Flickr:tags=machine_tags

Flickr has just added support for machine tags.

What are 'machine tags' (also known as 'triple tags'), you might ask? Think tagging with metadata - extra information that rides along with the main tag descriptor content eg. geo:long=123.456.

Why is this cool, you might ask? There are a number of generic tagging issues that machine tags tackle. Traditional tags can lost value taken out of context - which may seem silly, but computers aren't nearly as good at analyzing images as us humans (aside from some fancy image recognition software, but even still... we've got a long way to go...). Machine tags provide machines for more detail, and the context of said detail. Also, Machine tagging is best used in automation, or recursion. Think spime, geo-caching, etc.

The flickr people are super stoked about this development, and rightly so. With all the walled gardens sprouting up, it's nice to see some love for us developers.