Give Your Photos Coffee Table Glory With Flickr And Blurb
Flickr and Blurb are partnering to provide Flickr users with a easy way to create DIY photo books. No official announcement has been made yet by either company, but I spoke to Eileen Gittins, founder and CEO of Blurb, and she confirmed the deal and says formal announcements will be made in the very near future.
According to Gittins, Blurb will be the new exclusive provider of photo books for Flickr (Update: The CEO of QOOP wrote to Wired News saying that QOOP will continue to produce books for Flickr, so users will now have a choice between the two services). Blurb, a DIY book printing service has added a Flickr widget to its desktop client which grabs the users photostream.
“We built a ‘slurper’ that automates grabbing the hi-res version of people’s photos for book printing,” says Gittins.
Of course, users could always create a photo book using Blurb and their Flickr images, but they would have had to assemble it by hand (or use QOOP’s service). The new tools make the process infinitely easier thanks to the Blurb client integration with Flickr.
QOOP, another Flickr partner that currently provides photo books for Flickr, will reportedly continue to provide other print services like calendars and posters (Update: As mentioned above QOOP will also still print books of your Flickr photos).
Blurb is also set to announce that they have a new printing partner in the Netherlands. “We’re now printing and shipping directly to our customers in Europe,” says Gittins who also adds that “in about two weeks time, our site will be updated with pricing in Euros and Pounds.”
Gittins says the pricing won’t be changing, just the localization of the currency. The local printing should speed delivery of not just Flickr photo books, but all European orders placed through Blurb.
