Weblog
230 days ago: Announcing FlickrEdit 1.1
We are please to announce the availability of a new version of FlickrEdit, v1.1. FlickrEdit has now fully replaced FlickrBackup. All links to download and launch FlickrBackup will now launch FlickrEdit. Version 1.1 brings the following new features and updates:
New Features:
- Backup Title, Description, Tags, and Copyright and store them into the IPTC header of the images. This has been the #1 requested feature since FlickrBackup was first launched. After the photo backup completes, you can open your images in an application like Photoshop/iPhoto to view the backed up data. iPhoto with automatically import your tags as keywords even.
- Allow editing local photo info before upload (similar to new Flickr Uploadr)
- Add support for Flickr RSS feeds
- Add basic html editing toolbar to comments editor
- Add support for mark photos as favorites (only photos you do not own (Flickr limitation))
Updates and Fixes:
- Redesigned preferences dialog
- Enable editing local photos when offline
- Add “justFriends” flag for Favorites to Preferences
- Enable editing or commenting multiple photos or sets by scrolling through selected photos or sets in the dialog
- Add support for setting log level from Preferences
- Preparation for all text to be localized
We are very excited to get this new version out to the community as it has many features that you all have been asking for! We appreciate all our users and thank all those who have helped spread the word. Please continue to spread the word about FlickrEdit though your blogs, forums, emails, and websites!
If you are using the recommended Java WebStart version (by pressing the launch button on the FlickrEdit page), then you will get the new version the next time you launch the application. If you are not using the WebStart, you can download the standalone versions from the product page.
283 days ago: Happy New Year from Sunkencity Software!
Another year has come and gone and what a year it was. 2007 was a quiet year here at Sunkencity until the last few months when we released a new application FlickrEdit. We have had great feedback from the users and are excited at the number of users using FlickrEdit. The transition from FlickrBackup to FlickrEdit has been slower than we had hoped, but people are catching on. Here are a few statistics for you all to see just how excited we are!
FlickrBackup/FlickrEdit Combined
- Number of authenticated users: 11,513
- Total calls in the last hour: 4,534
- Max Number of API calls in one week over the last year: 461,937
- Average Queries Per Second in the last year: 0.76
So you can see why we are excited and so thankful for all our users!
We have some exciting things in store over the next few months for FlickrEdit including one of the most requested features: Backing up Title, Description, Tags, etc with the Photo! We will try to start giving more updates and teasers over the next year, so keep watching the blog!
We hope you all had a wonderful Holiday season and have an even better New Year!
Andrew
Sunkencity Software
323 days ago: Sunkencity Software Accounces FlickrEdit!
Sunkencity Software would like to announce the 1.0 release of a new application called FlickrEdit! FlickrEdit is an extension of FlickrBackup and from this point replaces FlickrBackup as your one stop application to pull your Photos back from Flickr.
FlickrBackup continued to grow in scope so much so, that we found needs to be able to upload, comment and edit photos directly from FlickrBackup. Because we have expanded the application to support these new features, we decided that the name didn’t fit anymore and we now have FlickrEdit.
FlickrEdit would not have been possible without the help of a new developer, Lubos Pochman. He found a need to extend FlickrBackup and gave a breath of new live into the application. Many thanks to him for his help!
One major new feature of FlickrEdit is that we are trying to do away with supporting separate installers for multiple platforms and are now deploying the application using Java Web Start. Java WebStart will give us the ability to update FlickrEdit and ensure that our users (that’s YOU!) get the updates every time you launch the application!
There are so many new features in FlickrEdit, it is best to read the product page, or better yet, just go Launch it!
Thanks again to everyone for being supportive and patient with us over time. We appreciate all our users and hope this will be a welcome step forward for all!
332 days ago: An Exciting Day is Coming!
Keep your eye out here for an exciting announcement within the next couple of days! New releases are coming from sunkencity software!
569 days ago: FlickrBackup v1.0.2 Released!
Back around the beginning of March, Flickr changed the way that URLs are built to include the server number of the farm that a photo is coming from. They said that they would always honor the old URLs, and I took this to mean that FlickrBackup didn’t have a pressing need to be updated. Turns out, Flickr really meant that they would honor the old URLs for old photos. Any new photos would only be accessible via the new URL scheme. Therefore, when you tried to download a photo with FlickrBackup, all you got was a place holder image that said “Photo currently unavailable.”
FlickrBackup v1.0.2 resolves this issue and can now be downloaded from the Sourceforge page as usual. I’d like to thank the new developers over at flickrj for fixing the issue in there so the update was minor on my side. I also like to note the this version now writes a log file to the java.io.tmpdir (which on Windows should be in your HomeDir\Local Settings\Temp and *nix (including OS X) will be either /var/tmp or /tmp). The log file is called FlickrBackup.log. This should help when users notice a problem with FlickrBackup so they can send me the log.
One more note I would like to add is that the next version will very likely be a Java WebStart version only. I would like to get away from having to maintain 3 different releases, and also worry about users not having the latest and greatest version of FlickrBackup. So keep your eye out for that one.
Thanks to everyone who have help and supported FlickrBackup up to this point. I know that I have been slow in doing development on this project lately, but life gets hectic sometimes. Thanks again for all your kind words.
770 days ago: FlickrBackup v1.0 Released!
FlickrBackup v1.0 has just been released! This version fixes the issue of FlickrBackup not working any more due to the change by the Flickr Team. I worked with the author of flickj for quite some time trying to find out what broke flickrj and we finally fixed it. While that was the main reason for this release, you are all getting some new features along with it.
A lot of people have asked me to make FlickrBackup download photos with a better name than the random numbers that flickr assigns them. Well, now they will download with their title as their name (if possible). Some names will not be allowed as filenames, so please try not to use special characters in your photo titles. FlickrBackup should notice an illegal character if one exists and not use the title if that happens. If you notice it doesn’t, please let me know.
Another very requested feature is that Sets be downloaded into folders. We’ll you got that one too! The Set will download into a folder with the set title as the name (again following the no special characters rule).
Both of these features are configurable through a new options menu. You can enable/disable them there if you would like. You will see one other option to replace spaces with a character if you would like as well.
Thank you all for your patience which FlickrBackup was broken. I hope the new features will make it worth the wait!
788 days ago: FlickrAPI update breaks Flickr Backup!
The folks over at Flickr have made a recent update that breaks Flickr Backup completely. I’m currently working on a fix with the author of the flickrj API and hope to have an update released soon. This release will also have to contain some new features I’ve been working on which include saving Sets to folders, real file names, and a fix to allow you to download private sets. Thank you for you support and patience!
991 days ago: FlickrBackup 1.0a2.0.1 Released
I’ve posted a Bug Fix Release for Flickr Backup that fixes a problem where some of your photos load, but the rest just show up with grey boxes. Flickr decided to change their URL naming scheme for the static image URLs. This caused a problem in flickrj which in turn caused the problem in FlickrBackup. I helped fix the problem in flickrj and have pulled the new jar into FlickrBackup. You can find the release on the sourceforge page.
Please let us know if you have any problems.
Also, for the developers out there, I found a cool Ant Task that lets you build your Mac OS X Application Bundles. This is a life saver for those who do this by hand! I only had to do it twice to know that it was no fun. Now my build script builds it for me and I don’t have to worry about it any more! You can find JarBundler over at Loom Communications. Thanks Loom!
1047 days ago: Flickr Backup on G4 TV (sort of...)!!
WOW! First off, Google Analytics is awesome, so if you have a website, go sign up! So I was looking at my Report for sunkencity today and I saw a bunch of traffic that came from G4 TV! Their Free File Crew posted Flickr Backup as Free File #284 and it generated a lot of traffic. Thanks for the props G4TV!
1058 days ago: Mac Installer for Flickr Backup posted
I have create a package installer for Flickr Backup on Mac OS X. It will install a new Flickr Backup application in your Applications directory. So now you can have Flickr Backup as on file on Mac OS X and keep it in your dock because you use it so much! Let me know if you have problems with it! You can grab it from the downloads page.