Note: You can view an optimized version of ReadWriteWeb (as the above screenshot shows) on your iphone at: http://m.readwriteweb.com.

Update: Here's a shot of the old and new phone side by side, care of my friend Mark.

Blow Up is aiming to offer "presentation quality for users and portability for developers." Using the Flickr API, Senior Interface Developer Jonathan Greacen has created a new viewing experience for Flickr users that may leave you wondering why it was never an option on Flickr to begin with. Blow Up allows your images to be seen in fullscreen mode while still maintaining your image quality.

The service is free and doesn't require anything put your Flickr username to get started. Other options include being able to download the Blow Up to display your Flickr images on your website. Blow Up all your images including the ones in your albums. However, for images that are set to private, Blow Up will not be able to grab them.

A New Type of Slideshow

Blow Up is a nifty new slideshow in the market of Flickr apps that serves up your images fast and easy. No password required, no downloads necessary. Just get in and get what you came for in fullscreen.

The stats feature needs to be activated by the user. Large screenshots of the process can be found on the blog of consultant Dave Coustan, where I learned about the news myself.

"Broadcasting to the world. Anti Mubarak demonstration at Tahiri Sq. Feb 1 2011." Flickr CC photo by darkroom productions

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Jan. 29, San Francisco. Flickr CC photo by Steve Rhodes

Feb. 1. Flickr CC photo by monasosh

Flickr will also release the new features it first introduced for the iPhone and iPod Touch in October to the rest of its mobile users on other mobile devices with support for Webkit, Firefox Mobile, and Opera Mine. These new features include a more user friendly interface to view your own photos and recent activity, as well as that of your contacts. Users can also now add contacts, favorite images, and change privacy settings while on the go.

Overall, this is a nice update to Flickr's mobile site, which was already very strong in terms of usability and speed. Adding video is a nice touch (though, Flickr's users were of course somewhat hesitant when Flickr first added video). The core feature for Flickr, however, is still photos, and here the mobile site really shines.

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Flickr already allowed third-party developers to search for photos within a certain radius, but regular users could not easily access this feature from within Flickr.

Besides the default settings, you can also choose to only see pictures taken by your contacts, or images that were taken at a certain date, and within a certain radius from the original picture.

You can access these 'nearby' pages by either adding '/nearby' to the URL of any image that has been geotagged, or by first clicking on the map link under 'Additional Information' and then 'See nearby photos and videos.' It would be nice if Flickr made it a bit easier to access this feature by just adding a link from the actual photo page.

In the announcement, Flickr also explains a number of more advanced query parameters that you can use to find nearby pictures, and it will be interesting to see what third-party developers will do with this.

This is definitely a cool new way to explore Flickr's photo collection. By default, there is a certain degree of randomness to which photos you will see, which makes using this new feature even more fun.

Flickr, by the way, celebrates its 5th birthday tomorrow and now hosts over 3 billion images.

A number of people chimed in to reassure us that Flickr is going to be ok. First, former Flickr chief software architect Cal Henderson posted several comments assuring us that costs were lower than estimated and ad revenue much higher. Now today Yahoo PR sent us the following statement from Blake Irving, Chief Product Officer at Yahoo. Irviing says the company is absolutely committed to Flickr.

Blake Irving
EVP, Chief Product Officer, Yahoo!

Irving said roughly the same thing in 140 charecters a few minutes ago. You might recognize that avatar as the same one who freaked out and promised to fire whoever leaked the internal slide deck disclosing the company's plans to "sunset" Delicious. I hope this is all for real. If Flickr were closed, or had less instead of more energy put into it, that would be a real shame.

Derivative Works

While the highly restrictive BY-NC-ND license is the most popular CC license on Flickr (33%), the second most popular license (29%) is the BY-NC-SA license, which allows for derivative, non-commercial works, as long as the resulting work is licensed under the same license. In total, according to this study, about 63 million images on Flickr can be used for creating derivative works like films, photo montages, or animations.

Growth is Slowing

The growth rate for CC-licensed images on Flickr is slowing, however. The growth rate has slowed down from 13% in April 2006, to 4% in November 2008. Currently, the growth rate is holding stable at 4% per month.

Make Creative Commons Your Default on Flickr

If you want to make sure that all of your photos are covered under a Creative Commons license, just head to the Privacy & Permissions tab in your Flickr account settings, where you will find a Defaults for new uploads section. From there, you can change your default license. If you never changed it, it will currently mark all your new uploads as "all rights reserved."

Note: If you want to "Rock Flickr Like a Champ," have a look at this post.

"Born out of someone's frustrations with browsing photos on the web through static web pages that offered a meager user experience at best." You just might be glad this person was frustrated. FotoViewr is a great web app that brings the cover flow style to the popular photo sharing site Flickr. Fotoviewr requires no registration and you don't have to give you your Flickr password. All you'll need is your Flickr username and you're good to go. FotoViewr provides users with four different gallery views: Flow, Wall, Horizon, and Floor.

Creating Your FotoViewr Gallery

Simply pick a view and enter your Flickr username. FotoViewr allows you to choose between your Flickr photosets or tags for deciding which images to display. Once you've selected these options, you'll get a nice cover flowesque slideshow of your gallery. While you can't embed the galleries yet, there is a link provided for you to share your creations with others. Even better, you can use FotoViewr on Facebook with the FotoViewr Facebook application.

Flowing Nicely

FotoViewr is off to a nice start with its selection of viewing styles and smooth response. However, image loading times still need a little more work. If you have a huge Flickr photoset, then it will take a while for all the images to load. Be prepared to wait. it would've been nice to switch gallery styles even after you've created a gallery, along with a quicker way to make a new gallery. Hopefully these features will be implemented in the future. All in all, FotoViewr is a service to keep an eye on.

Flickr, unlike sites like deviantArt or SmugMug, does not offer its members the option to sell prints of their photos outright. Flickr, just like most of its direct photo sharing competitors, only offers its users the option to order prints for themselves.

Clearly, Flickr and Getty are going after more casual photographers here, who would not normally submit their work to Getty's own iStockphoto or its competitors. Given the outstanding work that a lot of photographers post to Flickr, this relationship will probably be beneficial to both Flickr, as it can promote this opportunity to its members, and to Getty, which gets easier access to more photos.

This announcement is not going to make much of a difference to professional photographers, who would probably not want to rely on serendipity to have their photos found, but it would give casual photographers a reason to put their pictures up on Flickr instead of a competitor's site.

As Thomas Hawk notes, it is interesting that Getty will put the Flickr images into a special "Flickr Collection" on its site. Getty's own profession photographers are most likely not too happy to have amateurs compete with them on the same level, which would explain this firewall between the regular Getty collection and the Flickr collection.

In an interview with pdnonline, Flickr's general managers Kakul Srivastava mentions that Flickr and Getty have a business relationship that goes beyond this deal, but declined to comment about the details. It will be interesting to see how this partnership develops over time.

To chose a CC license as the default for your photo uploads, you have to scroll down towards the bottom of your privacy settings page. Searching for CC photos requires that you scroll to the very bottom of the Advanced Search page or start at this page. There would be a whole lot more CC photos on Flickr if those options were given better placement on the site. In 2006 13% of the photos uploaded to Flickr were given a CC license; today that number is 4%. Flickr is much bigger and now includes the perhaps more cautious former users of Yahoo Photos as well. Only about 1% of the photos on Flickr can be used in a commercial setting (like this blog) even with attribution given; otherwise, explicit permission is needed. That's a real loss.

More collaboration equals more creativity equals more communication equals a better world - and more photography for Flickr. It certainly seems in their interests to promote CC more as well.

What do you think? Should Flickr do more to promote Creative Commons or ought we simply be grateful for everything they've done already?

The photos are plotted out using partially transparent yellow circles instead of the standard Google Map pushpin. Click on any circle and a transparent overlay will appear on the map giving you a filmstrip view of the latest photos.

What a fun way to see the what, where, and when surrounding photos uploaded from last night's New Year's Eve celebrations!

The site had been in testing since mid-June by more than 800,000 members, but now the final version is available to all.

Flickr has also worked to streamline navigation, making it easier to browse photos or switch from one function to another. The most interesting part, to us at least, is the background story for each photo that is now included. Josh Nguyen describes the changes in a post on the Flickr blog:

Your photos already carry the narrative elements of who, what, where, when and how whenever you upload them to Flickr. Browse Flickr and you'll see stories within stories - photos within photostreams within groups or any kinds of combinations. So we've made it easier to find when a photo was taken, it's location, camera/exif info and your name in one location to the right of the image, along with the title and description. We think that photosharing will increasingly become story-sharing.

At the same time, we would caution users to make sure that they understand what information they are sharing when putting their photos online. Much of this can be altered or hidden, rather that unwittingly sharing location information along with your photos. For example, under the iPhone's settings, including location information in photographs can be toggled on or off. Although many of us often share location information with all of our photos, this new feature will highlight this information, making it more prominent.