Searching Flickr
Flickr is an excellent web site. I’m amazed by its elegance. That said, its search capabilities are too limited for my liking. What I wish is that I could use Google to search Flickr. You know how sometimes you can use Google to search within a web site? For example, if I type in to the Google box:
site:www.amazon.com fishing
Google is able to search Amazon effectively. Another perk is that I can use Google’s Advanced Operators to increase my ability to search.
This doesn’t work with Flickr. If I want to locate pictures that include the colors orange and pink but NOT the color blue, there is no way to do that. I can only use the advanced search page on Flickr, pull up the pink and blue pictures, then scan them to rule out blue ones.
I was complaining about this a few weeks ago, and Aaron (what with his big brain and endless desire to learn new things) decided to write a little code to accomplish this. It isn’t perfect yet, but it’s improving. The main limitations are the number of pictures it can process (if the inclusive tags are very common, then it can’t grab all of them) and the slow speed. It really does take a while, but I think that is mostly related to the things Aaron can’t control with code. It’s more a Flickr thing. Still, I can do the tag search I want, which is very groovy.
Eventually, maybe he can get it looking like this using this, and then we can stick ads on it and become multi-millionaires! That would be soooo glamorous!
It’s a wonder Aaron gets any work done. Me with all my big ideas. And I tend to have even more when there’s real work to do! (Like now.)
Give his Flickr search engine a try, see what you think, and get back to us!
