Wow. It's been a while since I've been excited about something a company is doing so perhaps I'm a little overly giddy but Flickr's partnership with the (US) Library of Congress is just so cool. This joint project, known as The Commons, seeks to have acquire richer descriptions and information for photographs in the Library of Congress' photograph collection.

You're invited to help describe photographs in the Library of Congress' collection on Flickr, by adding tags or leaving comments.*

These beautiful, historic pictures from the Library represent materials for which the Library is not the intellectual property owner. Flickr is working with the Library of Congress to provide an appropriate statement for these materials. It's called "no known copyright restrictions."

Hopefully, this pilot can be used as a model that other cultural institutions would pick up, to share and redistribute the myriad collections held by cultural heritage institutions all over the world.

Essentially the Library of Congress is going to throw historical photographs from their collection into their Flickr account. We, volunteers will help catalog/identify/describe those photographs by adding appropriate tags and comments. This is a very cool project that allows community involvement, by using new technology in the process of documenting history the preceded us. Meaning, yes we can make and document history and we do everyday with our Flickr accounts but we can also record and describe historical photographs that predated us. We can make historical photographs more relevant and more easily found by increasing the knowledge and information associated with them.

I've been without a Flickr pro account for nearly a year because I haven't needed the space or any of the pro bells or whistles. Supporting projects and initiatives like this totally makes me want to get a pro account again just to support Flickr.

I totally love the openness of this project. I also love Flickr's note about being involvement with this project:

Any Flickr member is able to add tags or comment on these collections. If you're a dork about it, shame on you. This is for the good of humanity, dude!!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all know there is no way to completely keep people from stealing your images if you put them on the internet. That doesn't mean you can't encourage people to not steal them. It doesn't mean you can't encourage them to do the right thing. I wrote on this topic almost two years ago and said "my philosophy is to help people and give them the opportunity to do the right thing and most often they will. On my photography website I list a copyright notice on every page stating that all the work on the site is mine. This reminds people that a real person created all the content on the site and if they take it they’re taking it from a real person. Beyond that though I offer the opportunity to buy prints and licenses of my work. I make contact information easy to find and encourage people to contact me with questions or comments about my work. I encourage them to do the right thing."

Derek Powazek has done some thinking about this topic as well. He personally doesn't like putting copyright notices or watermarks directly on his images because 1) it distracts from the image and 2) determined thieves will just crop them our anyway. He's come up with an alternative though. It's a technique for photographers to use on websites that puts copyright notices, reminders about not stealing and contact information in a format that's hidden from view (and therefore doesn't interfere with the image like watermarks can) until someone right clicks on the image.

It's a cool, simple technique that adds a layer of encouragement to your photos. Encouragement? Yep, encouragement. It's not adding any more protection to your photos but it is subtly reminding people that taking your image without permission is wrong and encouraging them to do the right thing by either not taking your image or by contacting you and asking your permission/requirements for usage.

I got an email today about Box.net's new OpenBox service which allows the editing of photos stored online.

OpenBox allows you to "bring the power of web applications directly into your existing Box account". Translation? If you're storing and sharing photos with Box.net you can right click on any photo in your Box.net account and edit the image with Picnik

What is Box.net?

Box.net is an online storage and sharing service that gives you access to your files from anywhere. With Box, you can access important documents from your desktop computer, laptop, or even mobile phone. Once you've uploaded your files to your online storage on Box, you can also share them with anyone, anytime — Box makes online web file sharing simple.

Tableau is an open source application that makes building lightbox style photo galleries easy.

Oh that Flickr, they sure do know how to lure a girl and make her stay in love with them. According to the Flickr blog pro users now have unlimited uploads, free users now have 100MB of uploads per month and gift certificates to new or existing Flickr members are now super simple to buy. Flickr I heart you.

It's now easier than ever to spread joy this holiday season by giving the Gift of Flickr. You can purchase a special activation code that you can give to anyone, whether or not they have an existing Flickr account. We've even created a special Gift Certifcate card that you can print out yourself, fold up and stuff in a stocking, under a tree or hidden away for after the candles are lit (of course, you can also send the gift code in an email).

And it's even better to give the gift of Flickr since now your recipients will get unlimited uploads -- the two gigabyte monthly limit is no more (yep, pro users have no limits on how many photos they can upload)! At the same time, we've upped the limit for free account members as well, from 20MB per month up to 100MB (yep, five times more)!

The Flickr team also wants to take this opportunity to thank you for a wonderful year and wish you and yours all the best of the season. Yay!

Blogger Chris Heilmann shares his code for creating unobtrusive (meaning not ugly) Dynamic Flickr Badges.

Being bored yesterday night, I thought that it would be really cool to have a flickr badge that can be navigated (x pictures forward and backward), has a preview in middle size mode (lightbox style) and is generally nicely unobtrusive.

Tags: photography, flickr, photo sharing

Still in beta photo sharing software KoffeePhoto has some interesting features that make it worth a look. It's a combination organizer, backup service and presentation tool. Organize your photos into albums, save them on KoffeePhoto's p2p network, share your albums, present slideshows and receive comments on your photos, and order prints. Unlike many photo sharing apps I've seen this one supports Windows, Mac, and Linux (!).

A word of caution: p2p networks are a little scary to some people and you should make sure you're very comfortable using one (and all your necessary security protocols are in place) before you sign up.

Tags: photography, KoffeePhoto, photo sharing

JPG Magazine recently turned 2 years old and relaunched. The new 2.0 version of JPG includes much better submision and uploading procedures, more interactivity, payments for contributors and most excitingly a voting system to help choose photos for upcoming issues. They've also included a sweet system for promoting your submissions (cough, cough) on your website.

But not content being just a magazine JPG is expanding its self-definition

JPG is a magazine. It's published 6 times a year by 8020 Publishing. Check out the back issues. The photos in the magazine come from you!

JPG is a website. Here any photographer can join and upload photos to their member page. You can also submit your photos to issues and themes for consideration in the magazine.

JPG is a community. JPG exists because of, and exclusively for, photographers like you. Without you, we're nothing.

Tags: photography, JPG Magazine

New printing startup MOO is offerning 10 free mini cards to Flickr Pro members as a way of introduction to their new service.

MOO has joined forces with Flickr, the world’s largest online photo sharing community, to offer members a new way to share their Flickr information and photos offline. Hooray!

Flickr MiniCards use MOO’s revolutionary multipack technology to produce sets of small, customised calling cards: each card featuring a different photo from the last.

Flickr Mini Cards

Tags: photo sharing, moo, photography, Flickr

photofront is a cool online application that takes your Flickr sets and turns them into very slick, flash based galleries. The galleries are beautiful, navigation is easy and intuitive and setup takes less than 2 minutes. You select which Flickr sets get turned into galleries so this application makes it dead simple to create very professional, very good looking photography portfolios or just really cool slideshows, much cooler than the default Flickr ones.

photofront is free but the paid version (one time $10 fee) gives you access to pro features like removing ads from your galleries and allowing you to customize gallery titles and subtitles. Well worth the $10.

Tags: photo sharing, photofront, photography, Flickr