A Matlab code to hack Flickr for sharing uniformly gridded, non-image data.

flickr_hack_photo.m

%% Flickr Translation Function
% This code requires:
% JSON Lab: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/33381-jsonlab--a-toolbox-to-encode-decode-json-files-in-matlab-octave

%% Load Example Image
% This example image was provided Dr. Mark Stoudt at NIST.  It is surface
% roughness data for High Purity Aluminum.  The experiment's detector
% measures the height of aberations on the surface of rolled sheet
% aluminum.  The data has postive and negative float values.  In the title
% of the Flickr image I have added arguments for scaling and translating
% the data.

%%
% Use OEmbed to get information about the image.  OEmbed returns a json
% string that is then de-serialized using JSON Lab.

photourl = 'https://www.flickr.com/photos/tonyfast/13267132114';

oembed_arg = 'https://www.flickr.com/services/oembed/?format=json&url=';


% OEmbed json request.  The JSON is serialized as a string.
jsonreq = urlread(horzcat(oembed_arg,photourl));
% De-serialize jsonreq to a matlab structure
image_info = loadjson( jsonreq );

%% Image Info
% OEmbed returns the following information:
% type, title, author_name, author_url, width, height, urlweb_page
% thumbnail_url, thumbnail_width, thumbnail_height, web_page_short_url 
% license, license_id, version, cache_age, provider_name, provider_url

%% Scaling the Image Title
% Parse the image title to get the scaling factor and the translation.
% Example: image_info.title: 'Strain220F&scale=4.266667&shift=128.0'

[~,str] = strtok(image_info.title,'&'); % I wish I understood regular expressions :(
transform = struct();
for ii = 1 : 2
    [field,str] = strtok(str,'=');
    [value,str] = strtok(str,'&');
    transform = setfield( transform, ...
        field( 2:end ), ...
        str2num( value( 2:end)) ...
        );
end

%% Re-mapped Image
% Remap the image using the transform variable.

OldImage = imread( image_info.url );
NewImage = (double(OldImage)- transform.shift) / transform.scale;