Five Things I Like About The New Flickr Interface

Flickr recently updated the user interface of the online photo service, which has basically been the same for as long as I can remember. Honestly, I didn't think Yahoo! would even get around to sprucing up Flickr, but they did and here are the five things I like about the new interface:

1. Larger Images
Photo sharing services typically compress or shrink photos you upload to save space, but I really like the bigger cleaner crisper version of the new Flickr interface.

2. Better Navigation
I really like that you can now find all the features in a drop menu right above the images. Before I was always hunting for what I wanted to do.

3. Zoom
There is a handy Zoom button right above the image now, which takes you to a lightbox version, with the ability to see multiple sizes.

4. Improved Thumbnail Slider
In the old version of Flicker, you could only see two thumbnails, previous and next, and it was very clunky. The new thumbnail slider let's you see 5 images, and in fact slides back and forth without reloading the page.

5. Geo Tagging
Geo tagging is all the rage, but I really like being able to see where a picture was taken. Sometimes I want to go see the places people have taken pictures, but without having to email and ask, I can find the location right on the map.

Over all this is a huge upgrade for Flickr. Now, if Yahoo!/Flickr would just step into 2010 and add real social network sharing, they would have a killer service, one that would rival TwitPic or Posterous.

My Flickr photos.

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Fall 2010 Utah Code Camp

September and October are turning out to be a complete geek fest. With the Kynetx Impact Dev Day on 9/18, Utah Code Camp this week 9/25, and of course Utah Open Source Conference 10/7-10/9. Check out the camp schedule here.

I hope to attend these classes:

• Keynote 9:00am - 10:00am Modern Software Development, the State of the Craft -- David Starr


• 10:10am - 11:10am ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor -- Nathan Zaugg


• 11:20am - 12:20pm Internet-Enabled Applications for Windows Phone 7 -- Richard Thomson


• 12:20pm - 1:00pm Social Networking and Building your brand -- Pat Wright


• 1:00pm - 2:00pm What is ALT.NET? -- Craig Berntson


• 2:10pm - 3:10pm WPF MVVM Design Pattern -- Danny Staten


• 3:20pm - 4:20pm MVC and Entity Framework -- James Johnson

This should be a great event. Pat Wright and company do a great job. If you're Microsoft Developer, or want to learn more about Microsoft development tools, this would be a great place to start.

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Kynetx Impact Developer Day

I was fortunate enough to attend a Kynetx Impact Developer Day at the Kynetx World Wide HQ. I just wanted to share a few notes and links, and my over all impression.

First, the Kynetx group did an awesome job. One thing I have a hard time with at developer conferences are speeches and sales pitches. This event was far from that. We walked through code, wrote code, compiled code, deployed code.

I was impressed that the actual API engineers were presenting, demoing and coding. I was even excited that Jessie struggled to get some code to work he was writing on the fly. He's human, it's something programmers deal with a lot, and he handled it gracefully, all the while CEO Stephen Fulling was sitting in the audience. In the end, he got the demo to work, and it was very cool.

Founder and CTO Phil Windley opened with the reason he built what eventually became the Kynetx platform. He saw an opportunity to program the web. He saw the increase in available API's, and the ease in which data from various points on the web, and user initiated events, could be used to enhance the experience. Read more about Kynetx, the KRL language, and even sign up for a free developer account with an easy to use coding IDE.

Lunch was provided, prizes were awarded, and plenty to do, made for an exciting and educational day. In my opinion, if you don't leave an event like this with hundreds of new ideas you weren't really paying attention.

The only part that could have been better was the layout of the space. The tables weren't set up in a way I could use my computer and watch was going on up front. We were sideways, so I was always turning. I eventually gave up because I was more interested and watching what the presenter was doing. Guys, next time put the tables in classroom mode. You would have had plenty of room.

If you have a chance to attend an Impact Developer Day in your community I would do it. It's worth it.

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The Best Part About iOS 4.2

Apparently the best part of Apples iOS 4.2 software for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch will be AirPrint. I can see this is a much welcomed feature for the iPad, but not so much for the iPhone/Touch. Other features such as access to the Game Center, multi tasking and a new ad service.

This new release will take me further and further away from the latest iPhone offering. My 3G is at it's limit. Time to upgrade to ... the Droid!

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A Hard Days Night

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