Flickr on Tuesday introduced a new feature called geofences which allows users to set geographic privacy settings for each of their photo location tags.

To use the program Flickr users draw a circle on a map to put up a geofence, users then choose the privacy settings they want for that area and all previously uploaded photos along with future uploads in that geofenced area will follow that areas privacy settings.

According to the official Flickr blog:

“You might want to create a geofence around the your ‘home’ or ‘school’ that only allows ‘Friends and Family’ to see the location of the photos you geotag in that area by default,” while they add, “So the next time you upload a photo with a geotag in the radius of a geofence, it will follow the geo privacy setting you’ve designated for that hotspot.”

While Flickr is often slow to innovate the new geofence feature will affect more than 300 million photos and brings the company a much needed boost to their flimsy privacy. read more

What are the best online photo storage sites?

Gone are the days when photos are tucked into albums and shown only for special occasions. Today, memorable photos and videos can be stored safely on the internet via online photo storage. Photo storage online is fast becoming the main location where people keep their photos. Because of the threat of losing their most precious files, more and more users are using this technology in addition to storing them on their computer’s hard drive.

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The social impact of Bin Laden’s recent death has been incredible and it also became an incredible force across blogs and other Web sites. Countless bloggers, even those who usually don’t cover news-related topics, felt the need to peak out on the breaking story and, along the way, dip their toes into news and political blogging.

But with so much attention being focused on how blogging and social media is changing journalism, there are still scant few resources that give bloggers and other webmasters access to the media used by mainstream outlets.

The problem is that, while there are countless great sites on the Web for stock photos and other images, they are more targeted at providing attractive, but generic images for a blog post. If you need a photo to indicate friendship or represent something being locked down, these sites are great. However, if you need a photo of a recent rally in Washington D.C. or of a particular celebrity, they are virtually useless as most of the photos they have are not timely and not related to current events.

However, there are a few sites that offer news-related images for free on your site. All you have to know is where to look and how to search them correctly.

Here are some of the options to consider. read more

Photo sharing site Flickr has been on a roll in its support of mobile operating systems and their accompanying browsers. A Windows 7 App that fully integrates in to the OS and presents a clean interface was released recently. Shortly after Flickr turned its sights to iOS and released an iPad optimized version of the site.

The new iPad friendly addition is a change to the light box. When browsing the site on your iPad you’ll be able to access a full screen photo viewer and initiate a slideshow:

We’re happy to announce some big improvements to the photo light box for iPad users! The light box is a handy, full browser photo viewer available from any photo page. From a photo page on Flickr, simply tap on a photo to view it larger (if available) and on a clean, dark background.

While Flickr has a native iPhone App that taps in to the power of iOS and the hardware, no native iPad exists yet. Flickr may opt to focus on its site and continue improving it for iPad users instead of releasing an official App. As fellow Blog Herald author Darnell Clayton mused, Yahoo’s growing commitment to the service and expanding features to mobile devices hints Yahoo! doesn’t want to shutdown the service like it’s doing with Delicious.

Social Media played a huge part in helping the Egyptian populace coordinate a revolution that the whole world followed. Despite the new defunct Mubarak’s attempts to silence the people by disconnecting all internet connectivity in the country, updates were still sent out by Bloggers using old school mediums such as faxing. Following Mubarak’s fall, we’re still receiving updates on the Egyptian revolution thanks to the brave Bloggers, Journalists and Photographers giving us an intimate view of a country going through a massive change.

Many photos were shared through Flickr but the photo sharing network has acted to take down an Egyptian Blogger’s photos of the revolutions.

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The boys and girls at Yahoo! have released their second official Flickr app, which courts not only Windows Phone 7 but also tablets sporting Microsoft’s latest OS too.

Back in January, we let you know about some exciting mobile developments we had in store for you, and some of you may have already caught a sneak peak of the newest member of our family here at Flickr. Today, we’re excited to officially introduce Flickr for Windows Phone 7® and Flickr for Windows Phone 7®!

While it’s not surprising to see Yahoo! courting Microsoft’s smartphone (especially after the latter assimilated Yahoo! search in August of 2010), their creation of a Flickr app for Windows 7 tablets is puzzling (since they are already running the full OS).

Yahoo! has not indicated on whether they will consider embracing other platforms (like Android, webOS or even Blackberry), although the company may consider releasing official apps in order to help expand their global influence.

Flickr’s embrace of Windows Phone 7 should come as a healthy sign that Yahoo! is committed to keeping their photo social networking service alive (as opposed to “sun setting” it like they are doing with MyBlogLog and Delicious).

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a social world? I don’t mean a connected world like we current reside in, but rather to actually exist INSIDE the likes of Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and other social media sites. That’s the premise behind Intel’s newest online ad.

In “The Chase Film” the main character is chased across several social networks, while taking advantage of other computer based programs that the Intel Core i5 process is very capable of running at breakneck speeds with multiple processes running at once.

Featured  in the film is iTunes, Gmail Chat, an Intel created video game, YouTube, Flickr and even Google Maps. I particularly like the “Trash Bin” feature towards the end of the film and the part of the clip in which the main female character actually jumps inside a car ad and steals the car in an attempt to evade the men that are chasing her.

Here’s the video: read more

Once heralded by some as being the “YouTube of images,” Flickr has been struggling to regain its former glory in the wake of fierce competition from numerous social rivals (many of them matching Flickr’s premium features with free ones).

In an attempt to increase its appeal to the masses, it looks like Yahoo!’s photo social network is reaching out to an old nemesis in what appears to be a strange courtship.

With dozens of different login usernames and passwords out there on the Interwebs, who needs to add yet another one to the list? To help solve this, Flickr is rolling out a new feature to make it easier than ever for new users to join our community. We’re introducing OpenID on Flickr, a service that makes it faster and easier to sign-up for new accounts by letting you use one identity across multiple websites. So starting today, you’ll be able to use a Google account to sign-up for a new Flickr account. We’re pleased to announce Google as our first partner, but stay tuned as we continue to add even more in the future! (Official Flickr Blog) read more

A short time ago in a place not so far away (relatively speaking), founder Evan Williams uttered this statement explaining what Twitter is (and why it’s distinct from its rivals).

Twitter is a real-time information network. (via TechCrunch)

Although Twitter is often viewed as one of the first places to visit when breaking news happens around the world, the one thing the company lacks is the ability for users to upload media content directly upon the site (outside of a picture profile or a background image that is).

While this limitation has not stopped users from posting images and video via third party services, the inability to upload media directly to Twitter.com may convince new comers that the service is not worth their time (let alone tweet).

If Twitter wants to thwart the rise of Tumblr and match Facebook’s future growth, they are going to have add media uploads to their road map (and soon).

But instead of reinventing the wheel, Twitter might be a wiser alternative to purchase an established media service like Flickr. read more

Flickr photos can now more easily and eloquently be displayed on a users Facebook account, directly on their News Feeds. The connection between both accounts, which can be easily setup by users, allows publically uploaded photos and videos to be auto shared with the users Facebook account.

To turn on the feature simply visit www.flickr.com/account?tab=extend and then click on the “Connect” option.

If you have private photos on Flickr, don’t worry, they won’t be uploaded to your Facebook account, even more promising is the fact that if you set a private photo to “public” status at a later date it will also be shared on your Facebook news feed.

Just remember to turn off the Flickr app via your Facebook account if it’s currently being used or you’ll end up annoying your friends with double posts of those pictures you took when you were on vacation and they were sitting in their cubicle wishing they got to go to Cancun.