Flickr has introduced a new feature that lets you create fullscreen slideshows that can be embedded and shared.

Slideshows are available from just about every page where you see a group of photos on Flickr: photostream pages, sets, tag pages, group pools and search results. Just look for the slideshow icon, right.

I’ve embedded an example above, for a search for “sarah palin”.

Updated features include the ability to embed videos in your slideshows, customizable embed code and the ability to view slideshows in fullscreen mode.

Not twelve hours had passed after the end of the Democratic Party’s National Convention in Denver, before presumptive GOP Presidential nominee John McCain this morning named whom he’d chosen to be his Vice-President on the Republican ticket.

Not three hours had passed after McCain’s nomination of first-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin before little known facts about the dark horse VP pick began to bubble up on microblogging site Twitter. Some of the little-known facts were true: Palin was a runner-up in a 1984 pageant, Palin is a mother of five, Palin was a city councilman and subsequently mayor of the small Alaska town of Wasilla. Hundreds more of the increasingly ridiculous (and often far-fetched and hilarious) little known facts popped up in response.

A little known, but true fact, is that Sarah Palin (apparenty no relation to Monty Python alumnus Michael Palin) appeared this winter on the video podcast, Alaska Podshow.  In an episode about the capital city of Juneau, host Scott Slone tours the town of 30,000 and takes a walk with Governor Palin from the governors’ mansion to her office.

Ashley Payne is a design student at College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. The Zune Bug is her design concept for a Zune-branded nightlight that reacts to your room’s ambient light level. 

It’s also designed to be a wireless remote speaker for your Zune and responds to the frequency and volume of your music with variations to the lights brightness and color. 

Here’s another illustration highlighting the Zune Bug’s features:

This is just a design project – but it shows that there’s a lot of room for innovation still in the world of portable media player accessories, especially on the Zune side. 

via Yanko

The University of Utah’s Classical Guitar Podcast (iTunes link) features classical guitar audio and video podcasts.

The podcasts feature performances of works by Tárrega, Torroba, Berkeley and others, as well as original compositions by Tully Cathey, a classical and jazz guitarist who teaches at the College of Fine Arts.

Image: ycguitar814

Podcasting continues to grow by leaps and bounds, with the total audience for podcasts increasing by 58% in under two years, according to research by the Pew Internet Project.

The dedicated podcast audience – those that download podcasts every day – has gone up 300% in the same time, from 1% of those surveyed to 3%.

The survey promises to provide ammo for podcasters and critics alike. While the number of dedicated podcast fans is up 300%, the technology’s steady adoption rate is closer to something like RSS’s, rather than the rocket-fast adoption of something like YouTube, which has a much lower barrier to entry.

Pew also found that men continue to be more likely than women to download podcasts:

• 22% of online men have downloaded a podcast
• 16% of online women have downloaded a podcast

Men and women are equally likely (3%) to download podcasts on a typical day.

Age differences are more defined with regard to podcast downloading than they were in 2006 when all age groups, except for those 65 and older, were almost equally likely to download podcasts. Now, the dividing line is around the age of 50, with internet users under 50 years old significantly more likely than older users to download podcasts. Fully 23% of those under 50 say they have ever downloaded a podcast and 4% downloaded one yesterday, compared with 13% and 1% of their older counterparts. Since 2006, younger generations have more fully embraced the technology, their percentages nearly doubling since 2006.

Pew also found a strong correlation between broadband access and podcast use:

Internet users with broadband and premium broadband access at home are significantly more likely than the average internet user to have ever downloaded a podcast, with twice as many premium home broadband users being daily podcast users.

Image: nataliej

Yongfook has released Sweetcron, a web application that you can download and install on your Web site that automatically creates a lifestream site from the pages you bookmark and content you publish at Twitter, Flickr and other social networking sites.

An example is available a Yongfook.com site. 

Sweetcron joins an already crowded field of lifestreaming apps and plugins, but offers fairly instant gratification and attractive “out of the box” results. 

Requirements:

 

Download the latest version of Sweetcron from Google code.

via RRW

YouTube has announced a new feature – video captioning – that lets you add captions to give viewers a deeper understanding of your videos. Captions can help people who would not otherwise understand the audio track to follow along, especially those who speak other languages or who are deaf and hard of hearing.

An example, an episode of the Japanese cartoon Blassreiter, is embedded above. Click in the lower right corner to access the Closed Caption menu. 

You can add captions to one of your videos by uploading a closed caption file using the “Captions and Subtitles” menu on the editing page. To add several captions to a video, simply upload multiple files. If you want to include foreign subtitles in multiple languages, upload a separate file for each language. There are over 120 languages to choose from and you can add any title you want for each caption.

Details on the captioning feature are available at the YouTube Help Center.

Like to turn your experience with podcasting into a sweet new media job?

Check out the experiences of podcaster and new media guy Dan Patterson. He’s translated his experience with producing the Creepy Sleepy podcast, along with work as a correspondent and social media evangelist for the Talk Radio News Service, into a new gig at ABC News.

“This fall I’ll be running ABC News Radio’s podcast/new media department,” explains Patterson.  “This is a huge job, and I’m grateful for the opportunity.”

Here’ s Patterson’s take on his new gig:

“Deep and sincere thanks to the social media community for their support, advice, criticisms, critiques, and general kick-assness. You’re all bitchin,” adds Patterson.

This isn’t new – but it’s pretty cool.

Internet famous Sarah Meyers interviews professor Jamie Wilkinson, who teaches a graduate class at the Parsons New School for Design called Internet Famous.

Students are graded by algorithmic software tht determines each student’s grade, based on a quantitative measurement of their web fame.

via todayandtomorrow

Apple has unleashed a storm of criticism as a result of its decision to ban an ebook comic book, Murderdrome, from the iTunes store.

Murderdrome may be stupid, it may be offensive and it is certainly gorey – but it’s no worse than a lot of comics that you can get at Barnes and Noble or Borders. You can view the full first issue at the publisher, Infurious Comics.

Here’s what Infurious has to say about the situation:

By now, you might have heard that Murderdrome has been banned by Apple. This is due to the part of the sdk that suggests content must NOT offend anyone in ‘apple’s reasonable’ opinion. Here at infurious, we would love to work with Apple to ensure a content rating system can be put in place to allow material that is no more offensive than many of the R rated films available to download on iTunes.

The ban from Apple may ultimately be a gift to Infurious, making them notorious. But the ban raises the question of whether you want anybody deciding for you what you can read.