Soft cities was just a little experiment with Pipes (it’s still prototypical) and Mike’s quite right to say that the material on Flickr is of variable quality. However, one of the advantages of Pipes is that you can filter out users – there’s a fair amount of tag spam in Flickr – and I had to ‘clean’ a number of the feeds.

However, I disagree with Mike about the nature of the content. I like that it clicks through to Flickr. I like that you can find the context of the individual user. I like that the material is ‘user generated’. I think it displays the diversity of the city better. Multiple different viewpoints, etc. That is, of course, a matter of personal choice.

On a more general note, I know from work on previous projects that commercial access to the Flickr api can cost a lot of money. However, if you used this idea for campaigning work, they might give you a free pass. If you set up the appropriate groups and separate tags, then I think you could do something really interesting.

Anyway, thanks again for the praise, but I’m not sure I’ll hold my breath for the TED invite just yet.

But… As you say presentation is everything and clicking on an image should take you to a gallery or slideshow of the images in that category, say People. I was really disappointed to see the gallery home page is just a front end to Flickr, which I have never rated as the best medium for displaying images. The quality of images on Flickr varies immensely and therefore so do the images that feed Soft Cities. I would much prefer to see a single, high quality body of work than a random collection of variable quality and relevance.

So having clicked on an image all you get is that single frame displayed in Flickr (sometimes with those annoying comments pasted on the picture). This leaves you wondering where to go for the next image in that topic. The photographer may or may not have uploaded other images relating to that theme. After clicking on one image I was taken to a Flickr page with some great work but not related to Soft Cities and I found myself looking at these other images instead.

A great concept? Yes. But a masterpiece? I’m afraid not. While Soft Cities may be a good demonstration of Pipes, the enormous potential of this concept is completely lost in the presentation and variable content.