I just finished reading Flickr Hacks from O’Reilly Media. Whether you are new to Flickr or are a long-time user of the online photosharing service, you can find something in this book of 50 hacks to help make your Flickr experience more enjoyable.
The book is split into 7 chapters that group the hacks into common tasks such as sharing photos, participating in the Flickr community, and making use the Flickr API. As with other books in the Hacks series, each hack is rated as to how complex it is.
Starting with chapter 1, the book talks about the many ways that you can share your photos with Flickr, as well as how to get your photos off your computer to your Flickr account. Aside from uploading photos through the Flickr web site, you can also use a plethora of Flickr-produced tools and third-party tools. My favorite is FlickrExport by Frasier Spiers.
Moving into more of the hacking tips, the book gives several examples of how to share your flickr photos on your own site, whether using a Flickr Badge or by creating your own photo badge using an RSS feed and some scripting.
The tagging hacks that most interested me dealt with geotagging photos and displaying the location of the photo on a map. One of the better examples of this put into practice is the Flyr site. This service lets you search Flickr for photos based on tags and display those photos on a Google Map or in Google Earth, given that they have the proper coordinates.
The later portion of the book deals with more advanced topics like making use of the Flickr API for writing custom applications. All in all, this is a great resource that will let you take maximum advantage of the Flickr service.