Wolfgang & Family on Flickr
by Volker Weber
Wolfgang took the plunge and uploaded a bunch of pictures on Flickr. It's good to see you there. We miss you!
Comments
Thanks for the tip with Flickr. So far I can only say: a great tool!
I'v checked it too, it's nice but doesn't suits me. I miss the possibility to create "user accounts" for making albums available for certain users only. I know that I can use the "groups" family and friends, but these users have to be flickr users, too. And I cannot force every of my friends and family members to become flickr users...
It would be enough to set a password for selected albums, but I didn't find this feature :-(
Where is the difference? A basic Flickr account is free. So it basically IS a name and a password. Your friends don't have to upload pictures.
If that is too much, then create ONE virtual friend and give your friends and family his username and password.
yes, sure, but I'm limited to max two accounts, one for "family", one for "friends". But I have different "friend" groups with which I do different things. For exmaple with one group I'm at a wedding, I'm celebrating birthday with another group and with a third group I go sailing. And I don't want that every group see all pictures from events of the other groups.
Beside that, flickr is cool an I like it. But without having a flexible password system it's useless for me. I will ask them if they plan to have such system in the near future.
OK, now I understand.
You made the common mistake of mixing up authentication and authorization. You can authenticate as many users as you want (username/password) but you can authorize only two groups (friends or family) besides public.
So what you are asking for is not a flexible password system (that would be authentication) put a flexible authorization system. When you thinking of protecting a set of pictures with a common password to all users accessing the set, then you have created an unsecure security system. I call this theater security. It only looks secure but it isn't. :-)
sure you're right, that means flickr should have the possiblity to restrict access to a set of pictures to certain users, not only family and friends.
I've told flickr support to read this conversation and asked if they plan to implement this.