egentlig ikke årsagen. Årsagen var nye muligheder for teknisk opsætning der skal sikre bedre "renommé" og sikkerhed for rockland.dk som webside og min email adresse i særdeleshed.

Hjemmesiden...

Det eneste du nok umiddelbart kan se der er nyt, er at rockland.dk har fået hængelås i browserens adresselinje som viser der køres krypteret https protokol. Indtil få år siden kostede det ikke bare penge, men var også en ret besværlig proces at installere og opsætte sikker https kryptering på et website. Men med introduktionen af Let's Encrypt kom der ikke bare en gratis mulighed, men også en meget lettere proces. I mit nye webhotel er det bare er et simpelt valg i konfiguration at understøtte https med et Let's Encrypt certifikat. Og der bestilles og installeres automatisk et nyt certifikat når det gamle er ved at udløbe, både på PHP- og ASP-webhoteller.

Nu har du ikke brug for at logge ind på Rockland for at kommentere, eller kan foretage dig andet "følsomt" her på siden. Så strengt taget kan man sige kryptering ikke er særlig nødvendigt her. Men browser fabrikanterne tænder flere og flere "advarselslamper" i deres browsere når der surferes over ukrypteret forbindelse. Og det er nu rart at det ikke ser ud som om det er farligt at komme forbi rockland.dk :-)

Men det vigtigste i skiftet var nu i virkeligheden også de nye muligheder i email opsætning...

Email-adressen - DKIM, SPF og DMARC...

Så længe jeg har haft mobiltelefon, har jeg haft det samme mobilnummer. Og det er planen at det skal være konstant for livet. Jeg har derfor også fra starten været forsigtig med at smide mig omkring med det. Stort set alle webshop spørger f.eks. i dag om et telefonnummer når man bestiller, men de får ikke mit mobilnummer. Det omtrent værste jeg kan forestille mig, er hvis jeg en dag skulle begynde at modtage spam pr. sms. Så jeg gider ikke have mit nummer registreret alle mulige steder hvorfra det kunne blive misbrugt eller lækket. Og er det ude tilstrækkelig mange steder, sker det sidste med sikkerhed på et tidspunkt.

Helt så forsigtig var jeg desværre ikke med min email-adresse i starten. Udover at det var cool med eget domæne til sin hjemmeside, var formålet med anskaffelsen af domænet rockland.dk i 1999, at få en fast email-adresse for livet. En email-adresse der var uafhængig af af et aktuelt uddannelsessted, en bestemt arbejdsplads, en bestemt internet udbyder, eller bare en bestemt mail-service på nettet. Ergo, eget domæne var nødvendigt.

Men jeg var jeg ikke så tilbageholdende med at skilte med min email i starten. Og den kom hurtigt til at stå public og i klar tekst i mine indlæg på usenet og forums, i kommentarer til artikler og på alle mulige net-profiler. Desuden har jeg nok heller ikke i starten været særlig ukritisk med hvad jeg abonnerede på af nyhedsmails, eller tilmeldte mig af konkurrencer på alverdens sites, etc. Resultatet har selvfølgelig været spam. Masser af SPAM. Men det er nu ikke det værste.

Det værste er, at jeg efterhånden erfarede at min egne emails oftere og oftere blev fanget i spam-filtrene. Selv venner jeg havde skrevet med mange gange, kunne tilsidst risikere at skulle kigge i spam-mappen for at finde mine emails. Nu er det omtrent ligeså let at forfalske en afsender på en email, som det er at skrive falsk afsender på god gammeldags analog brevpost. Og det var tydeligt nogen misbrugte min email-adresse (eller i hvert fald mit domæne), så dårligt ry som mine emails efterhånden havde fået. Jeg mener, så "spammy" er jeg da normalt ikke selv?...

Så noget måtte ske for at genoprette tilliden til min email-adresse, og teknologier som DKIM, SPF og DMARC skulle gerne være svaret derpå. Nu vil jeg ikke komme ind på tekniske detaljer omkring disse teknologier - well, tildels fordi jeg heller ikke er helt skarp på detaljerne. Men det korte og det lange er, at modtagende mailsystemer kan verificere at emails som er afsendt med min email-adresse som angivet afsender, også er afsendt fra min mail-konto. Og med fuld DMARC opsætning kan jeg forhindre emails der misbruger mit domæne som afsender-adresse, i at nå frem til deres modtager.

På mit nye webhotel hos UnoEuro er det rimelig let at sætte support for SPF, DKIM og DMARC op. I hvert fald så længe alle ens emails bliver sendt igennem deres systemer. Man skal pille lidt ved noget DNS opsætning, hvilket man selv kan direkte fra sit "kontrolpanel". SPF og DKIM er rimelig ligetil at aktivere. For DMARC skal man først finde ud af hvilken politik man vil føre overfor emails der ikke kan valideres. Det letteste er at oprette en konto på et site som dmarcian og så lade dens DMARC Record Wizard generere din DMARC DNS record. Dmarcian vil så konstruere en record på baggrund af en wizard, og med opsætning så din mail-statistik sendes til en dmarcian email tilknyttet din konto for opsamling af data og generering af overblik som vist herover. Som en der er rimelig uvidende omkring opsætning af DNS-records, skulle jeg lige have bekræftet af UnoEuro's support, at det var i orden at fjerne eksisterende _dmarc.rockland.dk/CNAME record i min opsætning, for at gøre plads til den nye _dmarc.rockland.dk/TXT record jeg havde genereret på dmarcian. Man da jeg først havde fået at bekræftet at det var vejen frem, var første version af DMARC opsætning også klar.

Det er normalt at starte med en "blød" DMARC opsætning hvor man kun samler statistik om emails, og så senere konfigurere det så ukendte mails klassificeres som spam, og til sidst når man føler sig rimelig sikker på at alle ens egne mails er korrekt signeret, kan man sætte det op så ukendte emails helt afvises af mail-systemerne og aldrig kommer frem til deres modtager. De fleste privat-personer afsender nok kun emails igennem deres email-klient, men virksomheder kan have mange systemer der sender mails på firmaets vegne som man måske ikke har helt overblik over. I mit tilfælde havde jeg også en NAS som udsender en email ved "system-events", som jeg lige skulle have konfigureret til at bruge rigtige konto og mail-server, for at sikre at beskederne ikke blev behandlet som ukendte emails.

Som mail-klient bruger jeg i øvrigt gmail. Den kan sagtens sættes op til at bruge tredjeparts mail servere og konti til at hente og sende emails. Det har jeg nu gjort i mange år med 3 forskellige webhoteller. Det fungerer fint, og er dejlig fleksibelt.

For at DMARC opsætning skal have effekt, kræves selvfølgelig at modtagende mailsystemer understøtter teknologierne. Når det gælder "outbound support" lader det faktisk til at være en overraskende lille klub rockland.dk nu er medlem af. Men når det gælder "inbound support" er det mit indtryk at stort set alle mailsystemer og services har support for teknologierne, inkl. selvfølgelig de populære webmail-services Google, Yahoo og Microsoft tilbyder [Update: Microsoft dog ikke 100%]. Så jeg forventer at mails der misbruger mit domæne som afsender, vil blive afvist i langt de fleste tilfælde, og aldrig nå nogen modtager. Og jeg sover nu lidt mere forvisset om at mine egne emails når frem og ikke ender i spam-filtre :-)

Update: Cirka ét år efter jeg konfigurerede DMARC for mit domæne, stoppede misbrug af mit domæne som afsender-adresse for emails nærmest fra den ene dag til den anden. Min konklusion er at der kun var en enkelt spammer som bare brugte mail-servere spredt over hele Verdenen til udsendelse af spam. Og da vedkommende registrerede at mails med email angivet på rockland.dk som afsender ikke nåede frem til modtagerne, blev rockland.dk fjernet fra listen af domæner misbrugt til afsender.

PS. Lidt tips til at analysere mail headers og autenticiteten af emails.

Jeg kunne ikke forestille mig det kunne ske. Jeg ignorerede det totalt. Blandede mig udenom, vendte blikket den anden vej, og forsøgte at tænke på noget andet hver gang emnet blev nævnt. For jeg blev så deprimeret, frustreret og sur hver gang emnet var i mine tanker. Jeg stak fingere i ørerne, sang tralala - tralala - tralala, og gentog for mig selv at det-kan-ikke-ske, det-kan-ikke-ske, det-kan-ikke-ske... Men det skete.

Demokrati er vel grundlæggende godt, men det er en dag som i dag jeg bliver i tvivl. Jeg har længe tænkt at vores politikere ikke skulle have lov at tage beslutninger der vedrører det moderne informationssamfund. De har simpelthen ikke den krævede viden, forståelse og indsigt i området. I dag står den tanke kraftigere end nogensinde. Og nej, jeg er hamrende ligeglad med Google og Facebook. De er ganske ubetydelige i det store (informationssamfunds-)billede. Men der er nok kun dem politikerne har tænkt på.

Ok, vi må vente op til et par år til at se hvordan artiklerne implementeres i praktisk lovgivning. Og det kan vel i praksis ikke gå så galt som de scenarier jeg ser i mit hoved. Eller kan det?

Jeg er ikke den bedste til at stå tidligt op. Og da slet ikke når jeg har fri. Så det er ikke så ofte jeg ligefrem kommer ud på en morgen fototur, selvom det som regel er en meget god oplevelse når man for en gangs skyld kommer afsted.

Billedet her er fra en morgentur i Dyrehaven tilbage i slutningen af september i 2015, og er "fundet" i forbindelse med mit "2018 catching up" projekt. Jeg postede allerede et par stykker af scenariet på Flickr tilbage i 2015, men af en eller anden grund ikke alle dem der fortjente at komme ud. Og dette er måske endda det bedste i hele serien?

Jeg har husker tydeligt morgenen og situationen. Jeg ser det flotte modlys sceneri fra god afstand, og forlader stien for bevæge til et træ som jeg kan støtte mig op af imens jeg tager billeder på (hvad jeg syntes var) meget god og diskret afstand. Jeg tænker at det er et drømme setup jeg er havnet i, og følger mig ganske heldig imens jeg skyder løs. Jeg når både at nyde sceneriet og tage en del billeder, men der går ikke så længe før en mand kommer over til mig, og præsenterer sig som "parkbetjent" (eller sådan noget lignende). Han spørger høfligt, om ikke jeg vil fortrække og gå tilbage til stien. Det er ikke fordi der er nogen regler om at man skal blive på stierne, og normalt vil de ikke sige noget. Men lige netop på denne tid af året kan dyrene være mere stressede, og han så helst jeg gik tilbage til stien. Jeg må indrømme at jeg var lidt uforstående, da jeg synes jeg allerede stod på meget stor afstand [Teknik: 300mm tele på et 1.6x aps-c kamera, dvs. ækvivalent til 480mm brændvidde på 35mm fullframe kamera - og dertil er billederne beskåret lidt]. Så vidt jeg kan se på Google Maps har jeg stået på mindst 100 meters afstand til dyrene. Men det er jo ikke mig der er eksperten, og jeg følger selvfølgelig med ham tilbage til stien.

Jeg oplever måske aldrig et lignende scenarie igen. Hvis jeg var på morgentur jævnligt, måske. Men det kommer jeg jo ikke :-) Jeg har dog tjekket lokationen et par gange siden, og det er et sted hvor der er en tendens til flot smådiset modlys om morgenen. Men chancen for at dyrene så også lige står der når man er forbi igen... Men jeg nåede da heldigvis at få et par gode billeder i den tid jeg stod der, selvom jeg helst ville have været blevet stående helt til lyset eller dyrene forsvandt igen.

Catching up - Nytårsfortsæt uge 41-52 (2018)

Jeg har fejlet. Jeg kæmpede mig igennem 51 uger, hvoraf de sidste nogle gange var lidt en kamp. Men da jeg kun manglede uge 52 var jeg sikker på at årets nytårsfortsæt var i hus. Jeg havde ferie, tid, planer og motivation for at dyrke lidt stemningsfuld natfotografgering i byen i dagene op til nytår. Og det var så planen lige indtil en virus slog kløerne i mig, og jeg måtte tilbringe årets sidste dage i sygesengen med 40 i feber. Men hvis vi ignorerer at jeg principielt har fejlet mit fortsæt i årets aller sidste uge, og ser det i lidt større perspektiv:

• Glasset halvt fyldt: Jeg fik klargjort og postet en del billeder. Her i blandt fra et roadtrip til Bretagne & Normandiet og tur til Venezuela, som begge var i 2010 og var ture med mange gode minder og billeder jeg længe har ønsket at få ud.
• Glasset halvt tomt: Jeg havde nok troet og håbet jeg ville nå en del mere. Og imens jeg godt nok har spist i den ene ende af køen, er køen vokset i den anden ende med billeder fra Newfoundland og Lissabon. Så godt nok er køen lidt mindre nu end for et år siden, men selv hvis jeg fremad fortsatte med at poste med samme tempo som jeg gjorde i 2018, ville det stadig tage mange år at indhente det tabte.

Det har overhovedet ikke været overvejet at fortsætte mit "catching up" projekt ind i 2019. Jeg trænger til at trække stikket lidt på den front et stykke tid. Men jeg skal da have mere af det gamle ud, og for 2019 er målet nok at ende året i "status quo"; Dvs. med lige så meget ud som der er kommet ind, så køen i hvert fald ikke vokser. Nej, jeg når nok ikke til bunds i mine billeder, før en gang når jeg går på pension...

2018 Catching Up nytårsfortsæt - Alle "etaperne":

• Uge 41-52 - Rette tid og sted...
• Uge 31-40 - Når farverne går op...
• Uge 21-30 - Canaima
• Uge 11-20 - 24 timer ved Le Mont Saint-Michel...
• Uge 1-10 - Cambridge Circus, London 2009

Det slog mig da jeg så dette billede, at farve paletten passer perfekt til den farve palette jeg har brugt i det design jeg har kørt bloggen her med i de sidste 16-17 år. Så jeg var selvfølgelig nødt til at poste billedet her. Billedet er taget på en photowalk i går, og er således også et sjældent eksempel på at jeg faktisk nogle gange godt kan poste et foto allerede dagen efter at det er taget :-)

Må i øvrigt have været forud for min tid da jeg sad og designede den farve palette dér i 2002... (Bwaaahh) :-)

Catching up - Nytårsfortsæt uge 31-40

Nå, så kom krisen... Hvor jeg gennemsnitligt postede 11-12 billeder om ugen i etape 2 og 3, faldt det i hvad jeg kalder 4. etape (uge 31-40) til et snit på 4-5 billeder om ugen. Efter Venezuela sættet der blev afsluttet i uge 29, har der simpelthen ikke været megen motivation og energi og trække på.

Stort set kun bortset fra det lille aktuelle indspark fra gårsdagens photowalk, så nøjedes jeg på etapen med at plukke fra min miscellaneous folder ("rodebunken"), fremfor at tage fat på et lidt mere "forpligtende" og krævende projekt at få en af de større gamle serier fra rejser o.lign. gjort klart og postet. Samtidig faldt jeg også fra at klargøre billeder til postning ugerne inden de postes og poste dem i starten af en ny uge, til at udvælgelse, klargøring og postning af billeder, alt er noget der sker i sidste øjeblik inden ugen de skal postes i udløber. Så det er med røven godt nede i vandskorpen, men jeg har da endnu holdt mit forsæt og fået postet noget hver uge...

Håber at genfinde noget overskud, og få mindst en mere af de store serier ud i år. Men må se...

2018 Catching Up nytårsfortsæt - So far...

• Uge 31-40 - Når farverne går op...
• Uge 21-30 - Canaima
• Uge 11-20 - 24 timer ved Le Mont Saint-Michel...
• Uge 1-10 - Cambridge Circus, London 2009

In spring it was announced that Flickr was going to be acquired by SmugMug. After many years frustration about Flickr's direction and ownership, I'm convinced this is the best Flickr news in something like a decade or so...

Under Yahoo/Verizon/Oath, Flickr was in my eyes turned into some skizofren combination of a cloud backup service and a wannabe instagram competitor. The site became less-and-less gallery like, and great features for exploring other peoples backlogs of photos was crippled or removed.

But SmugMug is a company controlled by photographers, and I expect they will lead Flickr in a new direction much more focused on presenting photo collections in a nice way and improve the community experience and exploration features. SmugMug has already tweeted a couple of statements from CEO Don MacAskill that backs my optimism:

"Flickr isn't Instagram and, under my watch, it won't ever be. Flickr is all about a long-lasting, deep, abiding photographer community."

"Flickr is not about showing a photo to quickly gather some likes & comments today, only to never have that photo be seen again. It's about engaging in visual storytelling that lasts forever."

Notice, this Rockland posting is very much based on a series of comments I made in a wishlist thread in the Flickr Help Forum. Thus it is in English and some parts of it might sound a bit repetitive/redundant (I'll try to fix the most redundant parts down the road).

The Best Thing about Flickr!

Before looking at my big long wish-list, a look at what I think Flickr has done absolutely right. In my eyes, it's how you can organize your photos...

The "photostream"
You have a stream of photos ordered like a (b)log or social feed. This shows your photos with your latest additions/uploads first. Just like a blog (There's a stupid option to override the order in the photostream, I choose to overlook it. It's just adding confusion to the concept).

The Albums (and Collections)
You can add a photo to any number of albums you want to, and you can put the photos in any order you like in your albums. These are you're "themed galleries".

The photos
There is only ONE of each photo even though it can be present in multiple albums (or none). Each photo has it's assigned "attributes", which follows the photo no matter if you see it in the photostream or in one of the albums it has been added to. By "attributes" I mean things like title, description, faves, comments, privacy & safety level settings, tags, etc.

So the smart thing is?... Well, you can organize, and re-organize, and re-organize even more and again. Remove a photo from two albums and add it to three other albums. Comments, faves, privacy-level and everything else follows the individual photos no matter how you organize and reorganize your albums. You can have an album mixed of public and friends-only photos. The friends can see all the photos in the album, while others only see the public ones.

It's simple, it's smart. It is implemented soo right that it almost hurts!

I have had a major crisis with Flickr in many years following a move Flickr did in 2012, and for years I was looking for another competent photo-community offering similar flexibility in organizing my photos. But I never found it, so I'm still on Flickr. It's Flickr's biggest asset competing with other photo-communities, and Flickr should be aware of it and take advantage of it. They don't do it in current design, but I'll get back to that...

Presentation of my photos

My largest frustrations with current Flickr design is in relation to the presentation of my photos. Thus some of my highest wishes for future Flickr goes towards fixing that.

Photostream design

Current photostream design doesn't work at all for me. The messy flow of photos does not give the photos the presentation I want. It is impossible for me to look at current layout and call it my photo-gallery or anything else flattering. One photo per line in my photo-column should be the normal. At least for 1st page with latest additions. I might accept a compromise on page 2 and forward...

Also with one photo per line in the photo-column, there should be room for at least the first couple of lines of each photo's description . If so, I would actually be able to point to my photostream and call it "my photo-blog"!

I intentionally wrote one photo per line in the photo-column. Because I would like a smaller second column teasing some of my albums. With the album column I would really be able to point at my photostream and name it "my photo gallery" ! And Flickr should really give albums the visibility they deserves, because as mentioned above, I think it's flickr's biggest asset. Currently albums are hidden in a top-menu no casual visitor ever sees or opens, and it is sadly visible in view statics on albums. Nobody ever look at albums anymore! :-(

Conceptually, what I want was available earlier, when Flickr offered you to choose between several photostream designs. The photostream concept I liked, and a popular option in general as I remember, is the selected one here (sets=albums):

Make all my photos available in the big display sizes

Up until 2012 Flickr had always updated the full database of photos when new browsing-sizes was introduced on the site. However in May 2012 only photos uploaded after March 2012 was updated when Flickr introduced 1600px and 2048px wide browsing-sizes, leaving the majority of photos to be displayed only 1024px wide, even on 24+ inch monitors. Please SmugMug, make my pre-2012 uploads available in 1600px and 2048px display versions like the rest of my photos. It could eventually be a Pro-only service?. Hell, it could even be a pay-once service to update your collection? I'll pretty much pay anything to get the first 7 years of my photo collection updated to the display sizes you need on today's desktop monitors.

Navigating my photos

Make navigation more flexible. Why do you for example have to start from the top of an album? This leads me straight to another major subject I want to talk about...

Make Flickr EXPLORATION-friendly (again) !

This one is more a "theme" than a single feature. Flickr have lost a lot its "exploarability" during the years, and it's really sad for the dynamic and diversity of the site. Flickr introduced Explore-page, but when that's where everybody goes for inspiration, then it doesn't help much that Flickr tries to make the algorithm behind more "explorable", everybody still sees the same photos and photographers. Flickr looses it's dynamic and diversity this way.

Besides using Flickr as a place to exhibit my photos, Flickr is also a place to explore other peoples photos and discover new photographers. And once it was a very good place to do that...

When Flickr was best, it was a fantastic place to explore photos and discover interesting subjects and new photographers. But today Flickr has lost the best exploration features, and instead of being a very dynamic and diverse place, Flickr has become very "one-dimensional".

There was especially three features of Flickr that once supported and seduced you to do deep exploration in Flickr's treasure chest:

• Albums displayed on Photostream pages
  Besides digging into a photographer's photos from page 1 in the photostream, you where via displayed albums invited to attack the collection by other angles independent of when it was uploaded. Today people normally only look at the photos found on first page of a photographer's photostream, a few might continue to page 2, but "nobody" ever sees anything beyond that.
• Flickr Map
  Flickr Map was really good in it's first years. REEEAALY GOOD. I used it a lot. Often as a tool to scout an area before visiting it, other times solely for exploration by digging down into some random area. Sometimes the first also seduced me to explore new photographers and forget about my original reason to be there. But something has changed with Flickr Map. It has become seriously crippled and I rarely use it anymore. Most of all it seems only a very little fraction of Flickr's photos are discoverable when doing a general search in an area. Often when I zoom into an area where I know there should be a lots of geotagged photos, Flickr Map is completely empty. But there's also a lot of other problems with Flickr Map today making it almost practically useless. Okay if not completely useless, then definitely frustrating and not very inviting for exploration. Even if I just want to see the location a photo was shot, I prefer using a hack to see it on Google Maps instead.
• "Context strips" or "Filmstrips" (navigation widget)
  There must have been genius behind the design of this little navigation widget and concept, which as far as I remember was already a part of Flickr when I joined in 2005. But it was lost in the latest big re-design of Flickr. I don't remember if it had an official name, but I've seen it mentioned as "Context strips" and "Filmstrips". The strips was "sneak previews" of next and previous photos in albums, groups and photostream a photo was posted in, directly on the photopage. As Flickr user FlyButtafly so beautiful describes the "strips":

  Those wonderful, expandable/collapsible thumbnails that showed which groups/albums/photostreams they were in, were easily-scrollable, and provided a quick way to go to hop-skip-jumping around the flickrverse, exploring to your heart's content! You could even open up an album or photostream in the exact spot where that photo resided, instead of having to do a url hack or go digging to find it.

  As I said, it was work of a genius, and it could transfer you deep into "forgotten" and rarely visited places in groups, albums and photostreams.

The best thing about these three "exploration tools" is that they supported individual exploration. Everyone using them inevitably ended up in completely different places discovering different photos and photographers. And the next time you went exploring, you would also end up a completely different place than the previous time. That's very different from how exploration generally works on Flickr today. Everyone only sees first page of photostreams, first page of group pools, and the same Explore page as everyone else sees that day. All ending with we all see and fave the same photos and follows the same photographers. And everything is always only about the very latest uploads. That's how Flickr have lost the dynamic and diversity it used to have, the "thing" I believe made Flickr so big and successful in it's first years. Flickr in its early years was such a fun place to be inspired, amused, or just kill some time while having fun.

As I see it, Flickr has done some attempts to bring more "explorability" back to Flickr. Most notably the Trending pages which at first sounded interesting. But in my opinion, they failed. The Trending pages seems to be circling around the same very generic themes again and again, rarely catching anything that really looks like a "trend" (And if you dive into one of the "trend pages" it is not just new uploads it shows. So what is the "trend"?). If they were really able to not just catch a trend, but catch a "local trend" like last weeks music festival or air show, or maybe yesterdays extraordinary nice double rainbow over the city, then it would probably really start to get interesting. But even though Flickr is still relatively big, I don't imagine there's data enough to make that possible (especially if most uploads are automatic backups without tags or descriptions)?

But also, while making a feature like Explore (or Trends) controlled by clever algorithms must have been fun for developers and engineers, in the end the tools which supports individuals to go their own ways, controlled by their own minds, is the best, most fun and most giving way to explore.

The very big list of wishes...

Okay, let's dig into it. Big and small things. Some already mentioned in more details above...

The presentation of our photos

• Landing page (photostream frontpage): Change layout for nicer presentation of each photo and make room for featured albums - or give us multiple layout options!
• Give our pre-2012 uploads big display sizes like the later uploads.
  I've been told by insider, that all display versions of photos are going to be recreated when moving photos to SmugMugs cloudservers, and in this proces the 1600px and 2048px wide display sizes is most likely also going to be created for uploads pre-dating 2012.

Exploration

• Albums displayed on photostream pages (I know, I'm repeating myself a lot here) as another angle to attack a photo-collections.
• Make all geotagged photos generaly searchable on Flickr Map. Today Flickr Map seems broken in several ways, but most annoyingly the amount of photos discoverable by general search, seems only to be a tiny little fraction of what should be discoverable. It use to be a fun tool for random exploration a big selection of photos to search. But it's not of much use/joy in its current form.
• Navigation tool to go deep exploring. Something like context strips / film strips we once had?

Other miscellaneous stuff

• Get rid of the Yahoo login. It's a no-brainer. Probably didn't have to write it. I assume it will happen...
  Unsurprisingly it has more or less officially been announced, that it will happen. And it will be the first big change they make. Developers are problably working hard right now to get rid of all technical ties to Yahoo. I'm eagerly looking forward to being able to close my Yahoo account :-)
• Make my pages friendly for the non-Flickr users visiting. Right now they get a very annoying pop-up trying to encourage them to sign up, every time they go to a new page in my photostream (or album?). Problem is that it is so offensive I cannot think anything, but it scares my visitors (which also could be potential future Flickr users!) away forever. And I'm even a Flickr Pro user, paying to have my photos shown without any adds. But that's clearly an ad in my eyes, and even a very annoying one!
  Problem solved! In beginning of October, Flickr finaly choose to remove the annoying popup.
• Improve group and community features. There's so many things that can be done here, and good place to invest for more life on Flickr.
• Improve Flickr Map. Besides making all photos that should be discoverable, actual discoverable on Flickr Map, update it to use Google Maps. Not only because Google's maps and satellite photos generally are better than Yahoo's, but if Flickr Map also integrated with personal Google Maps features like for example favorite locations (making it possible to see your existing Google Maps favorite locations directly on Flickr Map - and add new ones!), then it would really be cool and useful in new ways.
• On photopages for geotagged photos, make it possible to see exactly where the geo-location is when clicking on the map-widget.
• When Albums (hopefully) are brought back from its current secret life, also return album-comments, album-map and an album-layout that works for album-descriptions longer than one and a half line. I have some album descriptions that are complete travel descriptions!
• Top-pagers, so you don't have to scroll to the bottom of a page for pagination (photostreams, albums, group pools, etc.). At least as long as pages are working/looking like today.
• I know, for some it's a bit controversial, but: Even harder restrictions on how many groups you can post photos to. The group pools are ruined by people spamming their photos to all possible groups they can without respecting the group rules and themes.
• Make it obligatory to set content-type on non-photos again, so it's possible for people not interested in those 3D-renderings and game screenshots to avoid them. Or groups to disallow them.
• Keep exif copyright info in all display sizes generated (for a short period it actually happened, but feature was quickly lost again).
• Adjustable slideshow speed. The current is much too fast for me. I get stressed and doesn't get the time to enjoy and "digest" a photo. Btw, in old days you could make pretty much any list of photos (including a search result) into a slideshow by appending a "/show" to the url. I think you still can do that, but only on PCs with Flash installed. Please also make the new non-Flash slideshow available on the "/show" adresses.
• Color management/profile support in the Flickr app on Android 8+. See feature-box.
• Get rid of Flickr-ideas on Yahoo's uservoice site. It sucks. Instead re-introduce a forum for inspirational discussions like we once had (yes, there will be trolls too, I know :-/). I think it was called FlickrDiscuss. It could eventually be supplemented with a (better) public bug-tracker system. But there should definitely be a place for community members to discuss and develop features, ideas and wishes for Flickr (We are normally not allowed to do that in the Help-forum, and uservoice are definitely NOT a good place for discussions).
  No direct replacement for the uservoice site has been found, but the site has actually been closed and previous links to it now points to a contact formular instead.
• Flickr App Garden. What happened? It's still there if you can find it, but seriously broken. Search has been broken in years (Have never been able to find an "app" I added 2 1/2 year ago via search the functionality). Comments and faves are gone, and when I recently wanted to replace or add another screenshot to my app, I couldn't find the option to it anymore? Flickr API are an interesting part of Flickr even though we don't see as many "mashups" as we did years back. But Flickr could help bringing a bit more life to this by focusing more on what happens in this Flickr-world and fix or replace that App Garden with something that works.
• It's easy to forget in a single-page webapplication, but everything should have a link/webadress!. This means:
  1. You can bookmark the page
  2. You can link to the page
  3. You can open the page in a new browser tab or window via ctrl or right-clicking a link (and Flickr should use the link on navigation elements - at least as a fallback when click-event is not captured, like when right- or ctrl-clicking)
  Even personal (account) pages should support this, because a) and c) can still be very relevant for some users (including me). And even b) is handy for support purposes like in the Help forum. Flickr forgets it in some places (or ignores it because it is extra trouble to implement?).
• Okay, this one's big, but make Flickr design more consistent. Currently it's a mix of several generations of Flickr. Also consider making a clear visual distinction between public pages and your private account pages. For example the header on the Camera Roll page might confuse some people to think it's a public view of your gallery other people have access to too.

For many people photography today is about showing what you are doing or eating right now on social network. It seems that Yahoo have tried to adapt Flickr to support this kind of users. But it makes no sence to try to change a site that bottom-up was designed for something else. If you want to compete with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or whatever, you need a good concept built bottom-up for that. Flickr should take advantage of the fundament it is build on. While not everyone is interested in organising your photos in albums and creating a "gallery", we are still a lot of photographers that want to do that. Focus on that instead of trying to make Flickr into something it doesn't have a change to succeed with anyway.

But it actually sounds like SmugMug and I very much share the same opinions on what Flickr should be and evolve. So I'm pretty optimistic about the future of my photo gallery :-)