James Bowskill is a British Art Director at A.C.O. Tokyo, where he develops brands on-line.

He also collects Japanese packaging, occasionally writes articles for Tokyo's web magazine PingMag, and is a member of London design team Superblue.

Fotologue: Japanese Flash Photo Community Jan 05 2006

Whilst Flickr has been busy taking over the Western world, it doesn't seem to have caught on quite so much here in Japan. I stumbled across a site this afternoon however which seems to offer similar photo-sharing, but wrapped up in a gorgeous Flash interface.

What can you do?

Fotologue lets you upload and comment on photos, but unlike Flickr which is very much a free-for-all, Fotologue seems to act predominantly as a gallery for professionals/pro-amateurs. I was able to create an account and upload a few photos (with much help from my Japanese wife!) but I don't seem to have a personal URL to showcase my collection, I do however have URLs to individual photographs, such as this one.

I haven't been able to figure out if you can extend functionality by paying, or if you need to get through a judging process to get a full personal gallery, like this chap Kobetto has done.

Screensaver

You can access site-wide and individual photographer RSS and Atom feeds, and if you're feeling adventurous, download the free screensaver which automatically shows the latest photos uploaded to the site. Here's how you get it:

1. Go to http://fotologue.jp and mouseover the first 4 characters shown in the screen capture above. You should be able to click them. A pop-up window opens which you then close.
2. You should now be able to check the checkbox
3. Which should let you download the screensaver for your system. After then you're on your own!

I'll have a bit of a play around over the next few days and see if I can figure any more of it out. If anyone can explain more about the system, please do!