Hi all,

We've enabled an experimental API-only feature for geotagged photos
that, for lack of any better name, we're calling "contexts".

The short version is:

You can now say whether a geotagged photo was taken indoors or
outdoors or neither (the default context).

The longer version is:

Any talk about the "context" of a photo quickly becomes a hairy
problem conceptually and a hairier problem technically. Shouldn't a
photo be able to have multiple contexts (outdoors, at night)? How do
users add their own contexts? How and why are contexts different than
tags or machine tags? Isn't this specific to a photo and not just its
geo information?

The answer to all those questions is: Yes!

In the meantime, while we work through the details, we're going to
release the really simple version via the API. This is a first step
both for us to have something to talk about rather than around and to
get developer feedback early on.

There are currently three parts of the API that will play with
contexts. They are:

* The flickr.photos.setContext method

http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.geo.setContext.html

This method allows you set/update a photo's geo context (indoors,
outdoors, undefined) and requires minimum read permissions.

* The <location> element in the flickr.photos.getInfo method

If a photo has been geotagged the <location> element now contains a
@context attribute with a numeric value representing the photo's geo
"context".

* The flickr.photos.search method

There is now a "geo_context" parameter in photos.search that

It goes without saying that this one will take a while to fill up.

Experimental! Enjoy!