Posterous to Flickr: A Code Formatting Trick!
I’ve decided to embark on the experiment of disabling most of my social network sync/forwarding/cross-post settings and just funneling everything through Posterous. The main idea is to create a single pipeline through which all content is routed, and Posterous is a great service to do so, as long as you’re comfortable giving that service a lot of power.
Several heavy social network using friends have recommended Posterous to me already, but I’ve always felt turned off by the email part. I know email’s convenient and ubiquitous and for the most part accepted by the entire world, but it’s my least favorite place to hang out these days (ok, my voicemail inbox is worse, but barely). I pretty much hate checking my Gmail… a wasteland of starred items that I starred to remind myself to come back to, but never did, and now they make me feel bad about myself every time I log in.
But I digress. Using Posterous isn’t about hanging out in my inbox, it’s simply about using the email protocol to post pretty much anything to anywhere: text, photos, videos, etc., to blogs, Facebook profiles/pages, Twitter, etc. I can access my email with my computer or my mobile phone, and I always have one or both of them on me at all times. The service is a lot more robust than how I’m explaining it, so if you’re befuddled I recommend you read the Posterous FAQ for a very thorough walk-through.
Essentially I’m disabling cross-posting Del.icio.us links to Tumblr, blip.fm posts to Friendfeed, Flickr photos to Facebook, Facebook status updates to OMG I CAN’T KEEP TRACK OF ALL MY CROSS-POSTING ANYMORE, DID IT ORIGINATE IN MY LAST.FM SETTINGS OR MY TWITTER OAUTH, I NEED TO START OVER. See? I’ve gone crazy. So I’m linking all my online accounts to Posterous only, and I’m going to use the Posterous email protocol to send my content exactly where I want. I like experiments! This will be fun!
Here’s how it works:
- *I want to post a photo to Flickr: flickr@myaccount.posterous.com
- *I want to post the same photo to Flickr and Friendfeed: flickr+friendfeed@myaccount.posterous.com
- *I want to post the same piece of content to every service I’ve linked to Posterous: post@myaccount.posterous.com
- *I want to post something to my Posterous account, but not to any of my linked services: posterous@myaccount.posterous.com
And so on.
Now, because I really do belong to a ton of social networks that I use regularly, completely switching up my sharing methods is a little complicated, and I’ve already run into a few stumpers. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to share any little tricks I figure out along the way with all of you that 1) might already be baffling you, or 2) you may come across eventually if you decide to use Posterous the way I’m using it.
My first issue arose when I posted a Photo Booth pic from my computer to Flickr via Posterous email:
As you can see, the subject line of my email posted perfectly as my Flickr photo title, but notice how my Flickr “description” is some lame promotional Posterous code and not what I wrote in the body of that email (it was about my stylish pajama bottoms)? No hard feelings Posterous, I know that’s how you’re getting the word out and all, but… no thanks. I already wrote my own Flickr photo description in the body of the email I sent, and that’s all I want to see.
How to fix it:
In your Flickr account advanced settings on Posterous, you see how Posterous auto-populates your Flickr photo’s description with their own footer, which makes perfect sense. They’re not hiding anything or being devious, and I was able to achieve what I wanted simply by replacing their default code with this:
Now, when I send an email to flickr@myaccount.posterous.com, whatever I post in the subject line will convert to my Flickr title, and whatever I post in the body of my email along with my attached photo will become my Flickr description! It will be as if I uploaded through Flickr directly. Nobody will know. Easy as pumpkin pie, right? (Obviously you can screw around with the codes to get your own desired effect).
More Posterous tips as I discover them along the path of my little experiment. If you use Posterous and have any tricks of your own, please share them with the rest of us. This effer took me all morning. 
