Flickr Blog announced The Commons: a pilot project created in partnership with The Library of Congress.The Library team contributed choosing around 1500 photos from their most popular collections to share on Flickr. The result is presented in two incredible photosets: 1930s-40s in Color and News in the 1910s.

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.

You can help the project describing the photographs, adding tags and comments in the The Library of Congress's collection on Flickr. All you need is being a Flickr member, and you can do it for free.

Related posts:
Bound for Glory
America's Library
The great Houdini
Creative Americans
Panoramic Photographs
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii
Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American

Posted by Bibi on January 17, 2008 08:24 PM in Flickr, History, Photography, Photography, Vintage ||

Ucumari is the Flickr profile of Valerie, a volunteer at the NC Zoo. She loves to travel to other zoos, bears and taking pictures. Her sets are composed by marvellous pictures of tigers, giraffe,zebras, lion cubs, pandas, frogs, elephants, gorillas, sealions, birds, wolves, arctic fox, bears and other animals. You can stay surfing through her pictures for hours without being tired. It's a pity that she doesn't have any crocodile pictures on her sets.

On her profile, Valerie points to an important discussion about zoos. There are many programs in zoos that are re-introducing species who's population has either become dangerously threatened or extinct in their native land. That's great, and unfortunately that's an exception compared with the zoos all over the world. I'm against the creation of new zoo's, but I'm totally pro those kind of programs and in restructuring of old zoos.

I used to love visiting the zoo and the Zôo Safari (antigo Simba Safari) when I was a child. The last time I visited the São Paulo Zoo, many years ago, I decided don't go back there. The situation of many of those animals broke my heart. In small places, some of them alone (and I'm talking about species that don't live alone) and I wasn't so sure about the treatment they were receiving. It was too sad. I hope they had change the things there.

More pictures of animals:
John Hyde
Airborne Cats
Jellyfish pictures
Awww Too Cute
Shrew pictures
Dora - the raccoon
Red Panda Pictures
Photographing Squirrels
Frogs and the blue poison frog
Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Posted by Bibi on September 22, 2007 08:04 PM in Animals, Flickr, Photography, Photography ||

Oh, what a lazy day is Sunday. I always heard that people love Sunday, but I never was a huge fan of it. It isn't a productive day for me and it goes too fast. On Sundays I have a strange feeling that I'm late for everything, even it been the first day of the week. Strangely, it's also one of those days I don't know what to do and I feel lost if I don't go out. Sunday turned into the day to go to a restaurant, or go to the cinema, or to an exhibition, or if I stay at home, it's the day to read a (whole) book or be hypnotised by TV.

That's why I love internet: you can stay at home in a grey Sunday and do something more productive. Try a new recipe, watch a feature film or a funny animation, play a silly game, answer all those boring e-mails, discover a new book to read, chat with distance friends, search for a new hobby or find some cool stuff to keep your hands busy. And that's my point for this Sunday: keep your hands busy with the following links of papercraft. Check the printer and the scissors and go to them.

The little fellow above is Walter Kitty is a character from the book The Secret Life of Walter Kitty written by Barbara Jean Hicks. It was created by the writer and illustrator Dan Santat, who also illustrated the book and it's perfect for all kind of cat person, even the allergic, in his works. (via Paper Forest)

For the group who prefers dogs, Ben The illustrator released a second series of Speakerdog Paper Toys. The series 2 was created by 21 wonderful illustrators, graphic designers and graffiti artists. Twenty one lovely models to empty your printer cartridges. BTW, the series 1 still available at Ben's site. (via Urban Retro Lifestyle)

The company Furni has a free cardboard cutout toy in limited edition to download: Furni meet Bigchief. The little paper dude is a collaboration between Milan design company BigChief Design and Furni. It's a series limited to 5000 download, so be fast. Try also the BigChief - The original to download.

The Flickr is Flickr Monkey is there to share super cute papercraft models. Choose a dog available in brown and red, a red, green or blue bird, and a He's so cute on Flickr - Photo Sharing! available in five colours (orange, green, red, blue and purple). To thank Flickr Monkey for the toys, after print, cut and fold it (or them), submit the image to the group Flickr Monkey & Friends. I need a new printer to make a blue monkey to me.

My last suggestion goes to the excellent French blog Agence eureka. It's full of beautiful vintage images, from film magazines to illustrations of children's books. If you have some time, make a deep search on the archives, where you will also find several of images of vintage toys to print, cut and play. Among those preciosities, the last one was a Maquette d'Epinal, a small circus to fold. But my favourite post of last times is about some lovely Japanese paperdolls, who points to three complete scanned cutout dressing books here, here and here.

Posted by Bibi on July 15, 2007 06:41 PM in Animals, Cats, Craft, Flickr, Toys ||

When I was thinking I wouldn't find new covers of vintage pulp fiction books, one more time Flickr surprises me with a group devoted to it: Pulp Fiction. There aren't heat discussions - until now, but it fits my expectations for images. It has more than 900 images on the pool for now, with tons of fresh and new covers for me, from sci-fi to naughty covers.

Posted by Bibi on July 13, 2007 01:17 AM in Flickr, Pulp, Vintage ||

When I blogged about Lockwasher Design I had no idea that beyond being a talented designer he was also a vintage robot collector or that he had much more robot sculptures than those presented in his site. His Flickr page shows 10 sets with tons images of his robots, rockets and rayguns creations, and vintage Toy robot heads and space toys.

Some of his wonderful creations: BR2D2, a r2d2 version made with a Heineken; the Flat kat made with found objects; the Oil Yeller dog; Eli, the the aluminium elephant; Ms. Domestic Goddess, the robot; Sir Lube of Can-O-Lot robot; an espresso man robot and Robot Franz also made with found objects as almost all, or all, of his sculptures. (via Look At This)

Posted by Bibi on April 2, 2007 03:38 PM in Art, Flickr, Photography, Photography, Sculpture, Toys ||

Taking advantage of the super curiosity of squirrels, Scott Alan Johnson created Photographing Squirrels: a series of pictures of squirrels with cameras, just because they couldn't resist to check what was that. Those photogenic creatures are also at the Flickr set with the same name: Photographing Squirrels. The photos are starred by Buddy, Sam, Margy, Spottina, Arny, Boris, Timkin, Pops, Ms. Chipmunk, Boyd and many other squirrels. Fantastic! (FlickrBlog)

Posted by Bibi on March 3, 2007 03:29 PM in Animals, Flickr, Photography, Photography ||

My friend Adriano is an addict. The good part is that he has taken the first step and recognized that he has a problem. He promised he will try to stop making Tilt-shift miniature fakes all the time.And since he has been using this very nice tutorial posted in the group to make Tilt-shift miniatures using GIMP, the second step is to delete it from his computer.

He's not the only one. There are at least 2,589 other people that have that same problem: make Photoshop fakes of 'miniature' scenes as if they were taken with a real tilt-shift lens. Some of those use tutorials like Fake model photography to create those photos using Photoshop.

Adriano wasn't the first case. Кevin was also an addict last year, and was through his Flickr photoset that I discovered this curse. And that's not the end of it, there are more groups at Flickr like this one that is spreading it: Tilt-Shift 1-2 Miniatures and Tilt Shift. Even though I know the danger, I think I will give it a try. People who do this look so cool...

PS.: photos by Martin Hartland and Maciek Szczepaniak.

Posted by Bibi on February 27, 2007 12:51 PM in Flickr, Photography, Photography ||

This irresistible picture was the winner of the WNYC's Amy Sedaris Craft Challenge. The rule was very simple: make food come alive with googly eyes! There are several great (and funny) shots among the 196 photos submitted to the group pool. And after explore it my first conclusion was: even who didn't win had a lot of fun producing the pictures. I would have. (via FlickrBlog)

More funny food photos: Gummy Bears Photos, Bento Windows & Bento Art, Bologna art, Banana Art, Food to amuse, Funny sausages and Cute bento boxes.

Posted by Bibi on February 10, 2007 11:02 PM in Flickr, Food, Food, Photography, Photography ||

Did you ever think about have your own planet? Now you can Create Your Own Planets with a little help of that Flickr group and this tutorial. The group pool has wonderful examples of what kind of planet you can make with a good picture and GIMP or Photoshop. Polar Panoramas group has more examples to inspire your inside "Petit Prince".

Posted by Bibi on January 29, 2007 02:43 AM in Flickr, Photography, Photography ||

The image above is sample of Spiral pictures, a hyponotic gallery with more than100 images of spirals collected from Flickr. At Flickr, take a look at Spiral Mandala and Spiral Staircases. (via ponchorama!!!)

Poncho said that the gallery of spirals can be very creepy if you read Uzumaki. I agree and also suggest to you read it, if you don't know but is an appreciator of Mangas and horror comics.The scary story by Junji Ito became a film that looks a good adaptation according to the trailer.

Posted by Bibi on January 16, 2007 05:18 PM in Comics, Flickr, Photography, Photography ||

To celebrate Martin Luther King Day the blog of Internet Archive did a selection of videos and audio recordings with him. The FlickrBlog also made a homage, pointing to the photos in the Martin Luther King clusters.

Posted by Bibi on January 15, 2007 11:18 PM in Audio, Flickr, People, People, Politics, Politics, Video ||

A new year demands a new calendar, right? I did my last calendar, and the one before it, with the models of 12 sided calendar page. You can choose the language, the format to save to print (PDF or PostScript), when the week starts and if you want a regular dodecahedron model or a rhombic dodecahedron. Tip: print it in photographic paper, 100-120 g/m² as the site recommends, with a good quality. It will last much more - it lasted the whole year for me.

At PDF Pad there is a calendars session where you can customize your calendar: All month, year and perpetual calendars are ready for printing. Flickr Toys also has a very nic ne tool: the Calendar creates a customized calendar from your digital photographs.

And my last suggestion is a free downloadable 2007 calendar from the sci-fi site The Website at the End of the Universe, each month features a different bathing beauty from the future as illustrated on a vintage science fiction magazine cover. That means pin-ups from pulp book covers, like the ones that the dead site Babes in Space has. If you aren't happy enough with the images, try Science Fiction Paperback Covers to find nice images, like the ones in the gallery Sleaze Science Fiction Covers. (all via del.icio.us)

Posted by Bibi on January 2, 2007 03:18 PM in Craft, Flickr, Pulp ||

Explore it's a great place to start a visit on Flickr. There are always a breathtaking picture in the middle, awesome images to check and cats. Yes, cats, as the interestingness page, the calendar, the interesting photos from the last 7 days and the interesting photos from 1st of April 2005 shows.

Update: there crowd of cats left the Flickr Explore, but you can read the FlickrBlog post about it and the threadat FlickrCentral group. Cats lovers that lost the joke have a second chance: Кevin was super kind and saved all the months of Flickr Explore calendar as PDF. The 20 PDF files are available to download here.

Posted by Bibi on April 1, 2006 02:33 AM in April Fools, Cats, Flickr ||

If you liked of AutoStitch and you like of panoramas you must visits the Flickr community Panoramas. You are going to be amuse for a long time searching through the pictures of the panoramas Pool with thousands of photos. (Thanks Кevin!)

Posted by Bibi on January 24, 2006 10:29 PM in Flickr, Photography, Photography ||

Tagnautica is one more neat way to explore the Flickr Tag Space. Start with a tag and dive into tag space of related tags. The creator of Tagnautica, Mario Klingemann, developed also another experimental tool to use with Flickr: Flickeur. Flickeur randomly retrieves images from Flickr.com and creates an infinite film with a style that can vary between stream-of-consciousness, documentary or video clip. (via Google Blogoscoped)

Want more tools for Flickr? Explore the links over my Flickr category or go to Flickr Toys where you can have fun for a long time trying all them. New toys to try: Captioner and Poster.

Posted by Bibi on January 15, 2006 03:39 AM in Flickr, Folksonomy, Tools ||

Internet tips for beginners and experts:

- 55 Ways To Have Fun With Google. It's a plan for a book that will be written by Philipp Lenssen with suggestions of the Google Blogoscoped. The post contains some of those ideas.

- Blummy - The bookmarklet management bookmarklet. (via Micro Persuasion)

- How To: Getting Started with RSS at PaulStamatiou.com. (via Lifehacker)

- Share and Play Tag on the New Web Playground - PC Magazine rates sharing and tagging services. (via Lifehacker)

- Special: Geek to Live from Lifehacker: Ten Must-Have Bookmarklets.

Make your own iPod: links of paper craft to make an iPod. I should have posted this on a link about art or cool things, but it's funnier here.

- Paper Mac's Origami "Make your own Mac" The Apple Collection. Many models of Macs: mini, Shuffle, Mac mini, eMac, iMacs, Macintosh Classic II, iBook, Cube, G5 and others, in many colours to fold and have fun.

- My iPod: a lovely white PDF iPod model to download and fold here and a bit bigger model (104%) here.

- Shin Tanaka offers a Shuffle model. If you don't have iPod shuffle, don't worry! You can build up this, and feel you have an iPod shuffle. Hum... that's for me!

Neat internet tips for bloggers: wise words by Steve Rubel, from Micro Persuasion.

- Bookmarklets Every Blogger Should Have

- Ten Blogging Hacks

- Micro Persuasion: Ten RSS Hacks

- Ten Technorati Hacks

The last news from Google, just in case you don't know yet:

- Google Base is a place where you can add all types of information that we'll host and make searchable online. You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. (via Official Google Blog)

- Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. You'll be able to focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors. Looks great no? The tools are very good, you can almost know what colours of shirt your visitors was using, but it's not working as programmed for many people. The updates are very slow and I had to wait just 26 hours to get my first results. Let's cross the fingers and hope that the things get back to normal very soon. (via Official Google Blog)

Plus:

- Greatest Internet Moments:a visual travel through Internet history. Pick an image and discover the story behind it.

- Sudoku: play Sudoku with Flickr images. Choose a picture tag and have fun. BTW, the default tag is hamster. (via Lifehacker)

Posted by Bibi on November 17, 2005 01:00 AM in Blogging, Craft, Flickr, Folksonomy, Games, Google, Internet ||

Hey Flickr users, this can be very useful: Flickr Backup. It is a utility that allows you to download the pictures you have uploaded to Flickr back down to your computer for personal backup or restore. This Open Source project is hosted on SourceForge.net. Any bug or features can be reported and on the forum. (via Lifehacker)

Posted by Bibi on October 3, 2005 06:54 PM in Flickr, Tools ||

The Flickr user John is always making some new cool Flickr Toys. I blogged two before, Flickr Badge and Flickr Magazine tool. He made new amusing "toys", the Trading Card Maker and the Framer. Try them.

There are discussions and more information about them on the group fd's Flickr Toys. For specific tools try some of these groups: Flickr Magazine, Flickr Badge, FlickrTradingCards and Photo Mosaics. The stamp above was made with the Framer using the image of my friend Bertrand that also suggested the generator.

Posted by Bibi on September 15, 2005 01:14 AM in Flickr, Photography, Photography, Tools ||

Flickr Blog talked about a new cool tool to use with Flickr, the Magazine Cover maker. It was two days ago, but I just tested it today. Really cool! Make your magazine and post it on Flickr Magazine group.

Posted by Bibi on August 22, 2005 10:07 PM in Flickr, Tools ||

Do Your Worst is a Flickr group to submit the WORST FACE EVA where worst means: Ugliest, Most Contorted, Not Smiling, I Mean Really As UGLY As You Can Get It. As a new group they need of more photos: help them! And thanks; I want to see more funny faces there. (via FlickrBlog)

Related post: Shakeskin.

Posted by Bibi on July 28, 2005 08:45 AM in Flickr, Fun, Fun, Photography, Photography ||