If you’ve ever wanted to integrate Flickr images into your Flash project, head on over to Kevin Luck’s website and check out his Flashr API. As it turns out, I’ve wanted to do this for ages - so this weekend I finally decided to venture forth into this land of rainbows and lollypops.
So I’ve put together the following little demonstration which starts with a random image based on a colour keyword (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, pink, black or white) and continues to find new images based on a tag from the previous result. The only restriction is that each image can only appear once - a tag can be used multiple times as sometimes the same word can result in dramatically different results (ie - “nature” could bring back a picture of a turtle or a picture of a mountain). The unpredictable fashion in which users tag their photos often treats us to quite an interesting journey.
The top grey bar at the bottom of the screen shows the tag search progression and the bottom bar displays the current search.
There still may be a bug or two in the app - either that or Flickr doesn’t like me sending through so many search requests. At this stage, if it gets stuck you’ll have to refresh the page to have another go. Also - if a user has tagged a series of images with only one or two tags, you’ll see that the images will tend to be similar for that progression. Stay with it!
Enjoy.
This project was inspired by the amazing Islands of Consciousness project by Quasimondo - if you haven’t seen it yet then you are in for a treat!
