I suspect that I am part of a teaser campaign
Just a thought from 10 August 2005 about Flickr, Internet, JPG Magazine, Photography.

Today I received two very special surprises in the mail. Inside was the first glimpse of the dream of every Flickr user with more than a few photos online: If only I could order prints. Well, it looks like, very soon now, you'll be able to.

(Full disclosure: My wife, the lovely and talented Heather Powazek Champ is Flickr's community manager. And Flickr was started by Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, who are dear friends of ours. I'm told that none of those things are why I received these surprises. They are, however, several of the reasons I consider myself a lucky, lucky man.)

The first surprise was a huge envelope with a 13x19 print inside. The print is a large grid of thumbnails from a seemingly random assortment of my Flickr photos. It reminded me a lot of the grid of photos I made of the first year of Ephemera, except with more whitespace.

The print quality is good - not as good as the prints I make at home on the Epson 1280, but nearly so. The paper is high quality and it looks great hanging on the wall.

The other surprise was a book - 8x10, 66 pages, glossy cover, matte interior. Inside there are four photos per page, culled from my recent sets. It looks good and feels good in the hand. My first thought was, "Man, everyone's gonna want one of these." (Of their photos, I mean. Not mine. Besides you, mom. You might want one of mine. Anyway.)

The print quality is not as good as we get from Lulu for JPG Magazine, but it's damn close. When Flickr releases this, depending on how they do it, it may mean that anyone can start a group, filter for the best photos, and create a book for the community. Or make a set of photos from an event and enable people at the event to buy photos or books. Or a million more things you can imagine.

Dear Flickr peeps, what's it like to be so awesome?

A few more photos here. »