Flickr has unveiled a new feature/project called Places. Places is a Flickr project that makes use of all of the publicly available Geotagged photos. Think of it as a new way to see a massive amount of data that otherwise, may not of been noticed. Asides from being able to see photos of places all over the world, Flickr has also developed an experimental new map which somehow displays breaking news. That is, if an event is taking place somewhere in the world such as The Oscars, chances are, there will be a number of people taking photos which will then show up on this map.

I gave the new map a try and I thought it was pretty cool. The text that appears on the World Map is the name of the event. If you click on the event text, a photo ribbon appears showing all of the photos that were taken at the event. I saw an event that appeared to be taking place in the Pacific Ocean. After clicking on it, I figured out it was a wedding in Hawaii. At any rate, Flickr has succeeded in giving user’s yet another way to kill time.