Great article at the New York Times, covering recent Web applications such as Flickr, Yahoo's My Web, Technorati and del.icio.us. Here are some excerpts:

...From photo- and calendar-sharing services to "citizen journalist" sites and annotated satellite images, the Internet is morphing yet again. A remarkable array of software systems makes it simple to share anything instantly, and sometimes enhance it along the way...

...And if every picture tells a story, that may be only the start. At Flickr, the popular Web photo-sharing service where Ms. Fake, a co-founder, posted the photo, it can be tagged with geographic coordinates for use in a photographic map, or become part of a communal database of images that can be searched for certain colors or characteristics...

...Indeed, the abundance of user-generated content - which includes online games, desktop video and citizen journalism sites - is reshaping the debate over file sharing. Many Internet industry executives think it poses a new kind of threat to Hollywood, the recording industry and other purveyors of proprietary content: not piracy of their work, but a compelling alternative...

...And the announcements keep coming. On Tuesday, Google said it would make available a free version of its Google Earth software program that permits users to view high-resolution digital imagery of the entire planet. A feature of the service will be the ability of user communities to annotate digital images to make them more useful. Other early examples include a user-created map of London overlayed on a schematic of the city's subway system, and a link between Google Maps and the apartment rental and real estate listings of Craigslist, making it easy to visualize where rentals are in neighborhoods or entire cities...

...For Ms. Fake of Flickr, however, the business model is still secondary. "We're creating a culture of generosity," she said...