It's also RSS

FlickrNotifier is actually an RSS feed that allows you to view your friends' updated photostreams right on your desktop. I don't completely understand the how of it but it is supposed to save you time and energy by instantaneously displaying photos published by your friends via an RSS notifier that displays images. Sounds to me like I would not have to create/regularly check everyone's pages on social networking sites. What seems pretty great about the third party tools on Flickr is that each is designed to make the steps in the photo posting/viewing process a little easier.