notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Flickr API Corners: ID to URL

If you have the URL of a Flickr photo, and want the URL of the page containing that photo, here are two ways, one on the website, and one using the API.

(Why would you want to do this? Well, people seem to be good at breaking the terms of service and not linking back to Flickr with a photo. Perhaps it’s been through ffffound or tumblr, or it’s been used on a blog. If that happens, but you want to find out who posted it, carry on.)

Firstly, using the website. Say your URL is http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4031/4497550401_11d8d708a7_z.jpg. Select up to the number behind the final slash and replace the text with http://flickr.com/photo.gne?id=. You’ll be redirected to a page containing the photo. (It’s possible that the photo will be private, but you’ll still be told who the uploader was.) Note you don’t need to trim things from the end of the URL; Flickr’s smart enough to do that for you.

Secondly, through the API. Open up the API explorer and look at flickr.photos.getInfo. Again, look after the last slash, and copy the number there (in this case, 4497550401) into the “ID” field. Once you call the method, you’ll see a variety of information about the photo, including (at the bottom of the XML) a URL.

It’s possible, if you don’t sign the call, or if the photo’s private, that you’ll need the second (hex) string, in this case 11d8d708a7, in the “secret” field. Providing this grants a little more access to a photo than the ID alone, but you may still find that the photo is private.

There you have it: two ways to get from a Flickr photo ID to the URL of the page containing it.

Crowdsourcing for the Conservatives

iamdanw:

The Wisdom of Cameron: Crowdsourcing for the Conservatives

The Conservative Party offered to pay £1m to produce something that can “harness the wisdom” of voters. 6 hours later Tom Scott launches one. He’s rather fast.

I suspect the Tories were hoping for a bit more than a yes or no voting app. Still, I applaud Tom Scott’s work: either it’ll win the money, in which case the prize has been proven to be a bit of a joke, or it won’t, and it’ll force the party to explain a bit more carefully exactly what it is that they do want. After all, a £1m project usually has a better scope document than a BBC News page.

Simon Willison’s Twitter client

I went through pages of history so you don’t have to. Sounds like it’d be pretty easy to copy.

Finally broke down and wrote my own stupid twitter client on the train… it does groups! (July 3rd)
@rboulton as a matter of fact I did :) mongodb + about 100 lines of Python (July 3rd)
Having your own Twitter client that saves tweets to a persistent store is AWESOME - group support, search over just people you follow… (July 4th)
my dumb home grown Twitter client is now powered by djng! (July 4th)
@TrevorGerzen it’s really simple - just a script that dumps tweets in to mongodb every 60 seconds, and a one-page Django app that shows them (July 4th)
@rboulton @cackhanded haven’t decided if I’ll release my client yet (July 6th)
@JimPurbrick my custom Twitter client now archives everything from people I follow (in MongoDB), it’s a really useful feature (July 8th)