EXCELLATRONIC COMMUNICATIONS

Updated the Flickr Contacts Organiser Script Again

Ive updated the script again, this time i added "Recent photos featuring this user" and "Interesting photos featuring this user" filters. These do a search for the following tags: "me,selfportrait,flickr:user=username" on the users photostream, and return either the most recent or most interesting matching photos depending on the filter you choose.

Added recent+interesting "Photos tagged with..." filters, which works similar to the previous addition, except with this one you can choose the tag/s you want to search for.

I also fixed the "testimonials they wrote" filter and the intermittent stream duplication bugs.

All my flickr greasemonkey scripts can be obtained here and they are mirrored here

Tagging flickr photos to indicate flickr users are appearing in them

Theres a new way to tag your Flickr photos to indicate flickr users are appearing in them.

Quite a few users have already started doing it. The way it works is to use the following "machine tag" notation, for each flickr user in the photo
"flickr:user=[flickr-username]"
(replacing [flickr-username] with the username of the person in the photo)

e.g. if there were 2 flickr users in my photo, lets say their flickr usernames were fred11 and joe44 you would add the following 2 tags to the photo: flickr:user=fred11 and flickr:user=joe44

I made an rss feed of the flickr:user=* tags, which you can access here: feeds.feedburner.com/FlickrUsersInPhotos
to list the photos with flickr users in them. The feed is GeoRSS enabled, which means it adds the latitude and longitude values to the item, if the photo has been geotagged. And lets you do things like viewing the feed on google maps. I also just found a GeoRSS to KML converter, so heres a KML version of the feed, for the Google Earth fans.

if you wish to be notified when you are added to anyones photos, you can simply subscribe the flickr provided RSS feed for the flickr:user=yourusername tag in your news reader application.

theres also a greasemonkey script written by jacobd with some additional code from me, that detects these tags, when you are viewing photos on flickr, and adds user icons, usernames and links for each tagged user in the photo, next to the photo. It also activates the buddy menus for the icons and adds a simple way of adding the user tags, via a select box populated by your contacts list.

You can get the script here: flickr.users.in.this.photo.user.js

Theres more discussion on this topic in flickr central.

Technorati Tags: flickr, greasemonkey, tagging, machine tags, GeoRSS, Google Earth

A roundup of the GreaseMonkey scripts I've written for Flickr.com

I thought i would write a roundup of the GreaseMonkey scripts I've written for the Flickr.com website recently, which Flickr users might find useful.

Mail Enhancements:
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GeoTagging Flickr via Google Earth - New GreaseMonkey Script

I've written some code that lets you GeoTag your Flickr images via Google Earth, heres the instructions on how to do it.

Requirements:

* Google Earth (An amazingly cool free program that displays the whole world via satellite imagery and lets you zoom right in and fly all round the world, seeing some wonderful sights)

* Firefox Web Browser (you need to enable cookies and you also need to set Firefox as the default web browser in Firefox Tools/options/general menu)

* GreaseMonkey Firefox Extension

* You also need an account on Flickr.com with some uploaded photos in it (the photos need to be publically viewable, the process wont work with photos marked as Private.)

* You also need the following script: GeoTagging Flickr via Google Earth GreaseMonkey Script

Setup Instructions:

1) In order for this script to work properly, you first need to install Google Earth. Once installed you need to go into the Tools/Options/Preferences menu and make sure the box that says "Show web results in external browser" is ticked.

2) If you are running any of my other GeoTagging GM scripts ( i.e "geotag.flickr", "geotag.flickr.streetmapuk", "geotag.flickr.multimap" ) and wish to try this script out, you should disable them in the Tools/Manage User Scripts window. If you wish to go back to using one of the other GM scripts at some point, you need to disable this one, then re-enable the previously disabled script.

3) Open Google Earth, then goto the Places window on the left, right click "My Places" and then select "New Network Link" For the name enter "Flick'rin GeoTagger" and For the location enter the following URL:
http://steeev.freehostia.com/flickr/gearth.php?user=[Put Your Flickr Username Here]

eg if you were me you would use the following URL: http://steeev.freehostia.com/flickr/gearth.php?user=steeev

4) Set "View Based Refresh" to "On Request" and leave all the other options in their default settings then click OK.

5) Now Install this GreaseMonkey script ( Either "Right Click" on the link and select "Install User Script" or click the link and then goto the firefox menu "Tools/Install User Script" ) and you will now have a new link on your Flickr photo pages and batch edit pages called "Add GeoTags"

Usage Instructions

1) Click the "Add GeoTags" link and an input box will be displayed. Enter the address of where the photo/s were taken, then click submit.

2) You will then be sent a KML file (KML=Google Earth XML file format) to your browser.

3) You need to open the KML file with Google Earth, FireFox should automatically popup a window asking what to do with the KML file, and the default option will be to open it in Google Earth. (Tip: If you click the checkbox to always open KML files with Google Earth, you wont need to worry about this step again)

4) Once you have opened the KML file, if Google Earth has found the address you entered, it will display a marker showing the approximate location of the area you wish to GeoTag. If Google Earth did not find the address you entered, you can try a new address search using Google Earth's search search box, until you find the place, or alternatively you can just find the location by rotating and zooming the globe.

5) You now need to move to the exact spot you wish to GeoTag, once you have identified the right location, you should zoom right in on it, so its right at the center of the screeen. You should also ensure that your view point is not tilted, you can do this by clicking the "reset tilt" button.

6) Now right click on the "Flick'rin GeoTagger" network link in the Places window and select "Refresh". A new placemarker will now be displayed at the point you just specified, click the placemarkers icon, and it will pop up a HTML window, now simply click the "Add GeoTags" link in that window and the geotags will be added to your image/s.

7) You then need to either add the "GeoTagged" link to the description or if its not your image, to the comments. So just click the appropriate button. You can also add a link to "Fly to that location in Google Earth" See RobRoyAus's post on the subject for more info.

Adding The GeoTagged link is useful for 2 reasons; Clicking it the first time adds your images location to the geobloggers.com database, and subsequent clicks on it will display the location of the image overlaid on a map. Once its in the geobloggers database, you will be able to view it in Google Earth and other people will be able to find it by searching by location etc on the geobloggers site.

While it might seem like a lot of steps, you should only need to do the steps in the Setup section the first time you use the script, after that you would just use the steps listed under the "Usage Instructions" heading :)

If you have any ideas or suggestions on how to improve the process, please let me know.

Cheers,

steeev

Tags: GoogleEarth | Google | geolocation | geocoder | geocoding | geotagging | flickr | greasemonkey | photos | photography | StreetMap

BrainStorming:- GeoTagging Images via Google Earth?

Ive been toying with the idea of creating some kind of geotagging interface that utilises Google Earth, anyone got any ideas or suggestions as to how it could be done.

heres a few ideas ive had so far
1) use the network link, once you have found the spot you want to geotag, zoom right in then refresh the network link which sends the current bounding box (BBOX) value to a server. From the BBox data, it should be possible to work out the central coordinate and then store/use it for geotagging. i guess the server would need to cross reference the users ipaddress, with the ip address that sent the BBOX data.

BTW does anyone have an algorithm for finding the central coordinate given the BBOX data?

2) use the email placemarker function, to email the location to a script that continually checks a pop mail box, in the email you could include a title and description, or comments
the script will store the location and or add it to a list of that users locations, which when they login to the server, then can use the emailed in locations like bookmarks similar to the way CK's script works at present for geotagging images

3) save the positions as placemark kml files, then once youve finished saving locations. upload the kml files to a server, which will process them and store the locations similar to the previous idea

4) this might be a bit drastic, but my other idea is to somehow add a geotagging function directly into the google earth executable file, by way of a patch of some sort, not sure how feasible this is though.

anyone else got any ideas on how this could be done?

UPDATE I finally got round to coding this, you can read about it here

Technorati Tags: geolocation | geocoder | geocoding | geotagging | flickr | greasemonkey | photos | photography | StreetMap

GeoTagging the UK with Flickr + StreetMap.co.uk + Greasemonkey

Google Maps coverage of the UK is not as complete as it could be, and a few people asked me to write a geotagging script that utilised StreetMap.co.uk instead of google maps, for adding geotags to Flickr images. So I did, and here they are:

If you have got my geotagging with google maps greasemonkey scripts already installed, you will need to go into the "Tools/Manage User Scripts" menu and disable them before installing/using the geotagging streetmap scripts. If at some point you want to go back to using the geotagging google scripts, you can just disable the streetmap script and reenable the google maps ones.

GeoTagging Flickr via Streetmap.co.uk Script:
Geotag Flickr via streetmap.couk User Script

To install the script, just click the link and select "Tools/Install User Script" from the Firefox menu.

The geotagging process is pretty much the same for this script as with geotagging via google maps. Let me know how you get on, cheers.

N.B This streetmapuk script is only of use for people geotagging the UK. People in other countries should stick with the Google Maps scripts. UPDATE or alternatively i've also written scripts that utilise multimap.com, so people in countries not covered by google maps can also start geotagging :)

And PS, you should all thank Knautia, who gave me an incentive to write the scripts :)

Technorati Tags: geolocation | geocoder | geocoding | geotagging | flickr | greasemonkey | photos | photography | StreetMap | StreetMap

Geotagging Flickr with Google Maps and Greasemonkey Part 2

UPDATE: Please note, this method no longer works

Ive come up with a method, that makes adding GeoTags to your Flickr images, and then submitting the images to the geobloggers.com site a slightly more automated process.

if anyone wants to try it out heres what you need to do:

Automated(ish) GeoTagging Flickr Images Process

1) Firstly if you havent already, you need to install the Firefox web browser.

2) Secondly you need the Firefox Greasemonkey extension installed.
(N.B The scripts have now (27/5/05) been updated to be compatible with GM 0.3.3 thanks to Matthew Weymar! :) )

3) Install this greasemonkey script, which is for the maps.google.com site. (Installing GreaseMonkey scripts is as simple as clicking the link then going to Firefox's tools menu and selecting "Install User Script". Then accept the default options and click ok.)

4) Install this greasemonkey script, which is for flickr.com

5) Go to the image on the flickr.com website that you want to add GeoTags to.

6) You should see a new link next to the "add tags" link on the right, called "add GeoTags", click that link, and an input box will be displayed.

7) Enter the placename, streetname or postcode or zipcode or a combination, where you took the image (or any other location identification info that Google Maps will recognise) then click submit. Remember though that Google Maps only covers USA, Canada,UK + Republic of Ireland in great detail at present. (for people in areas not covered by google maps at present, ive created a new script) that utilises multimap.com

8) You should now be redirected to a page with the Google Maps interface embedded in it.

9) Locate the position on the map you wish to get the geotag coordinates from, you can do this by any of the normal means, i.e searching with the search box, or dragging, zooming and scrolling the map. Also worth noting is "double clicking" anywhere on the map will recenter the map.

10) Once you have located the position you wish to GeoTag your image with, click the link on the right hand side that says "Add GeoTags to your flickr image"

11) You will then see a page with 2 buttons. below that should be a message saying "rsp: stat ok", if it says that, that means the geo tags have been added to your image successfully.

12) You can now choose whether to add the "GeoTagged" link to the images description, or as a comment. You can only add the link to the description if you are the images owner though, if you arent the owner, you can only add the link as a comment. Choose which method you want to use and click the appropriate button.

13) You should now be redirected back to your image page, and you can now check the tags etc have been added properly.

14) Finally click the "GeoTagged" link in the images description / comments, and then you are done, the geobloggers site should add your images location to its database.

Any Bug reports, suggestions and ideas on improving the process flow are most welcome.

Cheers :)

Steeev

UPDATE Christopher and Dave have discovered that this method will not work unless you set the browser to accept "third party cookies". Thanks Guys.

FURTHER UPDATE: A guy called Mark has created a lovely visual step by step walkthrough of the process of adding GeoTags via this method.

*Yet another update* You can geotag the rest of the world, even though Google doent have the detailed maps, they do have a satellite view of the whole world, just not high resolution for anywhere apart from USA+Canada. If you want to geotag somewhere not covered in detail by Google Maps, try zooming all the way out from the map, and changing to satellite view, you should now be able to see the whole world if you move the map about.

Further Update At present MultiMap.com have greater worldwide map coverage than google has, so I wrote some geotagging with MultiMap.com scripts for people in countries not currently covered by google maps. You can get the multimap.com geotagging scripts here.

Further Further Update 27-Jul-05 Ive written yet another new GeoTagging Flickr script, this one utilises the fabulous Google Earth. You can read about it here.

A GeoTagging Flickr Group has been started, for anyone wanting to discuss geotagging/geoblogging stuff.

Technorati Tags: googlemaps | google | geolocation | geocoder | geocoding | geotagging | flickr | greasemonkey | photos | photography | maps

Geotagging Flickr photos, with GoogleMaps via a cool Greasemonkey script and bookmarklet

A guy called revdancatt created a cool new website called GeoBloggers that lets you "geotag" your flickr photos, geotagging means adding longitude and latitude coordinates to the tags for the image. Then his website pulls in the images and overlays them on google maps, its very cool! and will be even cooler for us in the UK when google maps adds the sattelite images for the UK.

I wrote a couple of scripts to help out, making the process a bit easier, one is a Greasemonkey script, that adds 2 links to the google maps page/s.

• The first link, when clicked, redirects you to the geoblogging website for that location, where all the images tagged with the local coordinates will be listed on the map.
• The second link, when clicked, displays the longitude and latitude coordinates on the map, which is useful for people who want find the coordinates of where they took their images so they can add the required tags to their flickr images.

Heres the GreaseMonkey Script: GeoTag.Gmaps.Flickr.User.js
UPDATE: Ive updated the greasemonkey script/s you can get the new ones here:

The second script is a javascript bookmarklet, which should work on both Firefox and Internet Explorer. The bookmarklet works the same way as the first link mentioned above, ie when you click the bookmarklet whilst on a google maps page you will be redirected to the associated page on the geoblogging site.

Here the bookmarklet: (*UPDATE* I dont think the bookmarklets below work any more.)

javascript:latlong = _m.map.getCenterLatLng(); latlong += ""; latlong = latlong.replace(/\)/g,""); latlong = latlong.replace(/\(/g,""); latlongarr = latlong.split(', '); location.href = 'http:\/\/geobloggers.com?lat=' + latlongarr[1] +'&lon=' + latlongarr[0];

To get the bookmarklet to work just create a new bookmark/favourite and copy and paste the above code in for the URL. then to use it just hit the bookmark when you are browsing google maps, and you should be redirected to the geoblogging site for that location.

I also wrote another bookmarklet that is based on one listed at http://libgmail.sourceforge.net This one when selected on a google maps page, will display the longitude and latitude coordinates of the current location on the page. Unlike the other version, this one doesnt autoupdate all the time, so its a bit quicker to run, though the downside is the center of the map isnt marked so its harder to get an accurate position for your geotags.

javascript:ll=_m.map.getCenterLatLng();ll +="";ll=ll.replace(/\)/g,"");ll=ll.replace(/\(/g,"");llarr=ll.split(', ');void(document.getElementsByClassName('title')[0].innerHTML='geo:lat='+ llarr[1] + ' ' + 'geo:lon=' + llarr[0]);

UPDATE Ive updated the GreaseMonkey scripts, see GeoTagging Flickr with GoogleMaps PART 2 for more details.

2 cool Firefox Extensions - Small Screen Renderer and Aardvark - Both useful for developing xhtml for mobile devices.

Found another couple of cool Firefox extensions, both useful for developers working with XHTML and mobile devices.

Small Screen Rendering XPI
http://disruptive-innovations.com/products/index.html
This extension basically lets you see what your pages will look like when rendered on a small screen mobile device.

Aardvark
http://www.karmatics.com/aardvark/
This extension lets you view how a web page has been built, and also useful for troubleshooting page layouts etc.

FlickrQuoter - Quote people in the Flickr Forums more easily - New GreaseMonkey Script

Ive written another GreaseMonkey script, this one is also for Flickr.com. It adds a "quote" link, at the bottom Flickr forums (it should be beneath each post in the forum, but i couldnt get it to do that yet)

If you select some text from a post that you wish to reply to in the forum, then click the "quote" link, the selected text will be added ready formatted as a quote to the input box at the bottom of the page.

This script needs some work on it though as im a bit stuck at the moment, the script needs to be able to detect if no text has been selected, and then quote the whole of the relevant post, it also needs to grab the username and add that to the quote, havent figured out how to do that yet either, as my javascript skills are well below Jedi standards unfortunately. If anyone wants to help out with the script, that would be cool :)

Anyway you can get the current 0.01 version of the script here:

http://steeev.freehostia.com/flickr/flickrquoter.user.js

The script is still quite useful i think even though its functionality is not 100% complete, and can save some typing time, when you wish to reply and quote someone in the forums...

Script Usage Instructions
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After installing the script, you can select the text of a users post in a flickr forum, who you wish to reply to, then click the quote link and the selected text will be added to the text input box at the bottom of the page, nicely formatted and ready for you to add your reply.

UPDATE:A guy called Kastner has made an improved version of my script, heres his version

FURTHER UPDATE Ive made some minor, mainly cosmetic, alterations to the script, including adding in some insallation instructions. Heres the updated version

My first GreaseMonkey script - Flickr Rater

Greasemonkey is a cool extension for firefox that lets you add user defined scripts to specific websites, which means you can filter parts of sites you dont like or even add new functionality to sites.

I thought it was a cool technology, so i decided to have a go at writing a script for it, I noticed a cool new application on the web called Flickr Rate by a guy called Nicolas, that lets you rate photos on Flickr.com, though the current interface is via a bookmarklet, I thought it would be cool if the rating applet was embedded in the actual Flickr photo page as it would make things a lot easier. And thats where GreaseMonkey comes in handy, anyway I had a look at some of the currently existing GreaseMonkey scripts for Flickr and put together a script that would work for Flickr Rate application, and here it is. In order to install it, you first need to install the GreaseMonkey extension.

Update, Nicolas has updated my script here http://flickrate.gasteroprod.com/flickrate.user.js

My first Firefox Extension - Ebay Negs! - Lets you check the negative feedback an eBay user has received.

I just read the brilliant tutorial at Roachfiend.com on how to write extensions for Firefox and I decided it would be fun to write one myself, So I decided to convert my eBay negative feedback checker bookmarklet into a Firefox Extension, and the roachfiend tutorial helped out a great deal :) It was pretty straightforward to convert, and you can try it out here: Ebay Negative Feedback Firefox Extension

Any feedback gratefully received :)

UPDATE 19/1/2005 A new updated version (0.6) of this extension has been released, thanks to a cool dude called Guido who supplied some brilliant code to extend Ebay Negs' functionality. If you have got the old version (0.5) installed you can use Firefox's update feature to update it to the new version. To do this go to the "Tools/Extensions" menu, then click the "Updates" button. This version allows you to right click on Ebay username links without having to highlight them first, it also alllows you to rightclick anywhere on an ebay auction page and it will try to automatically work out the username.

Ebay Negative Feedback Bookmarklet - Lets you check all negative comments left for a user.

Ive written a new bookmarklet, this one interfaces with Toolhaus' excellent ebay feedback checker, to show all of a users negative/neutral feeback remarks.

EBay show Negative Feedback Bookmarklet (Just drag the link to your web browser's "link" bar (should work on both IE and mozilla/firefox), then when you are viewing a users profile page, click the bookmarklet and you will be transferred to a page listing all the negative/neutral feedback that has been left for that user.

*UPDATE Ive written a new version of the bookmarklet 02/11/2004*

I've Just Written a new bookmarklet for finding the negative feedback left for a user, this one lets you select an ebay username on any page where one is mentioned and if you then click the bookmarklet it will take you to the toolhaus page showing the negative feedback for that user, if no text is selected, it pops up a dialog box asking you to enter an ebay username.

This bookmarklet has been tested on both Firefox and I.E, not sure if it will work on Opera or not. You can test this bookmarklet out on this very page, by highlighting some text on the page, then clicking the link below, or if you click the link below without selecting any text, you should be presented with a javascript dialog box asking you to enter an Ebay username. You can "install" this bookmarklet into your browser by simply right clicking on it and adding it to your bookmarks, or if you want quicker access to it, try dragging the link on to your web browsers link toolbar.

New Version of the Ebay Negative Feedback Checker Bookmarklet

Hope someone finds this useful! :D

Further Update R.A Brugioni has kindly pointed out the bookmarklet doesnt work if you are using windows XP sp 2 and I.E6, the best thing for you to do in that case is switch to using Firefox, which is a much better web browser! :D

Yet Another Update Ive converted the bookmarklet into a Firefox Extension, you can read more about it here

GenieTexter Tiscali Script

I started writing a Genietexter script for the tiscali.co.uk free sms website, didnt get very far though because, they have a weird javascript / cookie type validation thing i couldnt figure out, oh well the logout function works, thats something i suppose hehe :)

Genietexter XML scripting tutorial

Ive started writing a Genietexter scripting tutorial, im writing it on a Wiki (hosted for now at SeedwWiki) I decided to put it on a Wiki because its a collaborative editing format, i.e anyone can make edits on it, which is how WikiPedia works, I just thought it would be an interesting experiment in collaborative editing of a technical document. If you have anything to add to the tutorial or have any feedback on it at all let me know. Cheers :)

Genietexter XML Scripting Tutorial