Flickr and iPhone? Things are finally getting serious

October 6th, 2008 | iPhone Hacks, Tips and Tricks

Flickr for iPhone and iPod touch

Man, we really get ticked when some company touts a version of their site that’s “iPhone friendly” only to find out that it’s been so stripped down of content and features so it will work for the lowest common denominator of mobile phones, the WAP device. Usually it’s that little “m” that replaces the “www” in the domain name that gives it away. And so was the case with our favorite photo sharing site, Flickr, who flouted m.flickr.com to iPhones only to treat them as if they were Openwave instead of Mobile Safari. Rats! Duped again.

Thankfully, those days are over for Flickr users with iPhones or iPod touches. The latest release of mobile Flickr is so much more than friendly to iPhones that it’s downright obscene. Flickr for iPhone still lives at the old address (you know, the one with the little “m”), but the new digs are so sweet on Mobile Safari, flaunting the greatest features of Flickr to its users on the go.

Point your iPhone or iPod touch to the little “m” at m.flickr.com and you will now automatically get routed to the version that’s optimized for Mobile Safari. In this version, Flickr did not try to reproduce all the robust features its desktop offering because some of those are based on Flash, which is still absent from the iPhone. For instance, you won’t find the Flickr Organizer tool, or sadly, even the Slideshow option. No Flash and no ajax means less features, but what is there is very snappy and responsive, even for a web app.

This version of Flickr offers all the features you need for searching and viewing images, which is pretty much all you really need to do from a mobile device anyways. The default landing page offers one-tap access to the most used parts of Flickr like viewing your recent activity or uploads from your contacts. It also gives you quick access to on of the very best features of any photo site, Flickr’s “Interestingness”. No, that’s not a typo.

Interestingness is one of those things in which you can lose track of time and get lost wandering for hours on end. It’s an ingenious way of organizing a billion images in the Flickr database and displaying only those that the community finds interesting to look at. How is this done? Flickr’s algorithm figures out which photos are interesting by looking at a variety of metrics such as number of times the photo was viewed, how many people marked it as a favorite, how many comments were left on it, and so on. The most interesting images are then shown, and they are always very, very good. Its such a great way to explore new images, and another harsh reminder of how much you actually suck as a photographer.

The global navigation options are rendered at the top of each page so you can quickly move around from section to section. There is no visible place for uploading images from your iPhone, but this is done through email anyways. Every Flickr account, including the free version, comes with a unique email address that you can add to your contacts. Snap a pic, then send it to that email. Your photo will then appear in your account instantly where you can share them with your friends, set copyright and privacy settings, add comments, or edit title and description.

This new site shows that Flickr is finally getting serious about iPhone. While it doesn’t contain all the features of it’s desktop web sibling, it does offer only the features you really need on the iPhone like searching, discovering, and viewing images with your social network. If you already have a Flickr account, go check out the new iPhone version. And if you are not a Flickr user, go sign up for the free account. You’ll love what you can do with Flickr on both the desktop web, and now the iPhone.

Flickr - Photo sharing, social networking