Favorites are a great way to explore Flickr. You’ll almost always find jewels leading you to new photostreams and groups that you’d otherwise have never found. So next time you’re looking at someone’s photo, mouse over their buddy icon and click “Favorites”. The above photos were found by looking at one of my contact’s favorites, finding a photo, checking out that person’s favorites, etc.

Photos from Arman-h آرمان, Jim Patterson Photography, jasontheaker, LOlandeseVolante, Matilde B., and [Adam_Baker].

Stephanie Fysh has curated a wonderful selection of photos to commemorate International Women’s Day over at indicommons. Check out her post for more Women of the Commons.

Photo from the Library of Congress.

From the Mailboxes <3 gallery by Violet Echo.

Photos by A Outra Voz, Pixmaniaque, David.Bridges, nihiels and Power RGB.

People are discovering their relatives in photos from The Commons, the world’s public archives on Flickr. It’s fascinating to read the connections.

My grandfather Benjamin Franklin Metz b 2/21/1883, d 3/22/1954. Opening Day at the Polo Grounds, NY 4/10/1913 – Braves 8, Giants 0. This photo was probably taken within the next day or so, as others in this group have a date of 4/11/13 or 4/12/13 written on them. Game 2 against the Giants was played 4/17/13 at home in Boston. – pfmetz

Oh my gosh! How bizzare! Walter is my great great grandfather… – Patricia Snook.

Walter Brickett is also my grand grandfather too!! wow we’re related ,small world right! – Henry8362.

Hi Henry! Ha ha, we’ve just read your comment with the family recovering around the christmas dinner table, after a HUGE meal. My grandma is Walter Sydeny’s Daughter, the oldest son of Walter Septimus…. My grandmother is very interested, and amazed that you can connect so easily online! – Patricia Snook.

Sylvia Sweets Tea Room: My father, John Dayos started Sylvia Sweets Tea Room in the early thirties. He had worked for many years at Liggett’s Drug Store across the street as a “Patent Man” but after getting married in 1929, he soon decided he wanted to own his own business as so many Greek immigrants did. – soistaile.

Click through the photos below for more personal stories:

Try out a search of the Commons (or browse the photostreams of a particular institution) to see if you can have any personal connections there. You can share these stories with other members in the Flickr Commons group. We’d love to hear them!

Photos from the Library of Congress, Australian War Memorial, Smithsonian Institution and Swedish National Heritage Board.

It was back in June 2007, when we launched Flickr in 7 additional languages, localizing in 15 countries. Today, that number has grown to 22* with India being our most recent addition last December.

To celebrate, we’ll be hosting three regional events. Please save the date:

Delhi, April 16th    Bangalore, April 21st    Mumbai, April 23rd

Whether you can attend or not**, please share a photo in Hello, India!, a companion group for our events. As with our previous events, photos from the Flickrverse have been a highlight of the evening. The full details are available in the group.

Photos from $aintVikas, j.fisher and anu1243.

* Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, United States, United Kingdom, and Venezuela.

** We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

We’ve just overhauled our system emails to be more informative and have a more consistent look and feel. These messages are designed to alert you to activity about you or on your photos, and keep you in touch with what’s happening with your friends and family on Flickr. If you don’t have these emails turned on, maybe now’s a good time to try them out. (Nudge, nudge)

The Contact Notification email is a good example of the new messaging style. When someone adds you as a contact, you’ll now see their recent uploads, contacts you have in common, and photos in which they’ve been identified. You’ll see similar types of changes, as well as a more consistent look, across our system messages, whether you’re sharing a photo with someone, checking your recent activity, or corresponding with a fellow Flickr member.

Some other improvements you may notice:

• Share a set/photostream – cuter design (natch), and link to slideshow
• Share a photo – mapped location for geotagged photos
• Invite to Flickr – includes photos of and by the inviting member
• Welcome to Flickr – reminder of account information plus some helpful getting started information.

These emails are a great way to have Flickr activity like comments, favorites, new uploads, and member messages delivered to your inbox. Head over to Your Account to review and manage your email and notification settings. (If you prefer plain text, set your email reader accordingly.)

These changes are about making the messages we currently offer more useful and attractive. We can’t guarantee they’ll make you more attractive or smell better, you’ll have to log in to the site for that.

If you have questions let us know in this Help Forum topic.

Happy emailing!

Photo from S Megol.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, we implemented changes to the historical referrer data available to our Pro members. Part of that change included the removal of your historical referrer data. We promised then that we’d make that info available to you “soon”. Today, you’ll see a new link near the footer of your stats that links to a new page where you can download monthly files that will be available until June 1st, noon PDT.

Please refer (no pun intended) to the “Where can I view historical referrer data past 28 days?” FAQ for the full poop. If you’ve questions, please head over to our Help Forum.

Introducing the Stats API
The bigger news is that we’ve integrated Stats nubby bits into the Flickr API. Please check out Paul’s post on code.flickr for more information. So, now’s the time for all you groovy developers to code something wonderful.

Photo from café•moka.

To see more double exposures try a search for double exposure or check out the Double Exposure group.

Photos from minililimi, Dan Strange, and Viv | Seattle Bon Vivant.

You probably have seen the famous photo of Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17 in 1972, which shows most of Antarctica, Africa and the Saudi Arabian peninsula. Well, we can add more amazing photographs to the ‘Blue Marble’ series. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has released these beautiful images to the public, showing gorgeous detail of our planet.

This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public. This record includes preview images and links to full resolution versions up to 21,600 pixels across.

Update: Just posted was a lovely animation of the spinning Earth.

Photos by Goddard Photo and Video Blog.

Photos from Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, jaime.silva, Rupes72, detengase and Jordi Meneses S..