APP

Remember Flickr, from the web days of yore, when phones were just phones and photos came unfiltered? Well, it’s back from the scrapheap, with a brand new app that could make Instagram’s recent terms-of-service debacle its death knell. Flickr’s new app has nice editing tools, higher-quality images, album organization and the filters we’ve come to expect (without Instagram’s cloying faux-retro aesthetic) — but the main change is that it’s now fully social. It’s true that Flickr is still a bit of a ghost town, but the idea of a mass migration is gathering momentum on the web. Instagram still has the community, but for how much longer?

WEB

If you’ve ever frantically Googled something like “nail polish spill how to clean,” I hope you’re already acquainted with Jolie Kerr, better known as theHairpin.com’s Ask A Clean Person blogger. She’s kind of like a hip Heloise, except that her advice is entertaining enough to read even if you don’t care about handy cleaning tips. Her recent holiday column tackled red wine disasters, candle drips and that “horrible burnt-on black stuff” that won’t come off baking pans. Other times she’s advised readers on stinky comforters, cat barf, grungy juicers, blood-stained underthings and how to clean a marijuana pipe (baking soda and vinegar, volcano-style).

DESIGN

Basically, The Noun Project (thenounproject.com) is an awesome online library of icons. But the idea is much bigger than that — designers around the world are collaborating to create a “global visual language” for anyone to download and use for free (attribution sometimes required). The most recent development is “Iconathon” workshops where volunteers come up with symbols for tricky civic-minded concepts like food bank, sustainable energy and gluten-free. A symbol for “search and rescue” came out of an disaster relief Iconathon hosted by the Red Cross just two weeks before Hurricane Sandy hit.