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What's Just In?

So you’ve always liked the 23 front page, have you? You been thinking ‘Hey, it’s kinda cool to see new photos from other users when I visit those nice 23 people’?

Well, you’re in luck, because we have just extended the simple view from front page with a Just In section. It’s a way of getting a quick overview of what’s been happening at 23 − and a way of finding more 23 users to connect with.

You’ll find the new feature here or by clicking the Just In link in the top of the page when you’re browsing 23hq.com.

… And don’t forget to click the Subscribe-link when you’ve found an awesome user − then you’ll be able to follow his or her new uploads from your own Subscriptions page.

Searching

23 is taking more steps forwards. Throughout the coming days and weeks we’ll be crashing a few bugs and adding some new features.

We’ve already put a new search feature online at http://www.23hq.com/23/search, which will allow you to search through all photos, users, tags, albums and stories on the site. While it’s nice having means of finding your way back to “that photo with the butterfly”, this can also lead you to your friends, both on- and offline: Find them by searching for their exact first name, last name or email address.

So what’s next then? Well, the tag support will be tweaked a bit, and while we’re at it, we will be adding a “Just In” section. This new section is basically a scaled-up version of our front page: A shortcut to the newest photos, tags, and users for your exploring pleasure.

Scripting 23

We don’t yet have a proper 23 API ready yet, but there are a few ways to automate uploading many files to 23, especially on Mac OS X. We’ll have actual script examples up later, but here are a few pointers for the über-geeks out there:

You can create an Automator script in Mac OS X to select photos from your iPhoto Library, loop through the photos, and send each of them as an attachment to your 23 mail upload address.

You can also use AppleScript and the curl program, which is pre-installed on Mac, to log in and upload the photos. Here is an example of someone who did something similar for moving photos from iPhoto to Drupal.

Finally, until we have an API or a desktop application, we have a “simple upload interface”. The URL is http://www.23hq.com/23/extupload/simple-upload which takes these arguments:

  • username (required)
  • password (required)
  • file (required): Image file to upload
  • private_p: 1 for a private photo, 0 for a public one (defaults to private)
  • tags: Space-separated list of tags to apply
  • album_id: Numeric album ID

Here’s an example of how to upload, again using curl:

curl -F file=@image.jpg -F username=myuser -F password=secret -F private_p=0 http://www.23hq.com/23/extupload/simple-upload

Warning: This interface may disappear at any time.

New feature: Stories

We’re currently rolling out a new feature for 23: Stories. The basic idea is to make it possible to create new and different presentations of your photos.

To make a story works basically the same way as organizing photos. You start out browsing and selecting any number of photos, then you go on adding some text on the story page. If you want the photos organized in a different order, simply move the photos up and down until you are satisfied. You can create as many stories you like, and any one photo can, of course, be used in several stories.

We’re still working on this feature and brushing up things here and there, but why not follow Thomas’ example and go ahead and give it a try already?