In the following sections, I’ll show how you can use tags in del.icio.us to collect Flickr pictures and make a simple visual collection. The idea is simple: you can use del.icio.us to gather pictures from Flickr by tagging Flickr URLs in del.icio.us and using a specific del.icio.us tag on all the pictures you want in the same set. Because del.icio.us shows thumbnails of photos from Flickr, you get a simple album maker using this combination of Flickr and del.icio.us and tagging.

Here’s an example:

http://del.icio.us/rdhyee/set:Berkeley

In this case, I’ve tagged a selection of Flickr URLs with the tag set:Berkeley.

This mashup is certainly not a replacement for Picasa or iPhoto. You can’t sort the pictures, for instance, though you could imagine adding another tag with a number and writing a Greasemonkey script that would sort the pictures for you (and allow you to edit the ordering). This mashup is a helpful supplement to Flickr, but you might ask, why not just use the Flickr favorites or collections to accomplish this goal? The problem that this little mashup solves is combining your own photos with those of others. Favorites must be other people’s pictures; your collections can contain only your own photos.