Yahoo! Cool Thing of the Day

The Library of Congress has released more than 3,000 historical photos into the wilds of the Flickrverse. You can start viewing 'em here, and read all about the initiative here and here.

One of the hopes of the Library of Congress for this project, called The Commons by Flickr, is to provide "missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured". That would add tangible value of revealing new information about the photo and enriching the collection on a bibliographic level. I'm not so sure that much of that will happen, with people pointing out specific details about people and places. What I love about this project is the idea of using the community to add metadata to previously static artifacts, to provide associations and sentiment and opinion. You won't get someone saying whether J. P. Weatherby is featured in the background of a photo, but you will get them saying whether the photo is funny. You also get categorization and discovery. There are more than 20 pictures of horses. You can find 16 images featuring flags. Very small numbers so far, but as people explore, hopefully they'll increase. I think that this will really help people of the internet really consume, appreciate, and give back to items of history.

Here's a quick oldie-but-goodie since the thing that I was going to be talking about is delayed longer than I thought.

Wired recently compared four mash ups to help find lowest fares for travel, and while they have pretty valid complaints, gave Farechase high marks.

Check it out and see if you agree.

This one is filed as One Of Those Things I Didn't Know But That You May Find Useful. For all you heavy Yahoo! Address Book users, you may have lamented the fact that all of the various fields on the Add Contact form were singular, even for things that you might want multiple of such as email addresses, personal web sites, and nicknames. You could get around this by adding Custom Fields to represent all of the extra information, but it would make your entry look a bit disorganized. If you go back to edit the entry after you've created it with single values for each field, though, you'll see that extra input boxes pop in to allow you to add an additional value if needed. While it's a minor annoyance to need to save the form and re-edit it in order to find this option (this looks like a job for Javascript!), it's at least good to know that you can do it if you need to!

Straight from the source:

Be it Wikimapia or keyhole or any one of those innumerable sites that have geographic information, the community has painstakingly marked those bus stops and milk booths and restaurants and even houses. Probably for personal satisfaction. Or maybe to help those lost and stranded. With a billion helpful minds behind, India suddenly seems too small. And now it is payback time.

Starting today, Yahoo! India Maps will cut across the web so that the best of location intelligence is available to you behind one text box at http://in.maps.yahoo.com. Try "Mumbai cst" or "metro, Delhi" or "garuda mall, Bangalore" and you will know what we are talking about. Looking for ATMs near Forum mall? Try "ATMs near forum mall, Bangalore". Or maybe you are on that Motorbike drive across Chennai, "Shell petrol pumps in Chennai" will come in handy. These are locations that we have captured from various locations around the internet, wherever they exist.

And it does not stop with just that. Combine the mighty power of users with our unique Indian driving directions and suddenly, it seems like you may never be required to pull over and ask the pan-wallah for directions ever again. Yes, we know that many roads don't have names and when they do, they probably don't have sign boards indicating them. So, We thought landmarks and turns in your route instruction will help make it easier for you. Now, we have also added information about localities, towns, villages and cities along your route so that you know what you are leaving behind and what you are entering when you are on your journey.

Ok, the crux of the story is, getting lost is not so easy now.

Very, very, very cool.

I had read all the announcements about the new Yahoo! Media Player and I didn't quite get what the buzz was about. After all, we've been playing around with the same basic player on the Yahoo! Music site, and we already had a widget to play music from music blogs. Old news, right?

It's totally a different thing to see it in the wild. Check out Aurgasm, for instance. According to the instructions on the box, it's a snap to set up, and, well...it's just damn cool. In case you don't want to read the fine print, you include a line of JS in a page that has links to MP3's, and it automatically sets up play buttons by each song and a central playlist/player that follows you around the page. An awesome central playlist/player. Color me impressed.

So, you've probably heard a bit about the new mobile platform, and that we're updating Y!Mobile to 3.0, but you're asking yourself "What does that mean?"

(Ok, so really you were more asking "What is that stain on my shirt?" but play along here.)

Well, since i've now been giving the patter for 48 hours, i can probably answer that question for you here.

In a nutshell, we're letting you build the same stuff we are. No, really. What mobile is doing is releasing the same kit they're using to build phone based tools like the Flickr browser, sports, and all the other bits that are going to be showing up on phones. Pretty cool, huh? Trust me the full on press has a few more details, but really the best way to find out what it offers is to grab the documentation (pdf, but short)

I use the Yahoo! Notepad widget all the time, but I still have problems remembering things. Maybe having another place to jot notes would fix that! Enter stage left, the My Yahoo! Note To Self module, which lets you leave little comments for yourself on your My Yahoo! page, which you visit every day, right? Good for you. It actually ties into the Yahoo! Notepad backend, too, so once you identify which note is the one that's showing up on your My Yahoo! page (I guess you need to just browse around Yahoo! Notepad until you see it, because I can't figure out that it's really called out in any way), you can update it from any of the other entry points -- widget, Notepad website, etc. -- as well.

I was trying to find the showtimes for a movie over the weekend (Juno, by the way; it's really good) and remembered a handy little feature of the Yahoo! Movies site that I figure I might as well pass on. When you're looking for showtimes, you often provide a zip code to narrow down the list of theaters that you have to check out. For my zip code, I happen to get back a ton of extra theaters that, sure, are close enough by, but they're not the theaters that I typically go to. However, I can set up a list of my favorite theaters and then click over to that view to make sure I don't have to deal with the clutter. Also, I swear that I didn't see this over the weekend because I distinctly remember thinking that it would be a cool feature and wishing that we had it, but we seem to now have a little option to view the showtimes by Movie Title, which helps me know what options I have that are close by or playing at my favorite theaters in case I haven't yet decided what I want to see. So, if you're like me and happen to be particular about where you watch movies, you should definitely check this feature out.

Recently, I heard about a company that's doing something pretty cool with our stuff. They're combining Y!Maps with Flickr and a bunch of great information to bring you a Schmap of various locales.

Ok, so I'm a bit biased since they picked one of my pictures, but honestly, the interface and the tool is pretty darn cool, and they feature more than just Hawaii. So, if you're stuck inside today because you're being attacked by angry water gods, here's a fun way to play tourist and figure out your next vacation to warmer and possibly drier climes.

Now that Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee have stormed through preliminary victories in the Iowa caucus, maybe it's time to start paying attention to the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. For a handy start, you can try out the Political Dashboard offered by Yahoo! News, which keeps you up to date on how all the major candidates are doing across a variety of different metrics as well as how they're trending in each of them. Don't worry, guys, Ron Paul is on there, just under the "Other Candidates" tab. I'm sure you still feel slighted. :D Find out more at our overall Elections hub and vote, vote, vote!