After you install the myPhotos tool, your Flickr photos are automatically archived on Amazon S3.

We create an XML file for each photo and for your collection of photos, all linked together, so other apps can easily find them.

New photos you post to Flickr are automatically copied to your S3 archive. So you can continue to use Flickr, and we will continue to make sure your work is safe.

A Flickr account.

An Amazon S3 account.

A bucket on S3 to store your photos.

A Mac or Windows machine running the OPML Editor.

myPhotos.root installed in your OPML Editor.

1. In the OPML Editor, choose Tool Catalog from the Misc menu.

2. Click on the Install link next to myPhotos.

3. Once it's installed, this page opens in the web browser.

Setup is done in the web browser.

It can take a few minutes before you see any evidence of downloading, especially if you have a lot of pictures. Once it starts downloading, you'll see the names of the images scroll by in an outline, and there's a log file you can watch, over the web, that shows you the progress.

A link to the log file is included in the last page of the setup after you click Submit to start the downloading.

Here's a screen shot to show what the downloading process looks like.

At the top level of the bucket we maintain a filed called calendar.opml. It's a two level outline that links to an OPML file for each month in the archive.

Example: calendar.opml.

Each month is a chronologic list of links to photos with thumbnails.

The worldOutline.root app understands these formats. You can browse my photo archive here. That page is just a rendering of calendar.opml.

This is what a rendering of a month looks like.

And the rendering of a photo.

This is just a first pass at the formats, nothing is set in stone.

photo.xml is a new format, designed to have just enough information to do something useful with a photo. There are other richer photo formats. This format doesn't have that much variability so it's easier to support. I'll write a doc explaining when it firms up more.

If you have questions, or hit problems, post a comment below.

The original howto is here.