Apps & Services

Zurfer

Jenny Chowdhury

Looking for a faster, smarter way to view Flickr photos on your mobile device? Zurfer is your answer.

Created by Yahoo! Research Berkeley, Zurfer’s most promoted feature is its location-based photo feed. But it also offers a much more intuitive interface for viewing Flickr photos than Flickr’s own mobile site (although Flickr and Zurfer are both from Yahoo!), as well as a photo wallet and a way to customize your own mobile Flickr feeds.

Zurfer labels each of the available photo feeds a Channel and starts the user out with Nearby Photos, Recent Comments, Contacts Photos, My Stuff and Interesting Today channels. The photo channels resize dynamically based on your focus, using one click to move between channels and one click to get from one photo to the next. It should be noted that Zurfer is still a prototype, so some kinks are still being worked out.

Installation requirements
Zurfer runs on most Nokia Series 60 v2 and v3 phones and also on the Motorola RAZR V3x. You will need a free Flickr account and will also be encouraged to get a free ZoneTag account (another application from Yahoo! Research Berkeley) that you can sign up for during your registration for Zurfer. An unlimited data plan is also helpful since you’ll be downloading photos from the Internet.

Nearby Photos channel: see what's around you
Curious about what other people have photographed nearby? Zurfer can serve up photos in your current vicinity. There are two ways that Zurfer can get your location data. If you have a ZoneTag account, Zurfer gets your location from the ZoneTag application, which was built to recognize your location from cell tower data. Zurfer will use your last ZoneTag location update. If you don’t have ZoneTag installed, or want to use a different location, you can manually enter your location by street address, zip code, city or state. Once Zurfer has a location, the most recent nearby geotagged photos will show up in your Nearby Photos channel. You can then search this channel for things of interest. I tried the keyword “food” and saw people eating at Crif Dog, a favorite nearby eatery in NYC. If you’re a tourist and are more interested in finding out about what local about attractions are nearby, click on the “local highlights” option to see shots of popular nearby landmarks.

Recent Comments and Contacts channels: follow your friends
When I’m at my computer, I check my Flickr account constantly to see my contacts’ new photos, to leave comments on their photos and to see if I’ve received any comments. In the past, I’ve tried to do this on the go with the Flickr mobile site, but found the interface to be clunky, requiring lots of scrolling and link-clicking to get to all the photos and comments I wanted to see. Zurfer, on the other hand, makes following contacts incredibly easy, showing recently commented photos and contacts’ photo streams upon launching the application. Navigation consists of a single click between photos. Leaving comments is also simple as long as you’re quick at typing with a phone keypad. For better or for worse, it’s taken my Flickr addiction mobile.

My Stuff channel: take your personal photos with you
The My Stuff channel is all about you. The main component here is your Flickr photo stream, which is searchable by recent location and recent tags, in addition to the standard keyword search. You can get to your Flickr favorites from this channel as well, easily retrieving the photos you bookmarked on someone else’s Flickr account. A third option for the My Stuff channel, barely described on the Zurfer home site, is the photo wallet.  This is a way to organize and retrieve your own favorite photos. Since Flickr doesn’t offer an official way to favorite photos from your own stream, the way to add photos into the photo wallet is a kind of a hack, but it does the job. Simply create a photo set called “Photo Wallet” in Flickr and add your own favorite photos to it. The “Photo Wallet” will then show up as an option in the My Stuff channel.  I decided to store traditional photo wallet content here, photos of my family during Thanksgiving, and some shots from a recent birthday. Then I could quickly call up the photos when sharing stories about my life.

My Custom Channels: Flickr Inside
If the standard Channels aren’t enough, Zurfer allows you to create Tag, Friend and Group channels. My friend Mike is a fan of the artist Banksy’s work, so he created a Banksy Flickr Group channel so that he can see new photos as they’re uploaded to the group. I created channels for some friends with whom I’m working on a project so I can view their documentation of the project’s progress.

While Zurfer was released as a prototype, it’s highly functioning. It crashes every so often when it’s a few layers deep in search, but overall I’ve found it to be a very useful tool. I’ve been drawn in sufficiently enough to know why application advises, “Welcome to Zurfer. Do not use while crossing the street” while it’s loading. I’m not sure I believe Yahoo! Research Berkeley’s promise that “Zurfer will make you better looking and socially popular,” but I plan to use it to discover sites of interest and to show friends my own photos from an upcoming vacation.

Comments (49)

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