Welcome the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection to The Commons!

They join The Commons with a special treat in honor of the Olympics: Winter Sports! They’ve got all the great sports from curling to hockey to dog sled teams (huskies, anyone?) to toboggans galore. These historic photos from the Pacific Northwest showcase the athletic prowess of former champions; some are quite whimsical, too.

Take a break from Olympic coverage by checking out their fabulous winter images; these images have No Known Copyright Restrictions and are waiting for you to comment, annotate, and tag.

Photos from the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection.

The waves at the Mavericks Surf Contest a week ago were both enormous and dangerous. Some reached up to 50 feet catching spectators unaware.

Photos from miz_nicole, elsparquito, jseimas95008, michael’sphotography, and shaire productions.

There are lots of amazing photos from the Mavericks Surf Competition last week. To see more, try a search for mavericks surfing. To see photos from this year only you can do an advanced search and limit it to photos posted after Feb 12, 2010. (The competition was on the 13th.)

Photos from Eggz, vonvonvon , vonstanger, gemmamio, elsparquito, prgibbs, and BarCad.

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Games are shaping up to be a breakthrough moment for community coverage of the Olympics! But to chronicle our world, we need you … to see, capture and share your photos. Please join us at the Yahoo! Sports Studio in Yaletown on Monday evening, February 22, from 5-8 pm for a Flickr meet and greet! Details and RSVP are here. Please be sure to RSVP as we cannot guarantee your entrance without it.

Photos by jonwick04, kk+, Russ Beinder and s.yume in the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Photo Group.

More splashy pictures can be found in the Cookie Splash group or try an image search for Coffee Splash.

Photos from *Cencula*, donchris!™, Farbwerk_21 and Kevin Farris.

Photos from jackm2211, Banjo Brown, mando alvarez and changoblanco.

Photos from Warriorwriter, andertho, stephanie.keating, Nukin Futs, favourite waste of time, and friendofthenite.

Flickroom is an application that brings Flickr to your desktop, allowing you to browse and search photographs of yours, your contacts, and the Flickrverse. Your photos never looked better against a black background! Once you authenticate Flickroom to your account, you can not only manage your own content but you can also leave comments on great photos or make them your favorites.

But one of the neatest things about Flickroom is that you can chat, live, with other Flickr members while you’re viewing fantastic content!

There’s more, too. This application allows you to upload photos to your photostream. You can tag and set permissions on your photos as well as add them to sets and to groups.

Tweet tweet! You can also push your content out to your Twitter account, with the magic of Flickr 2 Twitter, or post to Facebook.

This application runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux with a host of other features including upcoming events, language support, the world map, access to group photos and discussions and real-time notifications. There’s a companion website, too, for when you’re on the go. Give it a whirl – see you in the chatroom!

Application by _Flickroom_, found in the App Garden.

Photos from Spot!, shinichiro*, lat454205 / Lisa, Laurie York, Benoit Dery, and Capital I.

Around the world today people are marking Shrove Tuesday in various ways – in Sweden, the day (“fettisdagen” – Fat Tuesday) is marked by eating a traditional pastry, called semla or fastlagsbulle, a sweet bun stuffed with almond paste and whipped cream.

It certainly looks like a pretty neat tradition to me. Feast your eyes on more delicious semla photos.

Photos from hepp, ~U~ Frugan, !smile!, tdhedengren.