January 18, 2006
@ 12:03 PM
Comments [9]
A Flickr-like API for MSN Spaces?

Once people find out that they can use tools like ecto, Blogjet or W.Bloggar to manage their blog on MSN Spaces via the MetaWeblog API, they often ask me why we don't have something equivalent to the Flickr API so they can do the same for the photos they have in their space. 

My questions for folks out there is whether this is something you'd like to see? Do you want to be able to create, edit and delete photos and photo albums in your Space using desktop tools? If so, what kind of tools do you have in mind?

If you are a developer, what kind of API would you like to see? Should it use XML-RPC, SOAP or REST? Do you want a web service or a DLL?

Let me know what you think.


 

Categories: Windows Live | XML Web Services
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Wednesday, 18 January 2006 14:20:17 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
As a windows mobile developer I would love to see this! I think it would be useful for uploading pictures. As far as the implementation, I don't know that it matters much (but I would lean toward a SOAP Webservice). Then in an Ideal world WCF would be avaliable for WM5.
Brian Nantz
Wednesday, 18 January 2006 16:45:33 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I don't need a Flickr-like API. But I sure would like a human URL system! I can't figure out how to *link* to an individual picture or a set of pictures, much less manipulate them through an API. Also, the URLs to pictures seem to constantly change (or maybe it's some other attribute?) causing bloglines to report every MSN Space photo set as having been updated about once a week. This is incredibly annoying and I've stopped adding MSN Spaces to my reader.
Steve
Wednesday, 18 January 2006 17:08:38 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
From a developer perspective, the simplest thing for me would probably be if you implemented the newMediaObject method of the MetaWeblog API (which in fairness hardly *anybody* implements.
Other than that a SOAP web service would be convenient, provided the API it exposed remained stable (to ilustrate why I'm twitchy about this, the web service option for Community Server is a good example of a published API that changes at the drop of a hat (between 1.0 and 1.1 for instance in a superficial but code-breaking way), and it drives me crazy).
Kevin Daly
Wednesday, 18 January 2006 17:50:54 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I think having a program API would be great. That way people could create richer clients for managing MSN photos and albums. As I'm thinking mainly of rich-clients, a class library would work best. However, the transport is implemented within that DLL (XML-RPC, Soap, whatever) could be hidden from the library's clients.
Pedro
Thursday, 19 January 2006 03:55:31 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
While I think having an API would be great, I think it would be even better if MSN Spaces just (optionally) integrated with flickr - either via its APIs, or via RSS feeds (which would have the added benefit of working anywhere there are images in feeds). That way I wouldn't have to upload my photos in two places!
Ben Hollis
Friday, 20 January 2006 08:25:49 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
It is like a DR.robot , help me on msn.
Good Answers
john
Tuesday, 04 April 2006 03:07:19 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
I can't wait to see this API ;)
Michael Smuga
Tuesday, 11 April 2006 18:04:59 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Before you offer a Flickr-like API, you need to allow bigger photos! Are you still resizing everything to that ridiculous 600-pixel wide size? I left MSN Spaces for Flickr because the photo handling was so poor.
Lutz
Tuesday, 05 September 2006 10:21:37 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
i need API to upload photos onto msn spaces.ApIs shud be friendly in a win32 project.
Leeni
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