Biscuit Tin is yet another new app I’ve recently discovered via a Twitter follow from its developer. In the UK, a biscuit tin is what in the US we call a cookie jar. And this app sets out to give you a sort of cookie jar / biscuit tin full of your Flickr pictures.
I haven’t used a screencap of my own pics above, because I use my main Flickr account for an awful lot of iPhone screencaps and they look pretty boring to be truthful.
I like the idea for this app, but for me it’s hamstrung by two issues – one of Apple’s making, and one of its own …
Biscuit Tin works very simply – you authorize it within your Flickr account, and then launch it again once it’s authorized. It then displays a pic from your Flickr set, and adds more and more pictures to the display as you shake the phone. You can shake once to add one image at a time, or shake more or less continuously to keep adding a lot in one go.
Ideally, with an app like this, I’d like it to be able to work as my wallpaper on the iPhone – rather than having to go and launch an app in order to see my Flickr pics. This is the Apple issue, of course, as I imagine this is just not allowed in an App Store app.
My second complaint about the app is more of its own making though. I’d like for there to be a slideshow option – so I don’t have to shake the phone in order to see more images. The app also stacks all the images a bit like a deck of cards as you shake it. Again, I’d like to see some options here – for example, one for displaying just a single image at a time on the screen.
For now, I like the general concept of Biscuit Tin, but it’s not a keeper for me. If its updated and adds features I might take another look though.
You can find Biscuit Tin in the App Store now, priced at $0.99.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Just so you know if you double tap on a single image it will zoom in and display a single image.
Hi Patrick,
my name's Brendan Dawes and I'm the creative director here at magneticNorth, creators of the Biscuit Tin iPhone app.
Thanks for the lovely mention on your blog – much appreciated. I thought though I'd just respond to the two main points you've set out.
Wallpaper – great idea and we'd love to do this, bit apps run in what's called a “sandbox” meaning that they can't interact with the core iPhone interface. Apps are self contained applications so there's not way to alter the functionality of the phone to get a random wallpaper when you shake. That (at the moment) would be an Apple job. Also, presently in iPhone 2.0 there is no way we can use pictures in a random fashion from the phones own photo album, as this would require having to “look into” the phone photo album and get a list of all the photos and the mix em up. Because of the “sandbox” approach, third party apps can't do that. But hopefully in 3.0 this might be possible, so in a future version Biscuit Tin would shuffle not just Flickr photos but on phone photos.
As your other point about viewing as slideshow this is really outside of the remit of Biscuit Tin. We felt it was important when developing the app to have it “do one thing, one thing only, and do it well”. Otherwise it starts to add complication and we wanted this to be a very clear, simple idea that people understood very easily. But who knows, we may develop a random slideshow app in the future.
Thanks again for the comments – all this stuff helps us to iterate the product to be better.
Bren.
Deviant1853 – thanks, but that's still not really what I was wishing for. I'd like to be able to launch the app and not have to shake the phone or tap anywhere or anything once I've got it setup, and just have it rotate Flickr pics for me.
Brendan – thanks for the thoughtful response! Just to clarify, I don't want it to use any photos from my photo library, I'm fine with it pulling from Flickr. I just would like it if it was able to do so, and then make that a rotating walpaper. I know that is restricted by Apple.
AS for the no slideshow and doing one thing and doing it well, I think that's a sound principle. It just doesn't fit my individual taste – I don't want to have to shake the phone or do anything really to rotate / add images. I'd like the app to do it for me …
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