Archive for: Flickr
When I first say the Litl, I was somewhat underwhelmed, and the name alone does not lend itself to thinking of anything grand. It was not until the Litl is unboxed and set up that you start to see just how powerful this little device really is. Coming in at approximately $700 is “a mix between a netbook and a [digital] photoframe on steroids,” says the site.
While under the hood it packs the same hardware that a standard netbook would offer, it’s what you can do with it that makes this device so unique. Take for example the OS. The OS that comes packaged with this device is proprietary and completely customizable. Make it fit your mood, your style, or your event, no matter how you slice it, it’s the OS that can represent your needs. Now pair that with the fact that the screen goes beyond the 180-degree tilt and completely swivels back on itself to prop itself up.
The screen remains completely functional can can display data such as weather reports, Facebook feeds, photos from Flickr or Shutterfly, or just about anything that can run independenty while you and/or your audience can watch. If you’re looking to take your netbook to the next level and get something a bit more out of it, then I highly suggest the Litl and let us know what you think.
For the first ever time Flickr has teamed up with a photo printing service for its users to use. Snapfish (owned by HP) will be Flickr’s preferred photo printing service and will be integrated with Twitter to make it easier for the users to export their pictures – and thus make it the preferred service of the users.
At the minute, users have to upload their pictures to an independent printer of their choice. However, because they’ll be able to export whole albums, photo streams etc… at the click of a mouse I can certainly see this being a promising endeavour for SnapFish. However, they will have to give some of their profits back to Flickr obviously – but because they’re available in 22 countries they’ll definitely be turning a profit this year.
Yahoo!, who own Flickr, have come under fire in recent times due to their management of the brand and the controversial decision to include video on the photography site (this has led to several online groups against videos on Flickr being founded). However, they still have over 4 billion photographs on the site and it’s growing by 100 million each month, so SnapFish won’t be complaining.
Adobe has been trying to move a lot of people over from the cheap version of Photoshop onto their online version. Yesterday Adobe announced that they were adding the ability for users to upload videos to Photoshop, the company’s web based image editing and sharing service.
Adobe isn’t the first company to add video to a site that was primarily designed for images. But while Flickr limits videos to 90 seconds, Adobe is allowing users to upload videos up to 200MB through a web browser, or up to 2GB through an Adobe AIR uploader. Users can upload files in “most major file formats” and you can view them from Photoshop.com or share them with other users.
Photoshop.com users will get 2GB of free video storage.
Adobe has also rolled out the ability to create Group Albums that let you collaborate on photo albums with other users.
Flickr, owned and run by Yahoo is the YouTube of photography. If I ever fancied a change in wallpaper I’d go to Flickr and enter in phrases such as ’forest’ or ’ocean’. I would get back loads of professional photographs taken all over the world that looked stunning on my desktop. However, in getting those results I would always be annoyed at the amount of page surfing through the results I would have to do in order to find the right one. Scrolling down through the lot got on my nerves too.
Now, Flicker must have read one of my five million angry e-mails and changed how your search results are displayed. Instead of having a long list of images with all the information about it to the side such as name, photographer, tags and a description, everything has been streamlined.
The updated search results show a load of small images right the way across and down the screen with just the users name under it in small writing. This is a much better way of searching for images and way less stressful given the sheer amount of images on Flicker.
I am also very impressed with the quality of the thumb nails shown. With other services such as ‘Image Search’ on Yahoo! or Google the images are fuzzy and have tons of useless information surrounding them.
Twitter has taken off like a Chinese Firework in the last few months. It wasn’t long before other started to cash in by creating their own Twitter using sites with a twist. For example, we reviewed Trazzler in June and a host of other twitter inspired sites.
Now we have TwiPho.net . Upon seeing the URL, I assumed it was twitter on your phone and I didn’t really see the originality of it all. Then I jumped on in and discovered it was Twitter Photo. Basically, this is a platform whereby people can submit their photos (usually taken at events, news stories etc on mobile phones) and submit them to the service.
Then when a user goes on (such as me) and types in say … Michael Jackson, I’ll be shown the latest Photo Tweets like hundreds of people gathered around the Millennium Stadium in the UK holding candles. Developed by Mark Goddard, it’s still in the Beta phase and as such operates on a small scale in comparison to its older brother.
Where as in Twitter tweets come in on the second, tweets only come by on a specific subject such as Chuck Norris or Dog every few minutes (or even hours depending on how specific you search terms is).
I can’t see it catching on as photos don’t have the same simplicity adored by fans of Twitter. However, it’s a cool website with easy-to-use functions. It serves a purpose – the Flickr of Twitter.
While at the SummerMash party in Austin last week, I was introduced to a breakthrough site that had just launched in beta the week prior, MySites. A MySites representative spoke with me briefly to highlight some of the amazing features his site offers.
Some might say that MySites tries to be too much, but I think they execute their offerings very well. Let’s take a look at the Virtual Desktop aspect first.
MySites does a great job of storing up to 10GB of items, to include photos, movies, and music. While it can’t necessarily import files from Flickr, iTunes, or any other site, you can personally upload your own files. With 10GB of space available you can set up your virtual desktop with more than enough to keep it functional. The files are stored in folders that you have to double click to open, just like your real desktop. You have access to the full customization of MySites which makes it a great addition to the usual items you can place on there like calendars, emails, sites, etc.
The flipside of MySites is the Social Networking aspect. MySites fully intends for you to share your content with friends and across as many sites as possible. With the ability to add buddies and designate which files can be accessible, it’s sure to be a great place to gather to share all of your uploaded files. Seeking others with similar interests is also possible, and is encouraged to fully extend your network via MySites.
As of last week MySites could not connect to any currently existing social network site, but again the site is in beta. I was assured that future offerings would be made available as the site is built out.
