Bloggers like to spruce up their blog with pictures-- after all who really reads posts longer than two paragraphs in these Twitter influenced days? You can take your own photos with your handy camphone, or digital Leica , however, sometimes your photos don't make the cut, and you need something else. Now Plinkme has come up with a service to hook up bloggers with photos, while giving photographers plenty of exposure. You can browse through the site's growing gallery of photographs and pick something that suits your fancy; to use it in your blog just copy a snippet of code, et voila you've got a nice photo to enliven your post. All photos from Plinkme will include links back to the original source; one link goes directly to the photographer's Plinkme gallery, the other will go to his/her personal website. All photos are displayed via Flash, meaning photographers needn't worry about proper credits. So you photogs out there can get some exposure just by uploading your photos. Plinkme also encourages comments so you can get feedback on all your work. It's a great way to share content.
In their own words:
"Plinkme was developed to provide bloggers, article writers and content republishers with a means to easily and very quickly add a photo to their content to make it more visually appealing - simply by copying and pasting some JavaScript into their page. Plinkme is also a service for photographers to showcase their work, get them exposure and generate links to their site.
We believe this service will give serious amateurs and professional photographers a means to get their pictures into the public eye; Plinkme automatically provides a link back to the photographer's own home page as well as their plinkme gallery whenever and wherever the photo is published."
Why it might be a killer:
Plinkme is a perfect marriage between publishers and photographers; bloggers get readily available photos, that are quite good, without having to go through the hassle of uploading etc; photographers meanwhile, get their work displayed all over the web, and they receive proper credits too. Plus the site is beautifully designed with tags and categories.
Some questions:
Will photographers be wary about submitting their work for others to use? Plinkme doesn't work with MySpace, Hi5, and a host of other networks because they use javascript, despite displaying as Flash- so what good is it really if you can't use it with your social networks?
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Summary only...
Although Google Maps might have been called out by name as the best in "Lazy Sunday" (double true), Microsoft's been gaining ground of late by adding lots of trick features to its own mapping site, particularly some nifty simulated 3D views. Well, Google is never one to lie back and take it from the Redmond crew, so it's struck a deal with Stanford to license the sensing technology behind 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge winner Stanley to improve their maps. Stanley, as you probably remember, was a robotic Volkswagen Touareg put together by the Stanford Racing Team that zipped across the Mojave Desert for 10 hours without any human input, winning the Grand Challenge by a hair. Now that same tech will reportedly be used to scan building faces and improve the 3D portions of Google Maps and Google Earth. Details of the deal and how it will be implemented are due to be announced during the Where 2.0 conference on May 29 and 30 -- here's hoping it involves the phrase "army of robotic Google cars."
Seems like only yesterday -- ok, 4 days ago -- we were telling you about the 
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