It’s now been two months since bought my first Mac, and I’ve spent a fair chunk of that time putting myself through a crash course in programming for OS X. I’ve spent the past few weeks up to my elbows in Objective-C, Cocoa and Xcode, and finally, my first application is ready for public consumption. It’s a fairly simple little app, it doesn’t do a great deal, and the user interface isn’t anything to write home about, but it’s my baby and I’m very proud of it.

On the face of it, it’s a simple desktop app to allow browsing of projects over on Utata. Behind the scenes, it’s a little more interesting. It consists of a couple of frameworks - the first is a general purpose REST API framework that deals with a lot of the nitty gritty of interfacing with web-based APIs such as those offered by Flickr. This REST framework can (I hope) be readily extended to build API kits that interface with a variety of web services. I’ve so far built a Utata API kit and parts of a Flickr API kit. Other API kits are planned, all I need now is more spare time.

You can download the Utata Projects app here. (Requires OS X 10.5).

I’ve been neglecting my blog again, so here’s a photo to make sure that it doesn’t feel too unloved and forgotten.

The Brooklyn Museum in New York has recently announced an API to allow the searching of its collection. The API is free to use, but you do need to sign up for an API key before you can use it.

There are currently three methods in the API:


collection.search
collection.getItem
collection.getImages


which between them allow you to search the collection and return a wide variety of data about the items held.

I’ve spent a little time this weekend playing around with the new API, and have started to put together a simple Flash-based browser to allow you to search through the collection. Try it out here.

The snow here has pretty much all gone now. Apart from the occasional small patch of grey white slush still lurking in a shady corner, all we have left are the photographs. I finally got a couple of films developed this week that were taken at the height of the snows with my Hasselblad. Mostly “meh”, but one or two that I quite like.

This was one of the first shots I took with my new extension tubes - the 10mm, I think. Sat on the back of my 80mm lens, it does a nice job of helping fill the frame.

The Flickr Developer Blog is running a “5 Questions” series, and late last year, I was picked by GustavoG as the next developer to interview. Last night Dan Catt finally hit the publish button and my interview has now been posted.

It’s only been two months, but so much has happened since that interview: the new Set Manager is still in development, but the public beta is now available to all. I’ve also started a Set Manager group on Flickr where people can discuss the Set Manager, get help on how to use it or suggest new features.

And of course, I’ve started work on a new project: Indicommons. The Indicommons site exists to help promote the Flickr Commons - the gathering together on Flickr of some of the world’s public photo collections. There’s a great team of people working together over at Indicommons, with fascinating new articles being published every day. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you really should!

Read 5 Questions for David Wilkinson

I’ve been in a bit of a photographic slump just lately. The cameras have sat on the side of my desk for weeks now, looking forlorn and neglected. Yesterday afternoon, I decided enough was enough - I finally kicked myself into action and finished off the roll that had been sat stagnating in the Holga. I developed it last night, and scanned it in this morning. There’s a couple there I’m reasonably happy with. And now I’ve at last jolted myself out of my rut, I might even go out and take some more…

I’m very pleased to be part of a new project that has just launched today. Indicommons is a new blog celebrating the Flickr Commons and its content.

indico: to proclaim, make publicly known
commons: flickr.com/commons

The Flickr group Flickr Commons was born out of one fan’s desire to show her support for The Commons. Anna Graf’s creation of this group also answered new needs, ones that hadn’t been spoken: it created a home for all those people commenting, tagging, researching, and simply enjoying themselves — somewhere to bring them all together to share their passion for The Commons. They turned up — not only regular Flickr members like us but also Commons institution staff and Flickr staff — full of ideas and enthusiasm and passion to do amazing things, and committed to actually doing them.

Indicommons (“in de commons”) arose quickly out of this new group. We wanted to let not just Flickr members but everyone know how exciting The Commons is. Today on Indicommons you’ll find an interview with the Brooklyn Museum’s Shelley Bernstein, plus examples of members’ choices from the collections, group member research into an individual photograph, then and now subcuration, and cross-Commons mash-ups – just a sampling of what we know is possible and what you’ll find here.

A public beta of Version 2 of my Flickr Set Manager is now available for all to use here. Please remember, this is beta software and is subject to change. There are still a few things I plan on tidying up a little over the next week or two, and there will probably be a few user interface tweaks too.

If you don’t want all the whizzy new features, version 1 is still available here.

To celebrate the launch of the version 2, I’ve created a new group on Flickr for discussion about the set manager. If you have any comments on it, or would like to report a bug, please go there to do so.

I know, I know, I’ve said a couple of times that I was hoping to get the new Set Manager launched before the new year. As you can see, that hasn’t happened. I’ve been taking an extended break over the Christmas period, and for once have been unusually successful in my goal to spend less time sat at my computer. I’ll be gently easing myself back into work mode later on next week, so things will soon start moving again.

In the meantime, I still have a few more days of curling up on the sofa, relaxing in front of the fire. Now where did I leave my mulled wine…?

It’s grey and wet outside, so let’s have some snow to brighten the place up a little. The snow is only on the front page, so if it annoys you, just click on a link to another page, or click on the “Stop Snowing” link over to the left. Or just click here…

Snow script courtesy of Scott Schiller