Flickr have just announced a fantastic new project called The Commons. The idea behind which is to harness the collective power of the Flickr community by allowing us to tag reference collections of images from institutions around the world.

The Commons kicks off with a pilot scheme involving the U.S. Library of Congress. From their photo catalogue of over a million photos the Library team has chosen around 1,500 photos each from two of their more popular collections, 1930s-40s in Color and News in the 1910s.

As well as being a historical treasure trove for us to pour over, absorb and catalogue, these images are also under a “no known copyright restrictions” license. It doesn't mean they're Public Domain, but it should allow for all sorts of interesting re-use possibilities.

It's very addictive once you get involved and reminds me a lot of Galaxy Zoo in a way. There's an aspect of “…just one more picture…” to it, which is bad for me as you really don't want to know how many hours I've lost to Galaxy Zoo.

For more commentary on the project, pop over to Adactio where Jeremy Keith has posted some thoughtful insight.

Sharepoint 2007 is proof positive that Microsoft doesn’t get the community thing

Clay Newton commenting on Scobleizer.

Artur Bergman over at the O'Reilly Radar has had a chance to look at the new Virgin America planes. The inflight entertainment system sounds amazing!

Developed internally at Virgin America, the system is named Red and provides live satellite tv, movies, mp3s, games and plane-wide chatting. Yes, chatting. There is a general chatroom, a private invite channel for your friends, and direct user-to-user messaging. When watching television, you have the option to chat with everyone who is watching the same event.

There are also some other smart touches like USB sockets for charging of peripherals, and being able to order food via the system which keeps track of what's been ordered so ground crews know how much to restock…

…oh, and it has Doom on it…

…yes, that's right, Doom.

Update (9th August): Xeni Jardin from BoingBoing writes about the experience on the Virgin America Inaugural, and Artur Bergman blogs about the flight on the O'Reilly Radar, including a screenshot of Doom on the IFE. Cool stuff.

From BBC technology news.

Social music site Last.fm has been bought by US media giant CBS Corporation for $280m (£140m), the largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition.

...

As part of the deal, Last.fm's managing team will remain in place and the site will maintain its own separate identity.

Sorry things have been so quiet round here recently, but Heather and myself have been busting ourselves stupid trying to get the new version of Scarleteen finished (more on that when it launches). We're not quite done yet but at least the end is in site.

Anyhow, the reason for this post (apart from the apology) is to point out a fantastic article on Matt Haughey's new site, Fortuitous, Some Community Tips for 2007 - Seven tips on how to run a successful community.

Every year or so I write a long post or do a presentation at a conference on the subject of community. Each time I approach the subject, I take what I've already written and add to it with recent things I've learned or learned long before and only recently realized. To prepare for an upcoming presentation, I decided to write down stuff I've learned/realized in the last 12 months. I suspect I'll be revisiting this topic many times on this blog but I wanted to kick off this first foray into community with a list of stuff I've been thinking about recently, but haven't written much about yet.

Matt is the founder of Metafilter (amongst other things) so when he offers up tips about running an online community, you'd better make sure you're taking notes.