Monkey Bites

According to the Wired Blog - Monkey Bites (click the title). I am not the only one playing with Flickr

More AJAX - a Flickr Slideshow

As if I didn't have enough places with uploaded photos, I recently joined Flickr. Intrigued by the RSS Feeds, I thought of a great idea - build an AJAX slide show from a Flickr RSS feed!

I saved the RSS XML to my laptop for working offline, and designed a simple slideshow that reads the RSS, and loops through the pictures. I then put it to work at a domain that I hadn't really used before - http://www.worldjewish.info. The slideshow program polls Flickr every 15 minutes for a new RSS feed. The code isn't polished or commented, but I promise to do so soon and make it available for the masses.

One caveat though - XMLHTTP will not allow you to cross-script - i.e. an XMLHttp object on a page served off of www.bonerosity.com can't read an XML doc from www.flickr.com . So, with a little help from my buddy Heshy , I wrote this PHP wrapper script. The script runs on my server, but retreives the XML data so that my XMLHttpObject thinks that the data is from the same server.

Here is the code (Note, I don't program PHP much, so it definitely isn't elegant):


< ?php $url=$_GET["url"]; //Pass the url in foreach(array_keys($_GET) as $getKey) { if($getKey<>"url")
{

$url=$url."&".$getKey."=".$_GET[$getKey];
}
}
//echo $url
$httpfile = file_get_contents($url);
header("Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8");
echo $httpfile;
?>



Another reason to look before you forward...

This morning a friend of mine forwarded me an e-mail stating that as of February, cell phones would be open to telemarketers, and that to protect myself, I should put my cell numbers on the national do not call list. While I was there, I clicked on their FAQ link to verify if this was the case - lo and behold, it is not. So, I quickly went to the two sites that I usually go to when people e-mail me things that sound too good to be true - Snopes.com and ubanlegends.about.com and low and behold, I discovered that each had an article on this one.

Unfortunately, I have learned the hard way to look before I forward.

Wi-Fi Enabled LCD Frame

Thanks to my friend Heshy , I discovered this new Wi-Fi LCD Frame. It can read Flickr RSS feeds and it can also display e-mailed photos. Although it costs $250, it, IMHO is a much better deal than the Ceiva Photo Frames, which require you to pay an annual subscription fee.

One of these days, I will convince my wife and siblings/siblings-in-law to buy this for my parents, in-laws and/or grandparents. All of us could e-mail new pictures to the phone and they would always have a fresh set.

Printing Photos

Sorry for the long delay of not posting, but I just got back from spending a weeks' vacation with No Internet Access! While it was one less distraction for my vacation, It definitely meant a lot of e-mail to sift through and catch-up on.

While on vacation, I followed my own advice and managed to squeeze some more pictures onto my digital camera. After informing my wife that I had nearly 300 photos of our vacation, she went on her usual diatribe of how we never print any of our digital pictures.

When I bought my camera phone last year, I got a 100 free prints with Ritz Camera, which I have yet to use (and hope that they haven't expired). But beyond that I would love to print many more photos on a regular basis.

While I do have a decent photo printer at home, I usually only print the ocassional snapshots to give to my parents or in-laws. I also maintain accounts at 4 different photo services:
Snapfish, Kodak Gallery, ImageStation, and Shutterfly. While I do upload all of my photos to at least one of these sites, and while I often use them to print greeting cards, photo mugs (especially popular with the in-laws) and my annual mother's day photo books - selectively choosing one or the other based on the current deal at hand.

But now I want to actually start buying prints from these guys and I wonder which one to choose, of course, the quality and pricing matter, but there are other variables as well: For example shipping vs. local pickup (Kodak charges $1.50 to pick up at my CVS less than 1 mile away, while Snapfish will deliver to Walgreen's for free, but there is none within close proximity to my home). To add to this mix is Costco (which is run on Snapfish's platform, but at the same time won't let me share my account?).

I think that this one will require a spreadsheet, or at least some trial and error.