Lately I've been trying to simplify and consolidate some of my online web activities, and so I've been looking closely at Flickr.  I've dabbled with a Flickr account for a couple of years, and I've discovered that Flickr works very well with Windows Mobile devices.  In this article I share some of the useful and fun things you can do with Flickr from a mobile device.  From any internet-enabled mobile device you can:

1) View flickr photos

• Flickr's mobile site (http://m.flickr.com) is optimized for viewing on mobile devices.  

Flickr's mobile site uses the same account settings as those of your main flickr account, so you'll set these options on your computer through your main flickr account.

• If you have a WM5.0 or WM6.x device, you can also use Yahoo! Go to view and comment on flickr photos

2) Post pictures directly to flickr

There's no way to upload pictures from a mobile device to flickr through its mobile website, but if you have the right software installed on your Windows Mobile device, you can post pictures directly to flickr:

• Resco's Photo Viewer 2007 has an option that allows you to publish photos to the web.  To do this, you'll open up the application, select the photo you want to upload, then tap Action > Send To > Publish to the Web.  You will be prompted to choose a Web Album service, but the only web service that Resco Photo Viewer currently supports is Flickr.com.  You can specify picture resize options (this can be a percentage of the original picture, pixel size or "best fit predefined size")

See this link for detailed instruction on how to set up Resco Photo Viewer to upload photos to flickr.  This method works well, but the initial connection to flickr (screenshot 3 above) is rather slow.  Also when you post pictures to flickr, no information (title, description, tag) is posted along with the picture, so if you want to title, tag and post a description of the picture, you'll need to do that later from a computer.

• Yahoo! Go can be installed on WM5.0 or WM6.x devices and provides a way to upload pictures directly to flickr.  Yahoo! Go also allows you to add a title, description and tags to the picture and set privacy options at the time you upload it to flickr.

3) Email photos to flickr

You can email photos directly to your flickr account but first you need to find out what your unique email address is:

• Login to your flickr account
• Go to flickr.com/tools/mobile to find your unique flickr email address.

Then you can go to flicr.com/account/uploadbyemail and input the tag(s) you'd like flickr to automatically add to any emailed photographs.  You can also input tags into the body of the email address, by adding a line in the body of your email, as follows: 

tags: twitter, windows mobile

Once you know what your unique flickr email address is, just create a contact (called something like "flickr email photos") in your Windows Mobile contacts list.  Then when you want to post a picture to your flickr account, you can open up whatever picture viewer you use, select the picture you want to send, and find the "Send To Email" option.  Select the flickr contact from your contacts list and send the email.  When you email pictures to your unique email address, flickr posts the email subject line as the title of your photo, and posts the email body as the description.

4) Automatically share your flickr photos on Twitter

You may already use services like twitpic or mobypicture to share photos on Twitter, but if you want to maintain all your pictures in one web location, you can use Twittergram, another free web-based service, to share your flickr photos on Twitter, as follows:

• Post your picture to flickr either by posting the picture directly to flickr (see 2 above) or by emailing the picture to your special flickr email address (see 3 above) 
• Be sure to assign a "twitter" tag to the photograph. 

• For emailed pictures you can
  • Input "twitter" in the tag field (if you want to post a link for every picture you upload to flickr via the email account to Twitter) or
  • Input the following line in the body of the email:  tag: twitter
• For pictures you post directly to flickr from Yahoo! Go, you can designate "twitter" in the tag field at the time you upload the picture.

• Use Firefox to go to Twittergram (this link will not work in Internet Explorer).  Then enter your flickr username and your Twitter username and password in the spaces provided. 

Twittergram checks your flickr feed every 10 minutes and automatically posts a link to the most recent photograph to twitter.

5) Post articles and related flickr pictures directly to your weblog

If you maintain a weblog, you can use another unique email address that flickr provides to post pictures and text directly to your blog.  Any photos that you email to that address will be posted to your blog automatically. Flickr posts the subject line of the email as the blog title, and any text it finds in the the email body along with the picture as the new blog entry.

Go to http://www.flickr.com/blogs_add.gne to designate your blog's specific parameters.  Flickr supports the following types of weblogs:

• Blogger
• Typepad
• Movable Type
• LiveJournal
• WordPress
• Manila
• Atom Enabled
• BloggerAPI Enabled
• MetaWeblogAPI Enabled (this is the one I chose for my blog)
• Vox

You will be prompted to input the API Endpoint for your blog (for this blog, the API Endpoint is http://frommypocket.pocketprimer.com/metaweblog.aspx) as well as the username and password you've designated for remote blogging to your blog (this is an option I had to set up with my blog services).

You can designate the size of the picture you'd like to be posted to the blog: Thumbnail (100x75); Small (240 x180); or Medium (500 x375).

In addition to posting the picture to your blog, you can set an option in flickr to post any text it finds in the body of the email.  Flickr will use the Subject line as the title of the blog entry and the email message and attached picture will be the included as the actual blog entry.

Once you've set up the blogging options, flickr will provide a unique email that you can use whenever you wish to post a picture and blog entry to your blog. Just create a contact (called something like "flickr email blog") in your Windows Mobile contacts list.  Then when you want to post a blog entry to your flickr account, you can open up whatever picture viewer you use, select the picture you want to include with your blog entry, and find the "Send To Email" option.  Select the flickr contact from your contacts list, input the subject and blog text in the email body and send the email.

NOTE:  Emailed content inherits whatever default privacy settings you've set for your flickr account.  So if you plan to use either of the unique email accounts for public viewing, you'll need to set the default privacy setting to "Anyone (Public)."

Software & Services to Enhance your Flickr/Windows Mobile Experience

• Yahoo! Go: a free software that allows you to browse, search, upload, and share digital photos on flickr, among other things
• Resco's Photo Viewer 2007: third party photo management application that allows you to edit pictures and to upload them to flickr
• Twittergram: a free web-based service that allows you to tweet links to flickr photos

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