Technical Ramblings

I’ve worked out how to post images to flickr using HTTPlib and Python from the flickrup source code. I have no idea if this is the best way to do it, but it seems to work, so I’m writing an application to surround it in a UI. In the process, I’m creating a pretty generalized application framework that I should be able to use on some of my other applications. So, I’m enjoying that.

Some things that it’s done so far:
* Established a couple generalized option configuration methods, which let me load and save from a file
* Created what i hope is a UI for changing those options (which will change per-app)
* Added in some general stuff to make sure the UI works, like locks to make sure the application doesn’t just quit

I’m probably not going to release the framework on its own, at least not until I come out with the Flickr app that I’m writing it for, simply because I’m writing the functions as I go along. If it ends up being worthwhile and reusable enough, I may list it seperately on my page of Symbian Projects.

I think that this could be really fun for me to play with, and I hope I get it working soon, because it seems like a cool application idea. The basic idea behind it is to combine the filebrowser code that is included with the examples in the distribution with a flickr uploading option, as well as the option to view the images. Granted, I can’t do anything other than open them in the default viewer right now, but then at least people can see what they’re getting into.

I’m starting to get to the point where I could see how having a bit more advanced symbian UI widgets would be helpful: something like Putty’s menu, where things can actually be in submenus and the like. I can also see how it’d be way more difficult to code, so I’m not lamenting the lack, just noticing it more than I used to as I get into more and more complex applications. One thing that I have learned is that the Text widget makes a really good way to keep messages and so on on the screen without any complex threading or anything, which is nice. Little things like a progress bar (which seems to be underway) might still be nice though.

Just some random meandering thoughts while I’m writing. Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll have an app at least starting to take shape for Flickr, and maybe I can devote some more time to the traffic cam project too.

I’m an open minded kind of guy. There are a lot of services out there, and even though some of them aren’t open source, it’s possible that they may do what I want them to do. One of those services is Flickr, a photo sharing service.

Flicker does a lot of very nifty things: updates from anywhere, advanced annotations, including an extremely easy to use Javascript interface for annotating regions of images, and posting to blogs directly from the service. However, that’s not the coolest aspect of the service, in my opinion.

Flickr provides a relatively advanced, full featured, well documented API – a way to get pretty much any information you might want out of the site without screenscraping. (LiveJournal, in comparison, strongly discourages screenscraping, preferring that you use services listed on their bot-friendly services list. However, the data afforded through these interfaces is extremely limited to the point where it’s unusable for most advanced tasks.) Through this API, you can retrieve all the information you want about the people and photos available through the service.

This is especially interesting to me as an RDF nut because it means that I can use Flickr’s nice interface and handy annotation tools – and at the same time, I can convert the data, via the API, to an RDF format that I can use for all the things I’ve been describing in my Image Description posts.

The limits a free Flickr account places on you are kinda strict: relatively small upload limit, given that I prefer to store full size images in the photos I already have in my personal gallery. I’d immediately set Flickr aside months ago because there was no way I could use it to store all my images. However, upon review tonight I discovered that an annual Flickr account during their beta period is only about 45 USD. Included in this is:

• 1 GB monthly upload limit
• Unlimited Storage
• Unlimited Bandwidth

In addition to a few others, listed at their upgrade page.

It’s a case where I can build lots of tools and do lots of work myself, and get exactly what I want… or I can use flickr, pay a pretty minimal fee, and get 90% of everything I want with no effort, plus an additional bit of work to get that last 10%. I’ll probably still keep things locally (if for no other reason as a backup should flickr ever go poof), but move my primary photo gathering to be flickr based.

I think I know which way I’m going to go. Once I do, I’ll keep you all updated on the progress I have with RDF.