A week or so ago, the lovely people at Flickr launched their new iPhone-specific mobile site. It's very nicely done, and there's one thing in particular I noticed that I've always wished for on their main site.

When viewing photos by your contacts, the "next" and "last" photo links don't go within the photostream (as they do on the main site), but they page between contacts instead. It's a really nice way to quickly look through new images.*

Having had a (years-old) desire for this feature on the website rekindled, I decided to spend a few hours with Greasemonkey seeing if I could make it happen, and I managed to do so, thanks largely to people who've led the way. Here's show_flickr_contact_context.user.js.



However, before you go charging in to install it, I should probably warn you that it's very much still at the "proof of concept" stage. Flickr's context boxes are surprisingly complicated little blocks of HTML, and (perhaps ironically) I haven't made any of the JavaScript in them work. Moreover, it seems that I've broken the functionality in existing context blocks. Moreover, the script only works when you've come directly from the Photos from your Contacts page, or if it detects an argument that it sets in the URL from the context paging block.** This is because the API call the script needs to make seems to be quite a complicated one, so I'm trying very hard to be polite with the usage of it.

Anyway, I thought it'd be nice to document even though it's really only getting going, so feel free to have a play with it. If I do tidy up any of its rough edges, I'll be sure to mention it here.

* A couple of minor notes on the implementation. On the plus side, it obeys the setting on the Photos from your Contacts page that sets whether or not you see five or one image from each. However, there's no way to modify this on the phone itself. Unfortunately, it's also hard to change contexts; in other words, to swap from paging by contacts to paging within a user's photostream. Both compromises are down to the lack of space for UI on the iPhone, though, so I'm hardly going to really complain (hence the hiding this in a footnote).
** Ideally I'd do this using Flickr's own convention: /photos/name/id/in/contacts/. Unfortunately, if Flickr finds a /in/ argument it doesn't understand, you get redirected and lose the context, so I'm using /photos/name/id/?contact=in instead. Ah well.

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"Yeah, well I blame George Lucas."

"Oh for... Well you seem to have been consistantly blaming Lucas for everything bad the last few years.  Do tell - how has this creator of fiction caused the current economic crisis?"

"You say that, but the economy itself is a fiction."

"Ok, a Frank Capra angel."

"Yeah, was going to stretch a metaphor around the Force or maybe people not believing in faries, but... nice Darmok.  Anyway, you see these guys on the trading floors, high ups in the investment banks.  Lot of guys in their 30s."

"Ok, go on."

"So, back in the 90s most of the previous guys in those positions were of cinema attending age in 1977 - when the original Star Wars was released.  But a lot of the guys today were either not born or two young to see Star Wars in the cinema.  Empire came out in 1980, Jedi in 1983."

"Oh, god.  Is this like when you openly mock people for believing in star signs, but then go on to contend that people's attitudes can be determined by who their first Doctor Who was?"

"Your close-minded attitude clearly marks you out as Tom Baker's, but yes, it's very much like that.  If you came to Star Wars between 77 and 80, or after 83, you had a very different perspective.  Those people had hope - new hope.  Their story ended in a very visibly defeated enemy, celebrations, medals, dancing teddy bears, whatever.  But for those years between Empire and Jedi...  You found out you were adopted and your real dad was a dick, had your hand cut off, your best friend flash frozen.  Bleak.  Precious little hope ahead. It's got to have some impact.  If you were a Star Wars obsessed 12-year-old in 1982, you're a 38-year-old today.  And hey, maybe you are managing pension funds or something.  It's not even a curve - it's high in 77, drops rapidly in 1980, then shoots back up in 83.  Not movie quality, mind you - just the perception on how well the fictional war was going for the good guys."

"Well, three years is a long time in war.  Even a star war."

"It's an even longer time in economics."

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I really should have posted this months ago, when it was first news (and I'd thought that I had, but I can't find a trace of it). Anyway. Apple now offer US keyboards in the UK, as a build to order option. For example, here's the page for customising a black MacBook, and look at what's in the Keyboard section:

Anyway, this was great news when I joined Six to Start, as I was able to get a US keyboard layout. Why do I care? Well, all Apple keyboards used to be US layout: my Wallstreet and Pismo G3 Powerbooks both had the same layout as a US laptop would have. It was only some time into the life of the Titanium PowerBook G4s that Apple started using the ISO layout, with UK mappings, on British laptops. (Fortunately for me, I've been able to buy laptops in the US since then, but now, as mentioned above, I don't have to.)

So, what's the difference and why do I care? Firstly, and probably most importantly, I really don't like the narrow, two-row return key on UK keyboards. It seems far easier for me to deal with the long, single-row return that US laptops have. Secondly, `~ is at the top left of a US keyboard, whereas it's next to a (narrower) left shift key in the UK. This is a big deal because I use the command ~ shortcut to flip around an application's windows a great deal. Thirdly, while most people probably don't notice the other keys - like / and \ - moving around, for a programmer those are a really big deal. Fourthly, and by far least importantly, the US keyboard has names on the meta keys: option, command and tab are labelled, rather than having symbols on them.

There is a rather odd postscript, though: I use a logical UK layout (ie, the UK key mapping) on my US keyboard. This means that to type # I use option 3, while £ is shift 3. I'll admit this is a bit odd, but it dates from the time when, as I said above, UK keyboards shared a physical layout with their US counterparts. My behaviour for using # is so ingrained that to break myself of the habit and move would be almost as annoying as moving to a physical UK layout.

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This year, more than most, the Photokina trade show seemed to produce a lot of interesting news in photography. Most of it filtered down to people outside the industry through sites like Digital Photography Review, who covered the long stream of product announcements from the beginning of August through to the end of the show in late September.

Of course, the big names were there; Canon started with the 50D announcement - which was fairly dull, being an incremental upgrade on the 40D - and finished with the long-awaited 5D Mark II, which brought full HD video to SLRs (a month or so after the other big name, Nikon, launched its D90, also with a movie mode). In between there was the usual string of compact camera announcements, with the most interesting probably being the rather ugly G10.

Personally I've always been fascinated by the market segment the G10 sits in, being somewhere between the SLR and the compact camera. However, the Canon range doesn't really do anything for me any more. Sure, the G10 now goes out to 28mm equivalent, but it's been years since the competition did that. Panasonic, in particular, have always been good at it, and the Leica-badged version of their player there, the DMC-LX3, finally emerged at Photokina. The D-Lux 4 is, somewhat hyperbolically, labelled as the "Son of M8", but it's certainly tempting.

One thing both versions of the camera get right is a commitment to reduce noise. In the press release for the LX3, for example, there's this:

Panasonic also redesigned the peripheral circuits and other components to further minimize noise generation. These enhancements greatly improve imaging performance, boosting both sensitivity and saturation by around 40% compared with ordinary 10-mexapixel compact cameras.

Meanwhile, here's Fuji, whose F30 and F31 still command amazingly good resale prices on the back of their low-light performance:

Fujifilm says its new Super CCD EXR technology will allow its next generation of premium compacts to produce high-ISO images "superior to the F31fd," while also offering improved dynamic range in other shooting conditions. The technology is already fully developed and will be integrated into the first camera in time for a spring 2009 launch.

This is promising news. For a long time, camera manufacturers have been pushing megapixels over quality, with the rare exception - like the aforementioned F30 - still a rarity rather than a market leader. Of course, these are marketing quotes, not from real-world tests, but I'll be keeping a keen eye out for reviews of the cameras as they make it to market.

Panasonic are also involved in another very interesting idea - Micro Four Thirds. This is a new system for interchangable camera lenses, and is apparently "the most significant announcement in the camera market this year" and "an important moment in digital photography's short history". DPReview and Imaging Resource probably do a better job of explaining why than I do, but the summary is that they close the gap between compact and SLR digital cameras by shrinking the latter to the size of the former, whilst still allowing a choice of lenses.

The drawback? By losing the mirror box and pentaprism, these aren't true SLRs: you can't look down the same light path that the sensor will have. However, these days, most compact camera users couldn't care: you can look at a screen on the back and see. not what the sensor will see, but what it is seeing. The G1 - Panasonic's first body in this format - uses an screen that you look at through a SLR-style viewfinder.

However, the camera that seemed to get the most attention - at least if ffffound is anything to go by - is the Olympus prototype, which manages to mount a pancake lens on a so-retro-it-hurts body. Obviously, it's far too early to tell how good the image quality is, but these could well carve out a niche, although I worry they'll find it hard to beat the big players on price. (On the other hand, it won't hurt that as the laggards in the SLR space, behind not only the big two but also Pentax and Sony, Olympus and Panasonic have little to lose.) Certainly I look forward to seeing what the reviews say and how they perform.

It certainly seems to be an interesting time for digital photography, even if it's coming at the expense of film. Now, if only I could carve out the time to actually go out there and start shooting...

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While not having read that much Iain M. Banks, I find myself thinking in Culture Ship names an awful lot. Blip.fm seems to encourage it. I try and think up a culture ship name that sums up the song I'm going to blip. No idea why. I enjoy it greatly however.

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I'm a bit late to this (it's a whole week and a half old), but a recent Stephen Fry Dork Talk column covered the Canon/Nikon camera rivalry, and more specifically, the Canon EOS 1000D. I've not really talked about it, but unlike a lot of the earlier commentators, I wanted to wait until it had found a street price, which it has: about £375.

So, what's the 1000D? Well, it's a new category (four digits, as opposed to the three-digit 350/400/450D, or the two-digit 30/40/50, or the single-digit (and expensive) 5D and the various 1Ds) of entry-level SLR. It comes with the same improved 18-55IS kit lens as the 450D (usually) does, and loses a few features compared to the model up (spot metering, for example) while saving about £100 off the price.

I'm sure it'll do very well, since the things that make me happy I've got a 450D (a replacement for a stolen 350D, although I'd have been tempted to upgrade anyway) rather than a 1000D won't occur to many people. (For example, the viewfinder's a lot better on the 450D, but no new SLR purchaser will even notice.) I'd also recommend it over Nikon's entry-level cameras, because it's compatible with all of Canon's EF lenses.

(Technically Nikon's backwards compatibility is better, since they never had the same sharp break for electronic kit as Canon, but the D40, D40x and D60 don't support autofocus on some lenses, and unfortunately the cheap-but-useful 50mm f/1.8 is one of them. Since I recommend this as something you want to buy either with your SLR or within a couple of months, this is a big deal.)

However, beyond the low end I'm increasingly minded to recommend Nikon. They have a much smoother progression in their range, whereas Canon have a vast chasm between the roughly £1000 50D and the well-over-£2000 5DmkII. (I'm assuming the 5D will vanish quickly; possibly not.) On the other side, the D90, D700, D300 and D3 are each much closer to each other in price (although it starts to get a bit rarefied towards the end). I have no idea what Canon's thinking is here, and of course there's more to an SLR system than bodies (there's lenses too), but even so, it's a bit strange.

Still, SLRs are more affordable than ever (especially if you look outside the big-two duopoly: Sony's entry-level Alphas are under £300 now, I believe), and so it's as good a time as ever to consider one.

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The tragedy of the commons is a myth.

There is a vast conspiracy enacted by those who would steal the common off the goose.

A giant distributed clan of supervillainy: the free-riders.

They are sent across the globe and beyond - into our fictions and our factions to ensure that the tragedy plays out as prophesised.

They cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be bought (as they are freeriders) - the only way they can be stopped is by applying a sharp pinch to their left elbow and when they turn around on their hard heels, giving them an extremely disapproving, disappointed look.

Start now.

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Having finally got snaptrip out there, I'm hoping you'll allow me a little (pretentious?) waffle about why I wrote it, where it fits, how I made some of my decisions, and what's next.

I'm a big fan of Flickr's machine tags. Most of my images have at least ten - mostly generated automatically, like my EXIF machine tags - and I tend to add geographic metadata as well. As such, it's probably not a surprise that I'd write an application that made Dopplr trip IDs available. The big surprise is that I bothered to make it accessible to most people, by building it as a website not a script.

Why a website? Well, I thought I'd like a nice interface as much as anyone, and I also know that to make a machine tag truly useful you need as many people as possible using it. Asking folk to download a script, get a key, and use a command-line interface - or no interface at all - isn't going to work.

Speaking of Dopplr, I don't think I've seen a talk by anyone there since it started, but I do think I've picked up their philosphy from slides and abstracts online. The phrase that tends to crop up is a "coral reef", the idea being there's a web of data that's available on the internet and that by doing one thing, and doing it well - the old Unix philosophy, really - that you can live in a happy niche. Well, snaptrip lives on part of the coral built by the two companies whose API it consumes.

I'm not under any illusions: it's likely that most users won't care about their past trips, or matching their Flickr photos. Those who do will probably only visit the site once, tag a few trips, and then leave. That's fine.

In my previous post I alluded to some decisions I made about the geotagging features in snaptrip. To be honest, it wasn't something I'd considered at first, but seeing Richard Crowley's Dopplroadr hack - which does some of the same things as snaptrip, but when they're uploaded rather than by looking for existing Flickr photos - made me consider the possibility. However, because I am looking at things that have probably accumulated metadata already, snaptrip is careful not to overwrite any information that's already there.

snaptrip adds fewer tags than Dopploadr. It won't add human-readable tags at all, and it adds the geographical data at a relatively low level of accuracy. I didn't want snaptrip to assert with precision that all these photos were taken dead in the centre of Copenhagen, since they probably weren't. My US trips show exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about: most of my pictures are actually taken anything from ten to two hundred miles from where Dopplr thinks I was staying. Similarly, it doesn't set a woe:id machine tag, instead preferring to use the dopplr:woeid namespace/predicate pair.

It's quite possible I'm overdoing the paranoia here, and so I'll probably add the option to set more tags later, but for now, I'm happy to tread lightly. (In that vein, snaptrip doesn't set a visible "snaptrip" tag, like many apps (Shozu and AirMe spring to mind; Picnic also suggests adding its tag). However, it does set a dopplr:tagged=snaptrip machine tag, and I should probably make that optional also. For now, you can use Flickr's tag tools to delete it.)

So, what's next? Well, the basic functionality I wanted seems to be there and stable, so I'm now considering two further avenues. I'm trying to develop tools to give you some views on the aggregated data from your past trips, but perhaps I should instead be looking at tools to increase the amount of stuff in that Dopplr history. I've got a couple of ideas...

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I'd hoped to do a lot to snaptrip over the weekend, and I pretty much managed to do what I hoped for. There's a lot of changes which went live today; a lot of them are kind of invisible, but hopefully they're all useful.

Firstly, there's some user interface changes that incorporate suggestions from people within Dopplr. You now have to authenticate with both Dopplr and Flickr before logging in; it was possible to use snaptrip with just the one, but it didn't really make a lot of sense. When you tag photos, they get a border in the city's colour (as they do if they've already been tagged). I've also removed the requirement to load all the photos before tagging them; you now get to do so in batches of 24.

Secondly, the behind the scenes changes. Google App Engine makes it really easy to use memcache to avoid loading data more than once, so I now use that, making reloading pages really quick. There's much better error detection, especially for when a network call to either of the services it relies on fails. I've also fixed the sort ordering in the statistics panel on the trip list page.

show-dopplr-link

Thirdly, I've added a lot more functionality to make use of the location information on both sides. Your map now shows Flickr photos*, and it's a "slippy map", so you can zoom in and out and recenter it. (It also shows the departure point.) It's also possible to use the Dopplr information about trips to add photos to Flickr's map. I should probably make it clear here that snaptrip will never overwrite location data (or trip data) that you've added yourself.

Finally, I had a comment on a previous post asking why you couldn't see trip tags on Flickr. Assuming that snaptrip worked, then the machine tags it's added aren't even shown by default- you have to open the disclosure triangle in the right hand pane. However, if you're using Firefox and Greasemonkey, you can install the show-dopplr-links user script, which will display a badge and link - like those for Upcoming - on each photo page.

Hopefully this isn't the end- there are still features I want to add, and the usage of the app when DopplrHQ first publicised it was a pleasant surprise. I hope these fixes and additions make it useful for you, though.

* Usually. There's a philosophical point I hope to expand on in another post.

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Just a quick note to say thanks to all of you who've been using snaptrip today, since it was mentioned on DopplrHQ's Twitter stream. As it says in the questions and answers on the front page, I'm still poking at lots of bits of functionality, and you may see the odd error when I haven't properly caught one of the web services I use failing to send back some text. Despite all that, I can see that the app's been fairly popular, and hopefully it's been useful.

However, I've just spent an evening tightening up some of the text, and also working on how to show that an image already has either Dopplr trip tags or location data. (You've probably noticed there's a link that doesn't work- I didn't expect to be releasing quite so soon- but it might give you a clue as to what's coming next.) I'll try and keep posting fairly regularly, but for now, thanks again.

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