I put all of my family pictures on the flickr web site, and then if I need to have a picture from my account in my blog posts I just add it from there. This is not a hard process but now I have made it easier with this little Extension.

To make this extension work you will need an API key from flickr. I already had one before since I use it to display my pictures directly from flickr on this site (See my Photos Page). If you don't have it yet, get it at flickr's Services Page once you log into your account. You will also need your flickr id which is a number that looks like 123456789@N00. Once you have these two things you can use this extension.

To set up the extension to work with your API key and your account details you need to change few things in the code. On line 25 in the code you will see
"http://www.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.getInfo&api_key=[KEY]&user_id=[ACC]&photo_id=[PHOTOID]"
Change the [KEY] to your API key and the [ACC] to your account details. You will notice that the url uses ?method=flickr.photos.getInfo this is the only function of the API we will use for this simple extension.

How does it work

First to make the extension work you will need to put in

The number is your picture id which your can get from flickr. (Its part of the url of every picture)

The extension converts this into a picture link to your flickr photo using the correct url information obtained from the XML file returned by the API method.

Download it and put it in your App_Code/Extensions/ and don't forget to change the [KEY] and [ACC] in the code.

FlickrPicture.zip (1.04 kb)

For those of you who don't know what Adblock Plus is, it is a Firefox extension that blocks most of the ads you see on websites.

Some people say that using this extension is equal to stealing. Is that so?

The argument that says it is stealing goes something like this. "My site is payed by ads, if you come to my site and turn off ads I can't pay for my site, therefore you are stealing."

I don't think this argument is valid. As an Internet user, while browsing the web I have many options: I can turn off JavaScript, I can turn off cookies, I can even not allow images to load. Blocking ads is just another one of the options that I as a user should have.

Why should I be exposed to unwanted ads everywhere I go? Some of the ads place unwanted cookies on my computer, some significantly slow down websites load time, some show images that I wouldn't want to be exposed to and are just annoying. They decrease my browsing experience and increase my blood pressure.

I'm not saying that all ads on the Internet are bad. If a website wants to run ads, I would suggest using locally hosted ads, these will most likely not be blocked by Adblock since they wouldn't be listed in any filter list.