Create your own mobile application - using ZoneTag

Action tags are exactly what you think they are. They perform an "action" on the photo that is uploaded to Flickr through ZoneTag. Using the latest ZoneTag client, a user tags his or her photo with a specific "action tag". Right after the photos is uploaded to Flickr, the ZoneTag server will call your web service with the parameters listed below.

See sample action tags we've created for ZoneTag

So what's it to you?

• Do you have a web service?
• Do you want to hook it up to mobile photos?

Using the action tag framework, you can instantly prototype your web service as a mobile photo application without having to do any painful mobile programing.

Turning your web service into an action tag

1. Your web service is registered as a Flickr developer application

   It wouldn't be much fun to use your web service if you can't do anything with the photos that the user uploads to Flickr.

2. Your web service takes the following parameters:

Parameter	Value	Description
photoid	string (required)	Flickr photo ID of the photo the user just uploaded with the action tag
userid	string (required)	Flickr user id
arg	string	optional argument to apply to the web service.

3. Give your web service an action tag name

   Whatever you want, within reason. It should be short and memorable. Remember, the user's phone screen is not very big.

4. Register your action tag

   Go here.

5. Tell your users to activate your action tag

   Your users have to be ZoneTag users and activate your action tag for their account. Use this handy script to have them activate your action tag on their ZoneTag phone.

6. Voila! Your web service can now be used by a mobile phone.

Example: Rotate photo

Rotate: The web service

• Rotate is registered as a Flickr 3rd party application. It is a web service located at http://www.foo.com/rotate.php.

• Rotate takes an optional argument, "right" or "left", which specifies which way to rotate the photo.

Rotate: The action tag

• The action tag name for Rotate is 'rotate'. It's brilliant, we know.
• Rotate is registered as an action tag.
• ZoneTag users can activate the "rotate" action tag with the two preset arguments, "left" or "right".

Rotate: What the user sees

• Using ZoneTag, the user will now see "!rotate:right" and "!rotate:left" in the "Actions" menu under "Tags"
  
  
• User tags the photo with "!rotate:right"
• ZoneTag uploads the photo to user's Flickr account
• ZoneTag detects the "rotate" action tag was associated with the photo and looks up web service assoicated with the "rotate" tag.
• ZoneTag calls the Rotate web service:
  http://www.foo.com/rotate.php?photoid=&userid=&arg=right
• Voila! The Rotate web service does its thing and the photo is rotated for the user.

Register your action tag now!

Terms of Use

ZoneTag web services are offered to you for non-commercial use, and are governed by the Yahoo! APIs Terms of Use and the ZoneTag web services Terms of Use.

Developer Support and Community

If you're building a cool action tag, please let us know or just swing on by the mailing list and shoot the breeze with other developers/users. Do it all in the zonetag-dev discussion group.