Flickr introduces placed-based sections, and man, it sure looks great
First, an announcement from the Department of Holiday Offerings: Happy Thanksgiving to you, you U.S.-living internet reader. For you other-country folk, well, no turkey.
Yesterday Flickr announced Flickr Places — new indexes for what looks like just about every place / city / town / state / province / country (but not neighborhood, yet — the Flickr Places URL for Capitol Hill in Denver displays a Salt Lake City … also, zip code works, but doesn’t give you photos for only that zip) in the world. This is the information that’s displayed:
- Thumbnails of interesting and recent photos from that place
- Two featured photographers who take photos from that place
- Flickr Groups that pertain to that place
- Weather from that place
- Popular tags from that place
- One featured photo from that places
It’s a great way to harness all the data flickr members add to photos. The Flickr announcement also has a news peg:
We’ve built an experimental new map view built upon the work of highly trained teams of globe trotting squirrels - sort of like the Magic Donkey* but more rodent-y - whose sole job on the team is to ferret out breaking news (or a nerdy conference, or a wedding, or some other thing that lots of people are photographing) and let us know so we can display it on the new map view.
I’m probably way off here, but this looks like it could be a step to bring Yahoo! Local, Flickr, and Yahoo’s You Witness News closer together. In any case, making more of the data you already have is a productive move.
(In a semi-related note, my friend JJ made Chicago’s most-interesting photo list with this shot of the South Loop. I built his web site, Planck Studios Photography, where he writes about photgraphy, Chicago, and his photos. If you’re looking for an awesome gift with a Chicago angle you ought to take a look at his work… and if you have some suggestion or complaint about his site, hey, let me know.