Fraser Speirs's dashboard

Fraser Speirs replied on November 08, 2009 09:28 to the question "Generate attribution data for used images" in Connected Flow:

Brilliant, brilliant feedback. Thank you. One thing that was suggested during the beta phase was that Viewfinder should write a 'sidecar' file of metadata along with a download. Does that sound like it would be useful?

If I did that, would it be important that the sidecar be XMP format, or would a plain text file work?

Fraser Speirs replied on November 07, 2009 20:42 to the idea "Viewfinder feature requests and some usability issues" in Connected Flow:

Hi Robert,

All points noted. The erasing current results when you hit Load More is an unfortunate bit of Flickr API design poking through. The search API isn't 'paged' (in the sense that I can't ask for the 'next 100' of a search). I can only re-run the search with a new upper limit.

When you mention 'save favorites', would the ability to mark something as a Flickr fave be enough, or do you want to curate local collections?

Fraser Speirs replied on November 07, 2009 15:06 to the idea "Add or Remove photos dynamically from within FlickrExport" in Connected Flow:

Unfortunately, this isn't possible with the way that iPhoto plugins work in iPhoto. They have to be modal dialogs.

A comment on the question "Viewfinder Searches are Limited" in Connected Flow:

I quite agree. The overarching rule for Viewfinder is "no more or less restrictive than a web browser". I just want to make sure that I keep the Flickr community on-side, so a step at a time. – Fraser Speirs, on November 06, 2009 23:55

Fraser Speirs replied on November 06, 2009 23:52 to the question "Clicking "Load More" downloads first 100 again?" in Connected Flow:

Yup, 500 is really useful but a bit slower than I'd like. I didn't want users to have a first impression of Viewfinder being sluggish.

Also, FYI, 500 is the maximum result set in any Flickr search.

Fraser Speirs replied on November 06, 2009 18:25 to the question "Viewfinder Searches are Limited" in Connected Flow:

Yes, authenticated searches in Viewfinder are roughly scheduled for version 1.5. I wanted to take a little time to get the design right, because there's a degree of sensitivity required in showing restricted photos alongside publicly-viewable photos in a tool that's designed to help people re-use photos.

Fraser Speirs replied on November 06, 2009 18:23 to the problem "Toolbar, Text-Only: Searchbox Disappears" in Connected Flow:

Yup, that's totally my fault. It's on the list to fix. Sorry!

Fraser Speirs replied on November 06, 2009 18:21 to the question "MarsEdit Integration" in Connected Flow:

This is actively being designed. I don't know that it will work exactly as you describe in the _near_ future, but I definitely want MarsEdit integration soon.

The first iteration of this feature will probably be a "copy HTML" command, with some drag-and-drop capability, but larger features could follow if there's demand.

Let me know if you think that's a useful direction to go in.

Fraser Speirs replied on November 06, 2009 18:16 to the question "Choose Size of Download" in Connected Flow:

I'll note that for consideration. As I develop more integration with blogging tools, rather than just Keynote and Desktop Pictures, I can see this becoming more important.

Fraser Speirs replied on November 06, 2009 18:14 to the question "Clicking "Load More" downloads first 100 again?" in Connected Flow:

It's because of the way the Flickr API works. Search isn't a 'paged' API on Flickr - I can't say "download the next 100 photos". All I can do is re-run the search with a larger limit.

Fraser Speirs replied on November 06, 2009 18:11 to the question "Return images that are NOT available for download." in Connected Flow:

At the moment, you can have the 'downloadability' of an image shown in the title or subtitle of the browser. I'm looking at better visual treatments for this in future versions.

You can set this in the Item Title and Item Subtitle submenus of the View menu.

Fraser Speirs replied on November 05, 2009 16:36 to the idea "Pinch to zoom icons in Viewfinder." in Connected Flow:

It's planned for 1.1. The multi-touch APIs are a bit, um, odd when used in the context of Image Kit.

Fraser Speirs replied on November 05, 2009 16:35 to the idea "Allow for list and column view in View Finder" in Connected Flow:

I can see the virtue of a list view (sort by size, license, etc), but I'm not as clear on where a column view would be useful. It's not immediately obvious how I would construct a metadata hierarchy from Flickr results. Tell me more about that?

Fraser Speirs replied on November 05, 2009 16:32 to the question "Generate attribution data for used images" in Connected Flow:

There are a couple of things in 1.0 that might help you:

Firstly, that information is embedded in the IPTC metadata for downloaded images (where possible - not all images can have it added). See the "Orphan Works" video on http://connectedflow.com/viewfinder/t...

Secondly, you can click the "Copy Attribution" button in the Download Manager. That will copy an attribution string to the clipboard. Alternatively, Option-drag from the thumbnail in the Download Manager to drag the same attribution text into a document. See the "Keynote Integration" video on the tutorials page I linked above.

Using the option-drag technique, you could conceivably keep a track of all the images in a table inside a Pages document or something like that.

Does that help? If not, tell me a bit more about your workflow and I'll see what I can do.

Fraser Speirs replied on November 05, 2009 11:48 to the idea "Preference for default double-click behavior" in Connected Flow:

Glad you like Viewfinder!

I'm working on some solutions for this in 1.1. Currently, I have designed a detailed 'tooltip' view that shows more information about the image. This would save you from bouncing out to the browser all the time.

I'd like to know what kind of information you would like to get on the images so that I can understand how to best achieve this.

Thanks,
Fraser

A comment on the idea "Faces to tags?" in Connected Flow:

Appreciate the support, Marc. – Fraser Speirs, on November 01, 2009 14:27

Fraser Speirs replied on October 29, 2009 10:23 to the problem "Crashes when trying to access Export menu" in Connected Flow:

If you have a crash log in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/iPhoto.(date).crash, please send it to me at info-at-connectedflow.com.

Fraser Speirs replied on October 29, 2009 10:22 to the problem "some files failing on flickr" in Connected Flow:

The Flickr responses are notoriously poor for this one.

There's a hard limit of 20MB per image on Flickr. Unfortunately, because of limitations in the Aperture API, there's not much FlickrExport can do to either warn you beforehand or recover afterwards.

The only thing that will work is to either reduce the resolution of the image or the quality settings. Even taking the JPEG compression down one or two notches from 12 will produce a significant savings in file size.

PS: I'm going to mark this as "not a problem", but that's just because it's not specifically a FlickrExport problem. I'm sure Flickr are aware that they need to raise this limit again.

A comment on the question "Could Not communicate with Flickr? WHY I have Pro Account?" in Connected Flow:

What's the error message? – Fraser Speirs, on October 27, 2009 19:00

Fraser Speirs replied on October 22, 2009 11:16 to the problem "Cannot export to Flickr" in Connected Flow:

Thanks for the follow-up!