Hi!
I have an idea that you might find interresting.
1. A "new" use for Flickr which probably will grow
An another less common use for Flickr but which could be important is for blog owners and small net news papers to find photos with creative commons that can be used with out cost. As the visual part of the web becomes more important such should this use. A good illustration makes a blog posting och news story better but time and money for making the photo yourself isnt allways possible.
We built our swedish net news paper which is quite big now in our segment using only free pictures. And in most case from Flickr. Cost for other photos wasnt an option. I wanted to publish research news from abroud mainly USA since media in swedish seldom cover research made outside Sweden. Also I wanted us to give priority to references, links to more information and so on. Hence other costs had to be very small since we already put so much time in translation, e-mail researches, reading articles and so.
After we found Flickr it was a great help. Before it took more time to find relevant free illustrations and they didnt usually had good quality. Now I believe which many other have stated that our illustrations holds high quality compared to bigger media. All thanks to Flickr and your excellent creative commons search.
For each picture we add at our net news paper the licens for our readers to see it and the name of the artist in a link to his page at Flickr. The artist usually liks this and sometimes they blog about it. I think that it gives status among the other artist at Flickr.
2. Example how good Flickr works
I included tre examples among many which show that Flickr work execellent for finding quality illustrations with creative commons. Under the photo you find the link to the artist and licens. The first one is a news story, the next a short article and the third is a big article.
* This is a short news story about research made at Oregon State University. It is mainly adopted from their press release. In the research they was able to make the brain in old beagles to work better. At Flickr I found a very good photo of a young beagle which made a nice illustration:
http://www.nyfikenvital.org/?q=node/2031
* This is a short article glycemic index for different fruits. It is a reference article to one of the areas we cover reserarch from in the segment food. It is a short article but I think it illustrate very good how one really great picture add quality the an article or a blog postning:
http://www.nyfikenvital.org/?q=node/2006
* The third article isnt a serious article but more fun. But it do have a nice visual quality I think. It is about strange animals:
http://www.nyfikenvital.org/?q=node/1988
Not all of the free photos is creative commons from Flickr but some of them.
3. My blog about Flickr and free photos
Actually I made a blog in swedish about how to find and use free pictures with focus at Flickr:
* Partly give something to the blog community since that connection is very important for us. We havent any budget for buying ads and stuff so it serves as something we can do ourself instead for free.
* Also because I wanted a lot more swedes using Flickr so more creative commons from Sweden would be saved.
* And third which is most important now to save the link with the photo to good photos I find using Flickr but dont have use for now.
You can find it here: bloggbilder.wordpress.com
4. Something that could be good for and us
I think it could be interresting for you to point out that it is possible to use Flickr this way with such good results. I dont think a lot people have thought about it. Finding a good illustration takes so much time without a Flickr so people dont bother.
Maybe you could blog about at:
http://blog.flickr.com/en and
Using us as example we get a little traffic also which would be very welcome.
Actually I think it probably would be a good idea to blog about the use at the Yahoo blog also since I think that blog have more readers that blog but do not takes photos themself:
http://www.ysearchblog.com
Big thanks for your time and good luck with Flickr.
Best regards
Hans Husman
www.nyfikenvital.org