Flickr member James Bowthorpe, a.k.a GlobeCycle, is about to complete the fastest circumnavigation of the Earth on a freakin’ bicycle. He started on March 29th, 2009 with the goal of raising £1.8 million for research into the causes of Parkinson’s Disease. Starting and ending in London, England, James will have ridden over 18,000 miles in about 150 days. Back in August he increased his daily mileage from 120 to 150 miles per day (!!!), putting him on track to break the current world record by nearly four weeks. He’s been busy geotagging, so you can see a map of his photos all the way around the world.

He’ll be arriving back in London this Saturday afternoon. If you’re in London, you can meet him at the Roehampton Gate Cafe in Richmond Park at 4pm GMT and ride with him to the Hyde Park bandstand. If you go, take some photos and tag them with GlobeCycle.

All photos from GlobeCycle.

Flickr is growing, and we’re looking for a few talented geeks to join our panda-wrangling, daily-deploying, shard-juggling squad, based in downtown San Francisco.

Flickr has openings for PHP and Front-end Engineers, an Engineering Manager, a MySQL DBA, Product Managers and a Designer.

If you think that you’ve got the chops, hop over to our jobs page for information on how to apply.

Photo by revdancatt.

(cross-posted from the awesomely nerdtastic code.flickr blog)

Just five days later, the Flickrverse is 25,000 galleries richer. We’ve been adding daily to Galleries/Explore and here are few of our recent favourites:

We’ve also seen a few unique galleries that use the layout to tell a greater story:

Galleries? If you missed Monday’s launch, check out the FlickrBlog announcement and be sure to read our galleries FAQs.

If you’ve created a gallery that you’d like to share, please do so in this discussion topic in Flickr Central.

It’s been wonderful working with the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (UK) on their Astronomy Photographer of the Year project this year.

If you’ve already been drawn into the cosmos of astronomy photography or you’re just plain curious about these magical photos of the night sky – you’ll be happy to hear that the exhibition of the finalists is now open! Hundreds of photos submitted to the group will also be showcased in a shiny interactive display.

There’s no need to worry if you don’t know your astrotag from your elbow. You can find out more by visiting the Astrophoto group pool and by viewing this delightful video explaining how astrotagging works.

Photo by tvdavisid from the Astrophoto Group pool.

The wonderful people at Moo are celebrating their 3rd birthday! Woo hoo, Moo! They’re giving away 10,000 packs of Moo business cards for free (you’ll pay shipping). You’ll get 50 cards in a pack, and each card will have a Moo watermark and discount code for your friend. Hurry!

We also wanted to extend a hearty congrats to Amit and Kelly at PhotoJojo. Their beautiful book is available now, chock-full of great photo projects.

C’mon people! Make something with your photos!

Photo by JKonig and acappella05.

(It ended ok.)

Photos from starvingpilot, The Maclac Show, chrisbarber1610, briantemple, ModernDayGilligan, merriewells, kisluvkis, and _Hans van de Vorst.

Photos from mowabby, dreikelvin, smudo, darcitananda, johnwmacdonald, hattie mahatma, xtrapop, and bethechange21.

There’s a long list of features that we’ve wanted to develop for our members. Giving our members a way to celebrate the creativity of their fellow members has always been high on that list. Today, we’re thrilled to launch our newest feature: galleries.

For whatever you find interesting, fascinating, or mind-blowing on Flickr, galleries are a way to curate up to 18 public photos or videos of your fellow members into one place around a theme, an idea or just because. Here are a few favourites from our preview:

And, don’t miss Contemporary Black & White Portraiture The Future Is Now, Half Sky, Half Water, tea, Heaven for Book People, beautiful fish, the blue hour. We’d like to thank our generous members who participated in our galleries preview. You can see even more of their work in Explore / Galleries.

If you’re ready to get started, click on the new “Add to gallery” icon that you’ll see in the menu button bar. These FAQs will help you on your way:

What is a gallery?
Seriously, how is a gallery different than favorites, sets and collections?
How do I make a gallery?
How do I find out if my photo or video has been added to a gallery?
How do I remove my photo from a gallery?

Be sure to read all our gallery FAQs for the full poop. If you’ve feedback or encounter bugs, please head over to the Help Forum.

Every year, Muslims around the world fast in the month of Ramadan. Along with abstaining from food and water from dawn to sunset, the month includes nightly prayers, reading of the Qur’an, the distribution of charity for the needy, and time spent with family, friends and community. The month starts and ends with the sighting of the new moon. This year, Ramadan started on August 22nd this year. It will end on September 20th or 21st (depending on the sighting of the new moon), with Eid ul-Fitr, the Festival of Fast Breaking.

Photos from Seahorse R, BeCeEne, Raaid, balavenise, awe2020, Farman Syed Photography

Photos from jcolman, Heidi & Matt, Luka Skracic, Chicken®, Dr. Jaus, Lo Li, brown-dog, kiplingflu, and nathalie booth.