You know you’re all growed up when people start writing books about you. Well, it’s started for Flickr (though for some reason we don’t feel real growed up yet)
How to Use Flickr: The Digital Photography Revolution
This books is a great introduction to Flickr, both in the sense of flickr.com, the website, and Flickr, the, um … socially constructed conceptual framework for a new model of online interaction. It not only runs down the features, but contains a lot of great interviews, sidebars, stories of how people use Flickr, ettiquette, and notes on how the features are getting used and the social dynamics that have evolved. Definitely the book to get a friend or loved one you are trying to "convert" to Flickrism.
Flickr Hacks: Tips and Tooks for Sharing Photos Online
Part of the venerable O’Reilly ‘Hacks’ series of books, and co-authored by Paul Bausch (Blogger co-founder and inventor of the permalink!) and Jim Bumgardner (creator of the Flickr Colrpickr and collaborative posters), this book is for the more technically adept Flickr user who’s interested in stretching Flickr functionality to the limits, through the website as well as through the API. With a great foreward by Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake.
This one we haven’t read (it’s not out yet, but is available for pre-order from a few places) but it’s clearly intended for the real geek/programmer, toiling away building new services, sites, features and products using our APIs.
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And while these books about Flickr are all very well, there’s also a cool new option for making books from Flickr: QOOP‘s new minibooks are amazing. I like the 5.25" x 3.5" size the best and the option to build a mosaic for the cover using drag and drop to sort the photos is really cool. They’re full bleed (so the photos printing right to the edge of the page, make a handsome gift or portolio presentation and fit handily in your pocket. Here’s some user’s photos of their minibooks:
You can order your own on QOOP’s Flickr site.