Yahoo Research Berkeley has released a second prototype application to follow on from ZoneTag (uploading and geotagginf photos). Zurfer for S60 phones, is a companion application, allows you to browse photos stored on Flickr. Zurfer allows you to view photos in a variety of 'channels' as well as offering a photo search feature, and the ability to comment on photos. Read on for more.

The default channels are one for location (photos taken near to your current position, especially relevant for mobile phones), one for your own photos, one for your Flickr contacts photos and one for interesting photos. You can also set up custom channels based on tag keywords or particular Flickr contact or a specific Flickr Group.

Each channel runs as a strip that you can browse along. The user interface implementation is elegant and is a nice way to explore a series of photos. Some of the channels can be open and broken down into their own sub channels (e.g. you can open the Contacts channel and see a sub channel for each of your contacts).

Zurfer also has a search function which allows you to search across the 500 million+ photos stored on Flickr. 

Zurfer also lets you access a number of Flickr features. You can view comments on photos and add new ones, and you can set photos as favourites.

More on Johanthan Greene's blog.