Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Sign in problems?

It seems like the changes at Flickr (implementing support for oAuth) are affecting sign in from Flickr Studio. Symptoms: you are trying to sign in but only asked for your username/password in some kind of endless loop. This problem seems to affect all Flickr users with a Yahoo-ID. Sign in via Facebook/Google seems unaffected (but may take a looong time).

Solution 1: Wait

It may sound crazy, but the easiest solution seems to just wait some hours and try again. I’ve had some people reporting sign in problems only to e-mail me two hours later that the problem disappeared. I’m not sure what is causing these problems, it must have something to do with the changes at Yahoo/Flickr.

Solution 2: Manual sign in

I have been e-mailing some people the following solution, which sometimes seems to work:

  1. On your iPad, go to mobile safari app
  2. Go to the Flickr site and make sure you are signed in
  3. Now go to Flickr Studio app
  4. Go to the settings tab and tap “add account”.
  5. Use the “problems signing in” button on the lower right – this will open safari on the Flickr authentication page
  6. Click the “I accept”, Flickr Studio should now automatically be started with you signed in.

 

Another problem signing in, “Timestamp Refused” error

Another problem which  may occur when signing in to your Flickr account with Flickr Studio may be the message (Problem signing in: authentication needed: “timestamp refused”). This often occurs when travelling in another country and is easily fixed by setting your iPad to the New York time zone.

To do this:

  1. Open the settings app on your iPad
  2. On the left hand side, tap on “General”
  3. On the right hand side tap on “Date & Time”
  4. Choose New York

 

If these solution do not work, please contact support!.

 

I hope this helps!

Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding!

 

What’s new in version 3.0? UPDATE: v3 is out now!

Today I have finished up on version 3 and started writing the “what’s new” for the app store update. I thought I’d share it with you so you get an idea of what’s coming. I expect the new update in the app store in about 10 days from now! The update is now in the app store!

Check here for the v3 press release.

 

I have included some nice changes in this version, many of them requested by users such as yourself! If you have a good idea for the app, contact me!  

- Changed the (blue) navigation bars allowing MORE SPACE for your content and improved readability for various labels throughout the app.

- You can now ROTATE YOUR PHOTOS on Flickr both from the quick edit window and in the batch editor.

- Re-designed the way PHOTO INFORMATION is presented. No more popover windows: information is now presented in non-blocking slide out panels. This allows you to have a panel open, for example the EXIF window, while browsing photos.

- UPLOADS now continue in the background! Added a setting for the number of simultaneous uploads and the default access setting of uthose uploads.

- The PHOTO SCREEN now has a view count and a resolution / size selector. I also changed the looks of the zoom percentage and tried to increase downloading speed by doing some network tweaks.

- Added an URL GRABBER (requested by many of you) that allows you to copy the (short) URL of the photo or the URL of the set to the iPad pasteboard. There is also support for generating GUEST PASSES for either a single photo or for a set.

- Added more TV OUT fun: you can now enable the TV out in any photo view and it will start sending each photo to the TV out.

- Completely re-designed QUICK EDIT window – now including an auto save option for quickly flicking through your photos while editing them. No more waiting for changes to get saved – it all takes place in the background!

- Re-designed the FULL SCREEN mode toolbar: you can now do most things that you could in the main photo screen: add a photo to your favs, read comments or add a comment, view EXIF info, sharing and editing of photos, read the description and more – all while staying in full screen viewing.

- VIEW ON WHITE/BLACK option added to the fullscreen viewing mode. Especially cool if you have a white iPad.

- The BATCH EDITOR now has less crashes, plus a batch rotate feature and a sorting option in the search bar.

- Fixed an annoying bug in the “save to library” option (showing empty sizes list).

- Fixed many crash bugs. Sorry about those, they are often so tricky to find!

 

 

Do not update if you are still on 3.2.2!

I just received an e-mail (well actually two) from users who updated Flickr Studio to the latest version. After the update they seem to be unable to start the app. I have found this to be related to the iOS version they were using – the old version 3.2.2

I must have messed up when sending Flickr Studio 2 update to the app store – it seems that Flickr Studio is in fact no longer compatible with 3.2.2 although the app store page says so (for the techies amongst you, this is caused because v2.0 requires the iOS assets library).

So if you are having problems starting the app after installing App Store updates on your iPad, make sure you are in fact on iOS 4.x – You can check this by going to Settings -> About on your iPad and see the “version” field.

Sorry for this inconvenience! Next update will set the minimum required iOS to 4.0

Bug in 2.0 prevents app from starting?

Unfortunately two bugs have surfaced in yesterdays big 2.0 release.

App crash at startup

Symptom: After tapping the Flickr Studio icon the app shows the splash screen for about 5 seconds and then returns back to springboard.

Cause: When there are many photos in the cache (for example, after a “long session”), the cache cleanup that runs when Flickr Studio launches prevents the app from booting in time and iOS kills it.

For now, probably the best solution is to start the app a couple of times. Every time you do, cleanup is taking place and after 2 or 3 times of starting (and exiting) the app should eventually have cleaned the cache and start up. You could also use the “empty cache” button on the settings screen every now and then to clean the cache and avoid long cleanups at app start. As a final resort, you could delete the app from your iPad and download it again. Be aware that this will also cause settings (and accounts) to be removed.

The 2.1 update fixes this by moving the cache cleanup to a background process (after the app finished launching).

Video playback no longer works for some videos

Videos posted by Flickr users who have a space in their screen name will  not play. This is caused by a bug in the way Flickr Studio constructs video URLs.

Update is underway! Update 2.1 released!

Fortunately, thanks to e-mails from our users, we discovered the bug within hours of the release and an update that fixes these issues has been submitted to Apple is available for download  in the app store!

Sorry for the inconvenience!

 

Flickr Studio 2.0 now available!

What’s New in Version 2.0

This mayor update has so many new features – it’s scary! ~ In short, we have added uploading, batch editing, geo-tagging, slideshows (including vga-out support), quick editing of photo details, delete button, support for multiple Flickr accounts, faaaast loading, adjustable grid sizes, a share feature, recent activity window, in-app help screens and more!

Oh and a new icon, as you can see on the right.

SLIDESHOWS
+ Slideshows have been added as a result view throughout the app!
+ Slideshows support external displays!

EDITING AND UPLOADING
+ Quick photo edit: A new item in the actions menu on the photo page. Tap this to get a window where you can quickly edit title, description, tags and privacy settings of a photo.
+ Quick photo delete: A new item in the actions menu on the photo page. Tap this to delete the photo from Flickr.
+ The batch editor let’s you perform batch operations on your photos. Select a few or hundreds of photos via the powerful selection tools, then add or change tags to them, add to photo sets, post to groups, or delete photos.
+ The “upload” tab allows you to upload photos from your iPad photo library directly to Flickr. Before uploading you can change properties like titles, descriptions, tags and sets – a bit like the Flickr Uploadr app for Mac and Windows. You can even specify at which size you want photos to upload, decreasing upload time and network usage.
+ Fast geo-tagger: Quickly add geo information to your photos using a set of crosshairs and a map view.

RESULT VIEWS
+ Added a slideshow view type. You can find it alongside the list-, grid- and map- icons as a square with a “play” arrow in it. In slideshow view, your results display as a slideshow with adjustable speed, transition,
+ The Grid size is now adjustable. Want a 4×4 grid? Or rather have 9×9 thumbnails? You choose!

GROUPS
+ Groups list now also include private groups that you are a member of.

PHOTO VIEWING
+ Enhanced the photo slider. The preloading mechanism has been revamped and is much faster now. Photos load faster too!
+ Added a “share photo” option (E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, AddThis)

HOME SCREEN
+ The homescreen slideshow has been enhanced: You can now set the speed, transition type, and use gestures to toggle fullscreen or navigate. One of the coolest new features is the ability to instantly look up any slideshow photo by “long-pressing” it.
+ Added a radar icon. Tap it to see recent activity on your photos.
+ Important news straight from Flickr Studio HQ is now displayed upon startup.

GENERAL
+ There is now support for multiple Flickr accounts. A single tap will switch between accounts.
+ Added in-app help buttons. Tap the button for a quick explanation of interface elements.

Problems with groups and search? [UPDATE]

A quick post for those of you who are experiencing issues with search and/or groups.

Problems with search / viewing group photos

I have received some reports from users yesterday that there are problems with search in Flickr Studio. For example, when searching for a keyword in the Explore>Search section, there may be no results. This problem may also occur when viewing photos within a group (pool), photos in the Hot Tags section and other section that utilise the Flickr search API.

The issue has now been confirmed by Flickr staff. It appears that there are some problems with the Flickr search API. For more info check the (edited) first post of this thread.

Staff Update Jan 06 2011: There are hardware and software issues affecting the search function in Flickr. Our operations team is aware of these problems and working on them. This will probably be an issue for few more weeks. We understand how important it is to make your work available in searches and it is important to us as well.

As you can see, Flickr staff are hard at work fixing this and I’m confident that they will soon!

Some groups don’t turn up

Another problem has surfaced in Flickr Studio which *can* in fact be totally blamed on me: In the You>Groups section, some groups may not show in the list. I can confirm that this is a bug. It will be fixed in the next update (v2.0). Sorry for the inconvenience!

Update February 3, 2011

Flickr is indeed working hard to get their search API running smoothly again. I’m quoting Henry Lyne from the Flickr dev team:

We apologize for recent problems with the API search results. We are actively working to resolve problems as they appear and we are also working over the next few weeks to make the service more reliable.

You may still notice some slowness in new photos getting indexed and appearing in results via the Search API. All new photos are getting indexed. Normally it only takes a couple of minutes for new photos to get indexed, but lately when things get really delayed it might take up to a day.

You might still get zero results on a search, when you should be getting some photos back. This is really bad, and we are trying to ensure this happens as little as possible. We will be transitioning the Search API to new servers over the next few weeks and the entire service should become much more reliable.

We apologize again for these problems, we know it can be really frustrating. Thank you for your patience.

Kudos to Flickr for communicating this to the outside world and for working hard to resolve the issues!

Happy New Year!

Happy new year!

I hope all of you had great holidays and shot many new photos to post to Flickr. Enough with the bubbles and fireworks! Back to work today on version 2.0 of Flickr Studio!

Thanks for the suggestions!

I’ve received a lot of nice feedback from users in the form of e-mails and some app store reviews. A big thanks for that!  I love to get good critique and suggestions and many of your ideas end up being implemented in the app. A great example of this is the blue/black skin choice which was suggested by a user who wasn’t fond of my choice of blue. But also the slideshow controls that will be introduced in version 2.0 were suggested by a couple of users. In other words, your e-mails are read and many ideas are applied to the app!

A 200 photo limit?

If you are having a problem or found a bug in the app, please remember that e-mail is also your friend. There’s even an in-app e-mail to send me your question. It’s really unfortunate that there’s no way for developers to react to app store reviews. For example, today I read this review where a user writes that the app won’t show more than 200 photos while he has thousands of photos up on Flickr. Obviously there is no such limit in Flickr Studio, so I would really like to get in contact  and work with that user to find out what’s happening. But with no way of contacting him it’s hard to help resolve issues such as this one. So again, please contact us if you are having a problem with the app or found a bug. Thanks!

Well, back to work! Version 2.0 will put emphasis on the “Studio” part of Flickr Studio with editing and uploading possibilities!

Version 1.5 is out (+multitasking)

This small update fixes an annnoying bug on the new iOS 4.2 where the grid overview was sometimes being forced into portrait mode, even when in landscape orientation.

We also took the opportunity to implement multitasking support so the app returns exactly where you left it after exiting or switching to another app.

Enjoy!

Flickr Studio 1.4 released – Get ready for groups!

First of all, in case you missed the previous (1.3) update, brace yourself for our complete re-design of Flickr Studio! Everything looks so much better now! For a quick look, visit our brand new website at http://flickrstudioapp.com

This update adds GROUPS support throughout the app. Find any group in the new “Groups” section in Explore. Or browse one of the randomly suggested groups. List all your subscribed groups or everyone else’s (Listing groups works on anyone’s user screen)!

You can now tap any group in the Groups popover on the photo screen, just like tags and sets, to “drill down” and view all contents of that group.

About iOS4 support:
We have tested this version of Flickr Studio on the new iOS 4.2 and everything seems to be working fine! Multitasking is not yet supported because we targeted this release for iOS 3.2 devices. Our next mayor update (planned for December) will be build for the new iOS 4.2 and will support multitasking.

Follow us on Twitter for all the latest info: http://twitter.com/flickrstudio

iPad camera connection kit problems?

While working on the new uploading functionality in Flickr Studio, I thought it would be rather cool to have support for Apple’s camera Connection Kit accessory.  But as it seems, this kit has some rather strict naming conventions which took me a while to figure out. Mind you, I’m talking about the SD card unit here, I haven’t been working with the kit’s USB unit yet.

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