Web 2.0 in Second Life: an expert hacks a Flickr interface

I came across a post in the hackdiary blog about how to integrate Flickr into Second Life (SL), in the form of a simple viewer for pictures from Flickr based on a given tag. hackdiary is the blog of Matt Biddulph, a Web designer who has done a number of interesting things in SL. The post isn't new, but that doesn't make it less interesting or valuable.

I've had quite a few requests for the source code of the Flickr screen for Second Life that I wrote about a few weeks ago. Here's the code, annotated with links to the Second Life coding wiki and a few notes.

I'm only publishing the LSL code, because the serverside code isn't very interesting and does pretty much exactly what it says in the previous post. If you want to run your own flickr screen, the URLs in the code below should work just as well for your objects as they do for mine. If you have problems, let me know. I reserve the right to switch off the code if the traffic gets too high, but I'll post here if I have to do that.

There's a neat little video built into the post demonstrating the Flickr screen.

I found the Flickr hack a little too simple for my own needs, and I don't know if he still has the server set up to act as intermediary, but for me the really useful aspect is that he published the Linden Scripting Language source code in another post called  Annotated source code for Second Life flickr screen.

It's a nice starting point for doing basically any kind of Web 2.0 interface hack in SL.  It shows you a number of useful things:

1. How to display media content (in this case a JPEG, but the method would work for streaming video).
2. How to personalize content.
3. How to interact with a server to get content dynamically.

It's just toy project from one point of view, but it provides a skeleton framework for the kind of client/server interaction needed for doing any kind of mashup one would want in SL. I'm looking at it as a way of putting together an interactive photo tour of the Health System campus as part of new island in SL.  I can imagine using it as a tool for doing dynamic social networking interfacing visitors to the island in SL with real-life contacts (peers, staff, or faculty) who share interests and can act as informants, mentors, or collaborators.