So long, bunnies ears. Hello, digital clarity. If you have an analog television, today is D-Day (in the U.S. at least) — the long-fabled digital switchover is here. If you haven’t gotten your converter box yet, your TV is SOL — and static-y ghosts have gone the way of Pong, Betamax, and the 8-track. Here’s what we digitized this week:

• Rock on, iPhone: There’s just something about radio — that element of surprise, that anticipation of what’s coming next, that man-I-haven’t-heard-that-song-in-years sensation. That’s the promise of our new Yahoo! Music iPhone app. Powered by CBS Radio, it lets you browse through 300+ stations within more than 20 genres (from Bollywood to Goth to Naughty Comedy), skip up to six tracks an hour, find local stations via GPS, share stations with friends, and buy music you like via iTunes. Never get stuck listening to Muzak again. Read more here, then download the app.
• Cirrus, cumulus, Flickr: The fact that Flickr has democratized photography and turned many hacks into professionals is not lost on Getty Images, the legendary stock photo agency. So back in March, we debuted the Flickr Collection on gettyimages.com, allowing mere mortals to license their work for commercial use. Today, Getty has introduced “photo clouds,” a new way to navigate groups of related photos within the Collection. You can join the community and create your own cloud around topics like “winter,” “out of Africa,” “bizarre photos,” and “fishy.” (Note the spiffy massage music that soothes as you explore). But wait! There’s also a screensaver, desktop widget, and a new Facebook app that lets you create a photo cloud to reflect your status mood. Brings new meaning to cloud computing. More here.
• Go commando with Colbert: If you’re addicted to Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, you probably know Stephen Colbert has been broadcasting from Iraq this week in support of troops stationed there. But he’s also leading an effort to make sure the children of said troops are getting what they need from a public school education. He’s teamed up with DonorsChoose.org to raise funds for military-serving schools, pitting the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard against each other. You can help by making a donation or spread the word by sporting a Colbert Avatar, with critical accessories like an eagle, bear, Colbert Nation hat, Che Colbert T-shirt, fireplace, and a desk. More here.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Tonight marks the end of an era. After 17 years, Jay Leno will give his last “Tonight Show” monologue, joining Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson in the ranks of former hosts. From taking Hugh Grant to the woodshed for using a prostitute to hosting the first sitting American president on a late-night show, Leno gave you plenty of reasons to delay your bedtime. Here’s what we pulled on stage this week:

• Photos without the jail time: If you’ve ever hesitated before throwing that copyrighted photo into a presentation or web page, you’ll celebrate this news. Yahoo! Search has added a Creative Commons license filter to Yahoo! Image Search to help you quickly identify photos that are OK to reuse or modify. No other search engine saves your bacon that way. Not only do we keep you out of trouble, you’ll never even the see the photos you don’t have permission to use — it’s like Eve didn’t even know the apple existed. More here.
• Search that sport: That little search box just made you a better sports fan. Yahoo! Search has added a sports team shortcut that helps you keep track of your favorite teams, leagues, and events simply by typing in a keyword or two. When’s the next Lakers game? Who’s winning the French Open? Just go to Yahoo! Search. The sports team shortcut covers the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA, and college sports leagues including the NCAAF and NCAAB. More here.
• 360 comes full circle: Yes, it’s official — Yahoo! 360 is coming to an end. We know, we know — it took us a while to pull the plug. But rather than rush the process and risk losing your precious photos and prose, we wanted to make sure we had a solution in place — Yahoo! Profiles. You can move your content over to your profile, where your connections can keep tabs on you, or take it to go. You can export your entries to blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger, and MoveableType. More here.
• Comments with a click: And in the hilarious third-party app category… Feeling too lazy, bored, tired, or uninspired to write a comment for that Flickr photo? Good thing some clever souls from Virginia have developed the Flickr comment generatr. You can choose between simple (”this is super :-p”) or verbose (”i eat up the framing and foto ;-) good job my friend”). Now you can be meaningless without even trying.

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The Flickr faithful turned out in force again tonight to celebrate Flickr’s (somewhat belated) fifth birthday at San Francisco’s 111 Minna Gallery. There were cupcakes — and more cameras in tow than should ever be at a party. As we photo geeks compared lenses and f/stops, more than 1,400 amazing photos were projected on the wall. But the night’s defining moment came when strobist guru Dustin Diaz climbed on the bar and orchestrated a popcorn fiesta of Flickr balls.

Check out more photos here.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Photo from polvero

The young Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk make a comeback tonight in the debut of Star Trek. It’s a good day to take stock of how far once-fictional technologies have come — handheld communicator (cell phone), medical tricorder (MRI scanner), holodeck (virtual reality headset), universal translator (Phraselator), scalpel-free surgery (ultrasound surgery), communications earpiece (Bluetooth). And as the ultimate evidence of progress, Spock reportedly cried. Here’s what technology we evolved this week:

• Personal realtor: Home prices are lower than they’ve been in at least a decade - time for a deal! Good thing Yahoo! Real Estate just made house hunting a cinch. Scribbling down lists of listings? Bummed you missed that great new house when it came on the market? You can now save both your searches and your favorite houses with one click. You can also sign up for alerts for new pads that meet your criteria or when the price changes on a place you’ve been eyeing. What’s more, you can get listing updates via My Yahoo! or any RSS feed reader. If only we could figure out how to fix those banks! Check it out here.
• Summer flick fiesta: So many movies, so few summer nights. The new Yahoo! Movies Summer Movie Guide just hit the street and it lets you get a preview of the great new titles coming out this summer. Browse by month, genre, or popularity. Each movie summary includes a recap of the story, the release date, three good reasons to see it, and trivia you might not know. You’ll also find photos and video trailers and clips (many in HD). You’ve got a lot of popcorn in your future.

And finally, a plug for this weekend’s celebration of Flickr’s 5.25th birthday. If you’re in San Francisco, come by for cupcakes and divine photography from 4-8pm tomorrow. RSVP here. Can’t make it? Check out the photos we’ll be projecting on the walls.

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Today marks President Obama’s 100th day in office and the White House has just released a set of nearly 300 photos on Flickr. This first set, Delivering on Change, on the Official White House Photostream gives you “an exclusive, massive, unique look at the President’s term so far” (whitehouse.gov)

It’s a wonderful mix of seriousness, serenity, and whimsy. You get an insider’s view on moments that include inauguration night, meetings with cabinet members in the Oval Office, signing a bill, getting briefed in swine flu, watching the Super Bowl with members of Congress, cheering on youngsters at the Easter Egg Roll, contemplating alone, examining solar panels in Colorado, playing hoops with the education secretary, golfing with Joe Biden, fist-bumping staffers, visiting troops in Baghdad, and clowning around with Michelle, Sasha and Malia. And, of course, even running around the White House with Bo the First Dog.

Have a look at the president you don’t see in press conferences.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Photo from whitehouse

Today we honor cheese — and not just because a certain CEO is from Wisconsin. It’s National Cheeseball Day. A day to craft your favorite dairy product into an orb, roll it in some kind of nutty ingredient, grab the crackers, and hail the beauty that is the cheeseball. (Suggested recipe from Amy Sedaris). Here’s what we put on a platter this week:

• Kittens vs. sunsets: This is the perfect Friday night distraction — Flickr Trends. A Flickr engineer mashed up the Flickr API with a trend chart, allowing you to compare the popularity (or in this case, the frequency of being a photo subject) of two terms. So go see which reigns supreme — blondes or brunettes, town or country, beer or fruit juice, mayo or ketchup, good or evil, boxers or briefs. Take it for a spin.
• Faretheewell Jumpcut: As we took stock of our myriad products, we determined it no longer made sense to maintain Jumpcut, the site that let you upload, edit, and share videos. So as of June 15th, we’ll shut its doors. We’ll soon offer a tool that lets you download your videos, which you might want to move over to Flickr or Yahoo! Video. We’re really sorry to see it go, but change we must.
• Get your vote on: This marginally qualifies for the Product Pulse, but it’s been a quiet week due to our pre-earnings quiet period! The nominees are in — the 2009 People’s Voice voting is now open for the Webby Awards and we’re honored to have omg, Flickr, Upcoming, and Yahoo! Go 3.0 in the running. Vote now!

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Whether you’re celebrating Nowruz, Ostara, Shunbun no hi, or the vernal equinox, today is the first day of spring, people! Rebirth, revival, renewal, the end of a long cold winter, and a time to see if you can actually balance an egg on its point. Here’s what we fêted this week:

• omg! celebrity mamas!: The ever-popular gossip site, omg!, is giving you one more way to obsess about the lives of the rich, famous, and far-too-photographed. This week, realizing that you can’t seem to get enough of Katie/Suri, Gwen/Kingston, Angelina/(pick one) on omg!’s Goddess blog, the team has launched “Spotlight to Nightlight,” a biweekly video program that peers into the lives of celebrity mothers. Each three- to five-minute episode features host Ali Landry (former Miss USA and famed “Doritos Girl”) chatting up a different celebrity mom, discussing parenting tips or the latest mama making headlines. Ever wonder how much a starlet’s nanny makes? Get addicted here.
• IE8 4 Y!: Microsoft’s brand new Internet Explorer 8 browser launched this week. Minutes later, we made a Yahoo!-optimized version available. What’s in it for you? Easy access to Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mail, our toolbar, and our homepage. You’ll get instant visual results for weather, stock quotes, and movie reviews/showtimes when you use the browser’s search box (i.e., a three-day weather forecast shows up right inside a search pulldown menu). And, no matter what site you’re on, you can always access a preview window to check your Yahoo! Mail. More on the Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Mail blogs. Download IE 8 optimized for Yahoo! here. (Not available for Macs. Duh.)
• Find photos with fast filters: Ever searched for just the right photo but gotten lost in a sea of stuff you don’t want? Yahoo! Image Search has just added a few new filters to hasten your mission. You can now narrow your scope by selecting black & white vs. color, restricting results to images that are either from Flickr or not, or even specifying the dimensions of the shot you’re after. And they promise more cool stuff to come. More here.
• Sometimes it’s the little things: The Flickr team rolled out two small tweaks that mean so much. If you’ve often found yourself irked by the “loading…” message you got when trying to narrow down your list of contacts, behold the people picker! It’s now lightning-fast when trying to find someone in your Contact List, share an image, or send Flickr mail. But wait, there’s more. For Flickr Pro members, the Stats page now shows real-time data for the day (no more waiting til midnight) and lets you drill down for daily details on up to 28 of the last days. More here and here.

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Last July, we announced an exclusive partnership between Flickr and Getty Images to form The Flickr Collection on gettyimages.com and offer a new kind of creative imagery collection for licensing. Today, we’re ready to debut the collection to the world.

First and foremost, we want to say congratulations to our members — this is truly a testament to their great work. Our community of more than 35 million members from all over the globe continue to amaze us with the authentic and individualistic images that they see in their daily lives and share on Flickr.

For the past few months, editors at Getty Images have been busy exploring the Flickrverse to find the right photos to be part of the collection – a task that is somewhat daunting when there are more than three billion images to choose from on Flickr. The goal was to choose photos that created a commercially viable collection, while preserving the inspirational and unexpected nature of the kinds of images that are so prevalent on Flickr. Like Flickr itself, this is a “living collection” and Getty Images will continue to add thousands of new images every month from here on out.

We see this as an exciting moment that’s breaking new ground for our members around the world, as well as the larger imagery industry. So what are you waiting for — start exploring the first set of photos on gettyimages.com/flickr.

Kakul Srivastava
Flickr General Manager

Photos courtesy of Flickr Collection/Getty Images

It’s National Frozen Foods Day! A time to honor the cryogenic wizardry that prolongs the life and freshness of pizzas, peas, breakfast sausage, Hungry Man dinners, ice cream, and, of course, snowballs. Honorable mention goes to the microwave today. Here’s what we nuked up this week:

• Video free for all: Flickr made several video headlines on Monday. First, they granted free video uploads to all users (hooray!). Then they introduced HD video uploads for Pro users (yahooo!), bringing the magical and glorious world of crisp, aperture-rich high-definition video to the viewing masses on Flickr. And, finally, they introduced Flickr Clock, a unique new toy that lets you explore videos taken across the Flickrverse by time of day. Oh! And unrelated to video, free Flickr users are no longer relegated to organizing photos into just three sets — let’s hear it for unlimited sets for your 200 most recent photos.
• In the loop on Mail: If you noticed something different when you logged into Yahoo! Mail, that’s because the team has been sprucing up the page with more new social features. As we said in December, we’re working on bringing you a “smarter inbox.” Initially, you could see your friends’ Yahoo!-related updates (i.e., stories they’ve buzzed on Yahoo! Buzz, hotels rated on Yahoo! Travel, etc.). But now you can see their updates from across the web — sites like YouTube, Blogger, Yelp, Picasa, and more. And there are many more Yahoo! sites now live, including Yahoo! Sports and Flickr. More here.
• Inquisitive iPhone: If you own an iPhone in the U.S., I suggest you run — don’t walk — to the App Store and download yourself a copy of the new Inquisitor app. This new mobile version of Inquisitor makes searching on your iPhone a breeze by autocompleting keywords and making search suggestions, so you can spend less time typing and more time finding. Here’s the buzz on Twitter. Obama’s not your president? Sit tight — it’s coming to your world soon.
• That’s my Mac calling: If you’re a Mac head and like calling your friends via Yahoo! Messenger, listen up. One of our engineers has written a plugin that lets you automatically dial a friend from within your Mac Address Book. Just install the script, open a friend’s contact card, right-click on the phone number, select “Call with Yahoo! Messenger,” and start gabbing away. Make sure you have Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 Beta 4. More here.

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Editor’s Note: Last fall, we rolled out Purple Pedals (aka the Ybike), a project that mashed up purple bicycles with GPS devices, cameras, solar panels, and Flickr to create a social media experiment. We sent 14 of these bikes to influential bloggers/photographers/cyclists around the world. Here’s the story of how our Copenhagen bike was received on a recent visit to Africa:

My Experience on the Ybike
When I hit the dusty roads of Tanzania, “karibu” and “wow” were some of the first things I heard. “Karibu” is Swahili for “welcome” and shows everyone’s openness and goodwill at the sight of me with my purple Yahoo! bike. I could tell by the expressions on people’s faces that a “muzungo” (“white man”) on a purple cruiser was not an everyday sight — most white people arrive in four-wheel drives.

There are plenty of bicycles in Tanzania. The people who ride them — the majority of Tanzanians — cannot afford cars or motorcycles. The fancy Yahoo! bicycle with solar panels, camera and the shiny purple colour showed people that the bicycle is not just as a means of transportation for the poor.

I’m cofounder of Baisikeli (Swahili for “bicycle”), a project that makes high-quality bicycles accessible to the poorest people of Africa. These bikes have many purposes, including helping farmers increase their income by more than 100%, just by enabling them to move twice the amount of crops in half the time. We also build bicycle ambulances, which are donated to rural health care centres to enable them to provide vital access to health care in neighbour villages.

My Running Guides
The Baisikeli workshop is based in Arusha, 80 kilometres from Mt Kilimanjaro. When I first arrived from Denmark, I went out for a bike ride to get a feel for the vibes of the city. Within the first few minutes, two young boys were running next to the bike shouting “around – around!,” explaining that they were going to give me a guided tour of the neighbourhood. To be honest, I’ve had better guided tours. But taking into consideration that “around” was their only English word, the energy they put into the tour was amazing.

The Attention
A Yahoo! bike ride in Tanzania was a new experience every time. Obviously, you get a lot of attention when riding a fancy purple bicycle in Tanzania. People would often ride up alongside me and start asking questions in Swahili and show enthusiasm for both the bicycle and me. Children on the side of the road would call for siblings, who would come running out of houses, screaming euphorically at seeing the muzungo on the purple bicycle. I couldn’t help but laugh. It was great every time — seeing the small children amused by me passing by.

A boy laughing at muzungo passing by on a purple bicycle:

Uses for Bikes in Africa
Bicycles are important to Tanzanian infrastructure. They are vital in the mobility of both the population and goods. People are employed with transporting huge amounts of things like charcoal, milk or bread, traveling dozens of kilometres to the city to sell them.

Sometimes people turn their bicycles into mobile shops, so they can ride around and sell their goods. Here’s a bicycle sneaker shop:

The idea of using bicycles for varied means of transport is the foundation of Baisikeli. We design bikes based on what we observe about how they are used in society. If people can make a living transporting 100kg tomatoes, they can make an even better living transporting 200kg. As a result, our mantra is: “Bikes for a better life.”

Here are some more examples of people riding bicycles with a heavy load: a shop, two baskets balance the weight, selling ice cream, and goatskins.

Bikes for Better Health
Bicycles also mean the difference between life and death for inhabitants of rural villages — everyone from pregnant mothers to children with malaria. Twenty-five percent of children never reach the age of five. Bikes can change that. I visited a village called Intavira, 60km from the nearest city and without a proper road leading to it, to donate a bicycle ambulance. This village of 2,000 inhabitants was the largest of 20 in the area and the only source of proper health care. Sick relatives are often pulled in a wagon by cow. Now with the Baisikeli ambulance, the surrounding villages will have easier access to the clinic –- and we hope this will reduce the rate of deaths in the area.

Here’s a slideshow from my visit.

Henrik Smedegaard Mortensen
Co-Founder
Baisikli – Bikes for a better life