It’s quick, it’s simple, it’s dangerously awesome. We’ve created a quick and easy way for anyone to add their Flickr account to the image service within Tweetie 2. Now you can upload a photo to Flickr while tweeting using Tweetie 2; finally!
Visit http://gdzl.la, prove who you are on Twitter and then authenticate your Flickr account and you’re done! Just add “https://gdzl.la/go” to the “custom field” within “image service” in your Tweetie 2 settings. It’s kind of just that simple.
It’s no secret that we at nclud are big fans of Twitter as well as Flickr; all of us, some of the first users on both sites. We are all big iPhone nerds as well, so there was an obvious love connection when Tweetie first came out. And we are no stranger to JPG’ing something interesting with our iPhones when it catches our attention – the more interesting, the greater desire to want to share it on Flickr as well as Twitter. One of the many great features of Tweetie 2 was the ability to attach and upload photos with our tweets; but there was no Flickr support! An early rant quickly became a brainstorm which evolved into an idea, and now we have GDZLLA.
For those curious about the name, GDZLLA; yes it’s “Godzilla”. We were sort of hoping that by removing the vowels and being one of those non-revenue-generating type applications, we could avoid pending trademark lawsuits. Prior to Tweetie 2 and GDZLLA, the best application we could find to upload photos to Flickr and Twitter was one called “Gyazickr”; since none of us could really pronounce it, we had always referred to it internally as “Godzilla”. Since our little project would remove the need for Gyazickr, we thought it appropriate to give it some love.
And for those curious how/why we prove your identity on Twitter, we have to ask for your username and password because of limitations on Tweetie’s side; otherwise we’d gladly use OAuth. But because Tweetie makes us all give them our password, we’re limited to doing the same – but don’t worry, we don’t store passwords as clear text and we remember nothing (we’re like an anti-elephant).
It’s one of those built-for-us but given-away-to-everyone type applications. Use it and enjoy it but try and keep the stealing and complaining to a minimum. Send rants and raves to @nclud.
Todd
October 16th 2009
Please Use Oauth!!!
You’re just asking for trouble by making people enter their FLickr username and password.
Oauth is free, no license, takes just a few hours to integrate.
Martin Ringlein
October 16th 2009
Todd,
As we stated in the blog post above, we cannot use oAuth because of limitations on Tweetie’s side. Tweetie does not use oAuth and that’s a problem for us. We keep looking into it and will do it as soon as we can.
Trust us ... we understand :-)
Joseph McLaughlin
October 16th 2009
Todd,
They’re not asking for your Flickr username & password, just your Twitter username & password (the part that integrates with Tweetie 2). They use OAuth on the Flicker side of things.
Great service, thanks a million!
Martin Ringlein
October 16th 2009
Thanks Joseph :-)
Jonathan Christopher
October 17th 2009
Wow awesome - this is just great! Thanks a bunch, nclud!
Martin Ringlein
October 17th 2009
Thanks! It’s been fun watching so many people use it ... Glad to see so much Tweetie/Flickr love out there.
Lasse
October 18th 2009
How does this service differ from Flickrs own Twitter integration - Flickr2Twitter:?
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/06/30/twitter-your-flickr/
Dan Drinkard
October 18th 2009
@Lasse, this is an endpoint designed specifically to work with Tweetie 2; so it’s sort of the opposite of Flickr2Twitter. There may be other applications for it besides Tweetie, but it was borne out of our frustration with not being able to make those two play nice with each other.
Lasse
October 18th 2009
@Dan: End result is the same, right? But Tweetie only.
Dan Drinkard
October 18th 2009
Yep, end result is picture on flickr, tweet on twitter, with link.
Martin Ringlein
October 18th 2009
@Lasse, it’s to send photos directly to Flickr from within the Tweetie 2 iPhone app ... There is currently no other way to do it.
You have to be a Tweetie 2 user to appreciate it.
Neil
October 19th 2009
It would not recognise my twitter account despite me entering it correctly on a number of occasions.
Martin Ringlein
October 19th 2009
Neil,
We are going to look into this .. we’ve had one other person report a similar problem. We are thinking there might be an issue with older accounts and short passwords; but we’re not certain.
It’s an obvious one, but remember that Twitter username/password is case-sensitive.
We’ll reach out if we think we’ve figured it out—would love it if you could test for us.
Neil
October 19th 2009
Hi there, I’ve done some testing at my end, changed some of my settings and i now have it working for my account - the two things i changed were -
1) mixture of cases in the username - ie NeilOughton
2) special characters in the password - in my case and underscore.
Hope this helps, and yes, my account is a couple of years old.
@thebig0
October 20th 2009
I am having a similar issue trying to log in with my Twitter username “thebig0” - my password is not short, and not sure what the cut-off is for Twitter accounts to be considered old.
Let me know if I can provide any additional information to help nail it down!
Dan Drinkard
October 20th 2009
@THEBIG0: Login issues should have been fixed as of yesterday afternoon. I just pulled up the DB, and your account is good to go; however, Flickr is down currently, so, that’s no fun :( Hopefully the flickr guys will have it back up soon.
@thebig0
October 20th 2009
Excellent thanks! I was wondering if Flickr was down or if Barracuda was eating me at work :)
joshnunn
October 20th 2009
Love the app. I wondered though how easy it would be to title the photo with the text of the tweet (similar to how echofon does it) or are unable to do that? It seems to me that Tweetie uploads first before the tweet is finished so it might not be possible, but it would great to have something other than a dozen photos called “Photo”. Oh! And a way to add photos to a set automatically?
And while I’m asking for so much anyway, can you write my tweets for me or just give me money?
Dan Drinkard
October 20th 2009
@Josh, definitely; look for some new stuff very soon. We’re also planning to have even better integration in the next Tweetie update :)
Matt Behrens
November 7th 2009
Great idea! Seconding @John’s idea, I hate having empty Flickr titles.
Dan Drinkard
November 9th 2009
Folks, your wish is our command: Tonight we moved gdzl.la to a bigger server, and added a queue to set photo titles based on your tweet: photo links will be stripped out, and any #hashtags will be converted to flickr tags.
As an added bonus, if you log in to http://gdzl.la and click your name in the top right, you’ll see a list of your photosets, from which you can pick one to add your uploads to by default. You’ll need to enter your password on that screen to save after making your selection. Enjoy!
Patrik
December 25th 2009
I like this service allot. However there is one thing I don’t get (maybe I’m just being stupid). The pictures are uploaded to the right account on Flickr but how does GDZLLA know my Flickr account by authenticating Twitter to use the service?
Martin Ringlein
December 25th 2009
Patrick, glad you like using GDZLLA!
You might not remember, but you had to authenticate your Flickr account as well as your Twitter. Since you’re most likely logged into Flickr on the computer your using, it was probably just a click of a button. But we do require that you authenticate your Flickr account, it is the only way we can post.
Best.
8dot3
December 28th 2009
Is there a way to edit my account or start over? Every time I attempt to post a photo I get an error. Flickr still has GDZLLA authorized and Tweetie 2 is setup correctly.
Thanks for the cool service! Hope I can get it working again.
Dan Drinkard
December 28th 2009
@8dot3 - Just sent you an email. Let me know if that doesn’t get you squared away.
Dylan van der Heij
May 21st 2010
I love the service and my twitter pictures on Flickr. But how can I change my Flickr account? I can not find a tab with ‘settings anywhere.
John Holdun
June 29th 2010
I only just recently purchased my first iPhone so while I was aware of GDZLLA, I didn’t previously know or care what it did. This is an itch I actually found myself trying to scratch on my own just a couple days ago; your solution is far more elegant than mine.
One quirk: my toots are geotagged and I’d like the photos to be geotagged on Flickr as well. Can I get a little setLocation love? :D
Martin Ringlein
June 29th 2010
Glad to hear you like using GDZLLA John. Also, congrats on finally becoming and iPhone owner; it won’t change your life, you’ll just wish everything worked just like the iPhone.
As for GeoTagging the photos; all I can say is that “we’re working on it”. It’s definitely on our wish list and we’ve discussed it a few times internally.
Seraj Gool
October 30th 2011
Hello, i’ve been using GDZLLA for ages now with no complaints. But ever since I updated my software to iOS5 it no longer works. Every time I try to upload a pic I get a “Bad Request” error. Can someone please assist me. Thanks, Seraj.
Dan Drinkard
October 30th 2011
Hey Seraj. I’m woefully overdue on a blog post explaining the iOS5 situation. The short answer is that twitter for iPhone’s iOS5 release is broken—not just for GDZLLA, but for users of all custom image endpoints. Yor options as of right now are to use a different client, (tweetbot and twitterrific are known to work under iOS5), or use a non-custom image upload service.
Seraj Gool
October 30th 2011
Hey Dan!
Thanks so much for the speedy response. Will check out the other 2 clients and get back to you.
Cheers :)
Dan Drinkard
November 3rd 2011
Just wanted to update anyone watching this thread—Twitter for iOS 3.5.1 was released today, and with it the custom endpoint bug is fixed.