RejectReality

… and now with extra Web 2.0!

Over the weekend, I was playing around with Photophlow, a new web application which combines collaborative Flickr photo browsing with IRC-style web chat.

A very intriguing combination, and certainly, one worthy of some exploration.

The Anteroom is where you start out when you first connect to the site. There are a few static rooms, however most dynamically appear based on members of Flickr groups using the site.

If you are an administrator of a Flickr group, you can “claim” your room so your group members can get together to discuss their latest work, assignments or organise the next event. On top of that, each user can claim their own room, accessible by your Flickr contacts.

After selecting a room, you enter the main chat interface.

If you’ve used any form of chat application before, be it web, instant messenger, text conference rooms or ye olde IRC, the basics to this will be quite familiar. You type what’s on your mind, others read in real time. They produce a cutting, yet witty retort (hopefully on-topic), and leave you rummaging for your best “yo mamma” joke.

Or does that only happen to me?

Ahem.

The text chat itself is simple, but it has a trick up it’s sleeve. I’ll get to that later.

On the left of the chat is the list of users in your current room. Hover over each to obtain links to their profile, Flickr photostream, favourites and others.

On the far left is where the magic begins; a drop down menu or a simple search box, linked to all that is Flickr.

Search for tags, search for keywords, browse your photostream or favourites; the outcome is a collection of photos, just as if you searched the Flickr site itself, sortable by most relevant, recent or (my personal favourite) interesting.

Now add in the collaboration:

Your search and the results are shared with the rest of the members in the room. Find an image, either interesting or pertinent to the discussion, select it, and it too will be shared with the group in the large right hand pane.

A good search, or good results usually spark some interesting discussion; the searches and display of images following on from either the first image or the discussion surrounding it tend to create a snowball effect.

Again, this brings up the discussion part – here’s it’s trick:

All text entered into the chat is scanned for keywords which are auto-linked to become a search. If you ignore making the first search to seed a discussion, a plain text chat usually produces enough random keywords and searches to find a bunch of interesting photos to spur or keep a conversation rolling.

Random links = random fun!

And now, for the really interesting part; this application also brings in all the social networking aspects of the Flickr site also. From the one interface, you can mark photos as a favourite, leave comments, magnify it and look at the EXIF data, if it’s present. You can also glue it to your Twitter account so you can tell your followers about the great image you just found, or to your IM account, so you can be notified when someone has joined one of your rooms for a chat.

There is one downside to the shared browsing experience; if you’re hanging out with chatty people who like clicking on the random searches that appear, it’s all too easy for one person’s search to stomp on the search or image posting by the previous user.

“Manual mode” was set up to counteract this. Enabling the manual checkbox above the chat area will stop searches invoked by others from affecting your view, allowing you to either progress at your own speed or take a different road.

On a similar topic, enabling the private checkbox hides your searches and results from the room. Feel free to use these for comic effect.

As a recommendation, I’ve found about six to eight chatty people and a little judicious use of manual mode makes for a comfortable sized room. Any larger than eight needs a lot more use of manual mode.

Note that this has only just scratched the surface. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words; I think I’ve well and truly blown my thousand here, so I’ll refer you to a five minute demo movie to show you the site in action.

Overall, it’s an awesome application by itself, and even better with friends (or complete strangers). For a beta application, it’s also especially well polished.

I’d like to see one or two small usability issues addressed (one being a minimum search or result posting lifetime of five or ten seconds to stop the inevitable search stomping, without needing to keep toggling manual mode), however they are very minor when you see what the application can provide.

If you want to try it out, the requirements are very light light; a recent web browser with Flash and a Flickr account will pretty much cover it. Oh, and bucketloads of time, if you get hooked. But I didn’t tell you that

Free Flickr accounts work just fine; just make sure you upload a couple of photos if you sign up for a fresh account to play with this site (not a requirements; just adds to the fun!)

Photophlow is in limited beta. You can register at photophlow.com to be advised when it’s available (I received a beta invite five minutes later) or leave me a comment – I have a few invites available.

Oh, and if you do decide to try it out, make sure to watch out for the troll traps …