Flickr

Head on over to your main Flickr page this morning, and you'll notice that it's been polished and shined up with some new features. Flickr is a favorite of mine, letting me upload images to share with friends and family, but it's also a powerful tool for professionals as well. With both types of users in mind, Flickr outlined some new changes it has made to the site in a blog post earlier today, and here, I'll give you a quick rundown on what you'll find. Check out what's new with Flickr below!

• The default view of photos is 28 percent larger.
• There's a new lightbox feature that allows you to see each photo you select individually with a dark background to minimize distractions.
• Navigation got easier with "Newer" and "Older" buttons above each photo.

Learn about the rest of the changes when you read more.

Dear Diary...lots of girls keep their thoughts under lock and key. It's said that many girls grow up believing they can do anything and then become tweens and lose that confidence. The Hidden World of Girls Project gives parents some insight into the minds of their daughters. NPR's initiative asks women to take a picture of a diary page of their youth and upload it to Flickr in an effort to "form a comprehensive tapestry — from elation to depression — of life experiences." The entries thus far include crayon doodles and poetry, an elaborate boy rating system, and records of every day life. Add yours! Or share your best tween kept secrets with your daughter.

Being the big robot fan that I am, you know that Wall-E was one of my favorite Pixar movies to date. So when a friend sent me a link to these pics, depicting Wall-E's quest to find his true father, I knew it was the perfect thing to share leading up to the Father's Day holiday.

The photos tell a touching story of Wall-E mistaking inanimate objects — like an old telescoping viewfinder — for his dad. He searches high and low without any apparent success. Honestly, I can't help but ache for Wall-E to find him, even though I know he's a toy robot!

I asked the photographer, Flickr's own bats..., to tell me how he came up with this idea. Find out what he said after the break.

Trying to choose a color palette for a wedding, a paint scheme for a room, or just a good color combo for tomorrow's outfit? Check out the Multicolr Search Lab from Idee Labs, a firm specializing in visual search results. With Multicolr Search, you can choose up to 10 colors for searching; the lab then returns a collage of Flickr photographs using that particular color scheme.

You can also choose the same color more than once to elevate that color in search results. The API searches over 10 million Flickr photos, so the tool's accuracy is impressive. And if you want to see one image in greater detail, just click on it to open it in its own window.

According to a study at Cornell University, the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan is New York City's fifth most photographed landmark. The study used a supercomputer to download and analyze nearly 35 million Flickr photos taken by 300,000 photographers from around the world. The main goal of the project was to organize and label a large collection of data, but they were also able to identify the most-photographed cities and landmarks in the process.

New York City is the top photographed city (with London and San Francisco coming in second and third), while the fifth most photographed place in New York is the Apple Store, coming in behind landmarks like the Empire State Building and Times Square. Most surprising? The store is also the 28th most photographed place in the world. The point of the study was to develop techniques to find places that people find interesting to photograph. Still unclear: whether it's the store's chic design, or just its impressive wares that makes it such a photographic hotspot.

• The seasonal Flickr color wheel is oh-so-pretty — Dvice
• I don't know what's going on here, but there's disco, Star Wars, and dancing — Urlesque
• PadNotes is coming to the iPad — Gizmodo
• Make like a hamster in this VR gaming globe — Oh Gizmo!
• Nintendo's Wii and DS train isn't slowing down any time soon — Joystiq
• Track local Twitter trends with Trendsmap — Lifehacker
• Happy Friday: cats on laptops — Unplggd

This useful tip comes courtesy of the Flickr blog, which just displayed a gorgeous variety of photos from California's recent Maverick Surf Competition. The competition was held several miles south of my home city of San Francisco, but I missed the excitement this year. Luckily, there was no shortage of beautiful photographs taken during the event, and after using Flickr's advanced search page, I was able to find hundreds.

Simply searching for "Maverick surfing" yields results tagged as such for all years of the contest. But setting the date to limit the search to photos taken after February 12 (the contest was on the 13), returns results from only this year's contest. This handy search tip works well for any event with a specific date — you can even narrow the range to include photos taken on one date only.

Source: Flickr User jurvetson

Yes, we've seen a Lego house, a Lego kitchen, and now the latest gadget obsession: the Lego iPad. Coming to you from a crafty builder, this Pad has the same dimensions as the real thing, and even sports some sweet icons on its app screen. You could even change the color of the base if you wanted to, since the screen pops out for customization. Now that's something the real iPad can't do. The only thing it's missing? A cameo at the Grammys. Sorry, Lego iPad, maybe next year you'll get a red carpet appearance.

Check out more images when you read more