web 2.0, tools, software reviews, tweaks and latest technology
Archive for August, 2007
4 tools to integrate Flickr photos into your website
364 years ago
by Benedict Herold
in tools
Flickr is a great and best photo-sharing site, no second thoughts about it. But the inability Flickr to allow their users to brand their own photoset is notable. Flickr API’s comes in handy for the rescue. Flickr tools built over Flickr API allow the user to brand their photo into their own site.
I have been using Gallery2 till now, since I wanted to brand my photos under my banner. But when you have bunch of photos trust me managing it with a self-hosted solution is a pain. That why I decided to move to hosted photo-sharing solution. Flickr sounded like the solution for me with plenty of flickr tools.
Here is the bunch of flickr tools that I discovered recently. If you are looking methods to brand your Flickr photos under your banner this list would be great help.
Flogr is a photoblog application that works great with Flickr. Flogr written on PHP over MySQL database and off course uses Flickr API. Flogr allows you to customize your template. It uses Slimbox implementation for slideshow. Flogr grabs EXIF data and comments from Flickr for each image. Moreover Flogr is easy to install and configure!
Satellite is a photo gallery application that allows you to use Flicks for hosting. The installation is simple; all you need is Flickr account, Flickr API key and a PHP supported host. Satellite uses MooTools framework and Slimbox implementation.
Chasr is another similar mini application that allows to display Flickr images in own website. Chasr is very simple implementation that allows you to customize it to you own theme. Chasr allows you to view / add comments to the images.
FlickrViewer ( Demo | Download )
FlickrViewer is a simple script written over SimpleViewer, which allows viewing Flickr photoset. SimpleViewer is a popular Flash app that allows to views self hosted photos. FlickrViewer needs Flickr API Key to read the images from you blog. This is simple flash gallery application.
Also if you like to integrate Flickr into your WordPress blog there are several plugins for it.
BTW, I have recently purchased Panasonic Lumix FZ50 camera and now I’m thinking of creating new photoblog. If you guys have better suggestion for photoblog, please suggest me.
Are you running photoblog using Flickr? If not do you plan to do so?
Update:- Moses over WPThemesPlugin.com has listed all flickr related plugins used with WordPress.
Update (08/30) :- Ram over TeknoBites did a favour for me listing all the photoblog themes available for WordPress. Thank you gentleman.
Top 5 open source Wiki engines
374 years ago
by Benedict Herold
in open source
A Wiki is a website which visitors can modify. Wikis are composed of web pages you can write on, enabling fast and easy collaboration
Why Wiki?
This is very commonly asked and answered question. But here is the few uses which I feel about a Wiki.
Educational: It can be used as instrumental tool for building knowledge management system. Wiki is also been used as Text books in few educational institutions.
Collaboration: It allows the project team to collaborate on any specific task / idea.
Documentation: It can be used for the documentation purpose of any project. Draft version of document can be developed greatly using Wiki features.
Personal: It can be used for personal note taking purpose and book marking.
Top 5 -
Here is the list of popular open source Wiki engines. This list is not complied in chronological order according to their popularity.
MediaWiki is most popular and holds the crown amongst the list. MediaWiki free web based software Wiki engine that was originally written for Wikipedia. MediaWiki is been adopted by several corporate and institutions as their internal knowledge management system. MediaWiki is written in PHP language and supports both MySQL and PostgreSQL RDBMS.
TWiki is a flexible, powerful, secure, yet simple web-based collaboration platform. TWiki can be used to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base or any other groupware tool on either an intranet or on the Internet. This Wiki is been mostly used by lot of enterprise including Yahoo and others. TWiki is written in PERL.
PmWiki is a free wiki-based system for collaborative creation and maintenance of websites. PmWiki pages look and act like normal web pages, except they can be edited or new pages can be added. Page editing can be left open to the public or restricted to small groups of authors. PmWiki works over text file and is written in PHP.
DokuWiki is simple and lightweight Wiki engine. The administration option is very simple and comes with one click installation. DokuWiki is highly customizable with your current website theme. DokuWiki is written in PHP and works on small text file. DokuWiki is my personal favorite since it keeps everything simple!
MoinMoinWiki is a web application for making large database of knowledge basing. It produces nice structured information with feature of expansion information in cooperation manner with appropriate use it is power full content database. Alternatively, desktop edition of the Wiki is also available. It uses flat file for storing the information.
Here is the list of few other open source Wiki engines which is worth giving a try.
- PhpWiki
- TiwiKiwi
- DekiWiki
- Xwiki
- FlexWiki
- OpenWiki
- Kwiki
- Very Quick Wiki
- TiddlyWiki (Thanks to Binny)
Do you see another use of Wiki? Have you used any of the mentioned Wiki engines? Share your experience.
ByteSwap, organize and share your bytes easily
94 years ago
by Benedict Herold
in web 2.0
ByteSwap is very new online service that allows people to organize the information they wanted and let them share across their friends and ByteSwap community. ByteSwap is newest approach for a tradition concept.
ByteSwap very new of its breed and is been released couple of days back. I’m very pleased to try out the service they provide. ByteSwap is unique by this way, they allow you to organize / store and share your content. ByteSwap can be your personal storage medium and bookmaking tool at the same time.
ByteSwap allows you to add any content that you would like to organize. ByteSwap allows you to manage Contacts, Photo, File, Link, and Article Reference. ByteSwap also says yes for your favorite recipe or if you have silly things to organize or share using Free form text note option. Founder Matt Brown tells, “Think of ByteSwap as a virtual file cabinet or a personal search engine”.
ByteSwap also has an option to build an online community around like-minded people using ByteSwap Groups. Groups allow you to share your content across other people. Also you can add your friends / colleagues as you connection. The community suggestion feature would recommend the relevant content for logged in users using their interested topics.
ByteSwap also has a powerful search feature that allows you to search across the personal and community content. It redefines the way to search and would find you most relevant information from your friends and public. ByteSwap also features traditional folder structure to organize content for easy access.
Finally, ByteSwap is FREE for limited usage and has a premium account for heavy users.
Suggestion / Feature Enhancement
ByteSwap team has really put the their efforts on their new service. But as always I say “there is always room for improvement”. ByteSwap team is very keen in listening to feedbacks. Here goes my suggestion and feature request that I would like to see from ByteSwap.
Social Elements
Social element is a key factor when it comes to online community building. ByteSwap has to capitalize on this as well. The ByteSwap community would like to know more information about the user who is sharing the information to the community. ByteSwap can improvise this by adding user profile, user picture, user feeds etc. ByteSwap can introduce Social button would enable add link directly from any blog. This would help them build an authentic community around ByteSwap.
Preview Option
BtyeSwap can provide preview on items that has been added / shared across the community. They might include but not limited to picture, video, text or a link. This is good at usability standpoint and users would love it so as me.
User Interface
The user interface adds value to any online system and this is more emphasized in web2.0 era. ByteSwap is easy to navigate around but might be missing sophisticated features.
Browser Add-on
Most of the communities are success today with a browser add-on. ByteSwap can also come with a browser add-on that would enable user to share contents and get community suggestions.
Widget Support
ByteSwap can allow users to create a widget around their public content. This would enable the ByteSwap users to share across their blogs. This would add more meaning to social content.
Conclusion
ByteSwap would let you easily organize your content anything (I love the recipe item) more effectively. Also their search enables the users to find the information more relevant to them. Bottom-line, ByteSwap has lot of areas to improve and if they do they would be unique and best of all.
Have you ever tried any similar service like ByteSwap? Try ByteSwap and share your thought.
This is a sponsored post.
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