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Tag: Yahoo

Flickr Offers a Free Terabyte of Space

Posted by JenThorpe at 6:44 PM on May 20, 2013

Flickr LogoFlickr looks a lot different today than how it used to. Yahoo! (which owns Flickr) has given Flickr a makeover that includes a brand new design. What once showed you small thumbnails of photos, with a lot of white, empty, space surrounding them, now features the photos much more prominently.

To me, it seems like Flickr’s new look resembles that of Facebook, or perhaps Pinterest. The photos are bigger, filling up the screen. Users now have a homepage that includes an activity feed that combines your friends’ recent uploads with the activity on the photos that you have uploaded. I wasn’t thrilled with the new design at first, because it takes me a long time to “re-learn” how to use social media when it visually changes. Eventually, I figure the new design will grow on me.

In addition to the very obvious design change, Flickr also announced that users will get a free terabyte of space. Their blog says:

At Flickr, we believe you should share all your images in full resolution, so life’s moments can be relived in their original quality. No limited pixels, no cramped formats, no memories that fall flat. We’re giving your photos room to breathe, and you the space to upload a dizzying number of photos and videos, for free. Just how big is a terabyte? Well, you could take a photo every hour for forty years without filling one.

In December of 2012, Flickr released a Flickr iPhone app. Today, it announces the release of the Flickr app for Android users, which can be found at the Google Play store.

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Posted in Photography, storage, Yahoo

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Will Yahoo! Screw Up Tumblr?

Posted by J Powers at 11:00 AM on May 20, 2013

Today Yahoo! announced they have purchased Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Of course, Yahoo’s track record for buying companies seems to be that of a kid with ADHD at Christmas time – by February they want new toys. Will this be a great deal for Yahoo! or will we they just push aside for another acquisition down the road.

Yahoo! Acquires Tumblr

Tumblr, a microblogging and social networking platform that was founded by David Karp in 2007 was purchased by Yahoo! for $1.1 billion dollars. Tumblr brings in 175 employees and 108.5 million blogs that reach 44 million people. This inlcudes the thousands of blogs that were imported from Posterous a few months back.

The Exodus from Tumblr to WordPress May Show No Faith in Yahoo! Tumblr

Yahoo Keep Calm gif

Yahoo Keep Calm animated gif (click on to see the image)

According to Matt Mullenweg’s blog today, imports have spiked to WordPress after the news of Yahoo! purchase. “Normally we import 400-600 posts and hour from Tumblr, last hour is was over 72,000.”

Marissa Meyer replied with a “We won’t screw this up” answer. She posted on her own Tumblr (the one with a very annoying gif saying “NOW PANIC and FREAK OUT” followed by “Keep Calm and Carry On”. You can see the annoying gif here.

“We promise not to screw it up.” says Mayer. “Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going.  We will operate Tumblr independently.  David Karp will remain CEO.  The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve.  Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster.”

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Posted in blogging, Yahoo

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Yahoo Updates Image and Video Search

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 5:18 PM on June 20, 2012

You may have written off Yahoo search, but the company themselves haven’t yet given up, even though they have outsourced most everything to Bing.  Today the former leader of the industry rolled out a brand new version of their video and image search.  Yahoo has strengthened their partnership with Getty Images to help power the new features.

Getty brings with them access to some of the highest quality images and they claim about 20,000 new images added daily and material from some of the highest-profile photographers.  In addition to the new images there are new features to go along with them.  Both image and video search have a brand new tiled thumbnail look.  The thumbnails become larger when hovered on, much like Bing and Google have been doing for some time.  Also borrowed from search competitors is the infinite scroll feature that Yahoo has now introduced.  There are also two new filters on the left column – HD and Recent.  ”For images, the HQ badge identifies photos with at least 2 megapixels and a 1024 x 768 aspect ratio. For Yahoo! HQ videos, we use adaptive streaming technology to optimize your viewing experience by continuously adjusting the quality of the streamed Yahoo! hosted video to match the capabilities of your network and device.”  Users can also search in the right column while watching a video in the main part of the screen.

 

The new features seem to be rolling out and not all users have access to them right now.  To see more images of the new features you can head over to the Yahoo blog.

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Posted in search, Yahoo

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Bing Gains Market Share, Yahoo Loses Again

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 5:27 PM on May 15, 2012

The latest search market share numbers have been released and two trends have continued – Bing is up and Yahoo is down.  The numbers have been posted by both Compete and ComScore and the trends shown by both are very similar.  Unfortunately for Microsoft, while Bing is gaining share on Yahoo, they are not getting anywhere in their battle against Google, who continue to be the 600 pound gorilla in the room.

Google, while maintaining their strangle-hold, has not seen an increase since late 2011, but that changed between March and April when their market share increased from 65.5% to 65.9% according to Compete rankings.  Meanwhile, ComScore showed a slight Google decrease from 66.4% to 65.5%.

According to Compete Bing increased their share from 18.0% to 18.3% and Yahoo dropped from 15.7% to 15.0%.  ComScore listed the changes as Yahoo being down from 13.7% to 13.5% and Bing with a slight increase from 15.3% to 15.4%.

While the slight increases for Bing sound promising it seems that most of the gain come at the expense of Yahoo and not Google.  That isn’t so good since Bing now powers Yahoo search.  Bing has recently released a series of updates that add better search results, functionality, and interface which could lead to another increase when the May numbers are released.  You can check out both share rankings posted below.

April-Search-Market-Share-Report

comscore april 12

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Posted in search

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Yahoo Reveals Top 10 Searches of 2011

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 6:43 PM on December 1, 2011

Yahoo today announced the 10th anniversary edition of their Year in Review.  The top 10 searched terms are a general barometer of the year, giving insight into the biggest products, news stories, and celebrities.  Yahoo boasts about 700 million unique monthly users, so these results do provide a pretty good overview of the hot topics of the year.  Yahoo has made their Year in Review available “in 17 versions including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Philippines, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and United States”

Surprisingly, at least to me, was that the most searched for term of 2011 wasn’t a celebrity or a news story, but a tech item – the iPhone.  It was the first physical object to garner the number one spot since the Playstation 2 did in 2002.  Britney Spears is the only multi-time winner, being number one in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008.  The Apple phone was the only non-news, non-person to to make the top ten list.  Beyond it, you will find a mix of names, mostly celebrities along with a couple from news stories.  Only one event made this year’s list – the Japan earthquake.

Here are top ten most searched for terms of 20, based on Yahoo’s data.

  1. iPhone
  2. Casey Anthony
  3. Kim Kardashian
  4. Katy Perry
  5. Jennifer Lopez
  6. Lindsay Lohan
  7. American Idol
  8. Jennifer Aniston
  9. Japan earthquake
  10. Osama bin Laden

You can get a lot more data and lots of different lists by visiting the Yahoo Year in Review.

 

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Posted in search, Yahoo

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Yahoo’s Lifestand

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 8:05 PM on November 4, 2011

http://f.cl.ly/items/2v1u2K3Z1p3041463C47/Untitled.pngThis week Yahoo put out a magazine style newsreader called Lifestand for the iPad. I am constantly looking at these types of applications having tried both Zite and FlipBoard, so when Lifestand became available I decided to give it a try. First like both Zite and FlipBoard it is beautifully made and well design. Setting it up is easy and using it is intuitive. When you first open it there are two sections. The bottom section contains all the content available thru Lifestand. As you go through it you can bookmark topics and sources that interest you and those go into the top section. Click on a source to choose it. Swipe left to view articles within a source. Click on the article and then swipe down to read the article. To go back in the menu, click on the arrow on the left bar.

After using it for a couple of days and despite it’s strengths I have decided Lifeststand is not for me. There are several things I either don’t like about it or are missing. The first weakness in my eyes is it is too Yahoo centric, which is not surprising, I just wish they had made it less obvious. The second problem is the sources within Lifestand are limited and there is no way to add new sources. Plus unlike Zite it doesn’t let you check off your likes and dislike and learn what you want and don’t want.  The third and biggest problem for me is the fact that the sharing options are limited to Facebook and email.  I need to be able to easily share with Twitter and Google Plus and I can’t do that thru Lifestand.   If you are a fan of Yahoo you may like Lifestand, but I still prefer Zite or FlipBoard.

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Posted in application, Information, IPAD

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Yahoo Rolls Flickr into New Android Weather App

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 3:50 PM on November 2, 2011

yahoo weather app

Yahoo is releasing a new weather app for Android and it looks like they have finally found a use for Flickr – not a profit from it, but a use for it, at least.  Yes, there are literally hundreds of weather apps for Android, and there’s a Flickr app as well, but Yahoo found a way to combine the two and make their new weather app stand out from the crowd.

The new app will pull pictures in based on a user’s location and the current conditions in that location.  In other words, if you are in New York City and it’s snowing, the Yahoo Weather app will search Flickr for a picture of NYC in the snow and use it as the background.  Of course every location won’t have pictures on Flickr for every condition, but Flickr is incredibly popular so you may be surprised by how close it can get.

For Flickr users who are concerend that their work may be used without permission, Yahoo promises to only use photos from members who have opted in via their Project Weather Group.  You can learn more, as well as download the app for free, from the Android Market.

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Posted in Android, mobile

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Dear Yahoo!: Just Sell it Already.

Posted by J Powers at 11:32 AM on October 20, 2011
Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Dear Yahoo!:

It’s time. Time to make a decision. Time to stop holding onto the past. Time to realize you were on the top of game in 2000, but now it’s 2011. Time to see that Yahoo! is Yahover.

Can you turn the company around as Jerry Yang talked about during AsiaD in Hong Kong? Anything can happen. But you are not willing to put the money in to do that. Investors are weary and you have no leadership.

If I was your business analyst (and that isn’t even my profession), I would tell you what I tell other companies that choose not to sell:

  1. Change your name
  2. Set a new 2-year business plan
  3. Get a CEO that knows Social Media
  4. Re-build your look and feel
  5. Re-build your clientele

Did I just say “Change your name?” YES! When I hear Yahoo! I think of a company that was on top of their game back in 2000. Eleven years later and I don’t associate Yahoo! with today. I associate Google, Microsoft or Facebook. I even have a better chance of associating AOL  with 2011 over Yahoo!

Even the best business person will buy land just for the land. They’ll strike down the building and create a new epicenter. If the roof leaks and the foundation is shaky; if the building takes more energy to keep going, then rebuilding might take less money than repairing.

I wouldn’t fret, though. You really helped shape the Internet. You should be proud of that. Now it’s time to save what’s left of the company and maybe put together a new venture. I hear Microsoft is putting together a bid, among others. It’s not going to be $31 a share as in 2008, but I would guess it will be comparable.

If you are going to keep it, then find someone that can turn this company around. Get a CEO that knows what’s going on in the new media space. Someone that is active in Social Media. Someone that will bring new blood into the company.

Sincerly:
Someone that doesn’t want to hear about this anymore.

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Posted in internet

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New Delicious Website Looks Good, Works Different.

Posted by J Powers at 12:47 PM on September 28, 2011
Delicious Toolbar App Broken

Old Delicious Toolbar App - Broken

I use Delicious to put together my show notes. I have the toolbar on my Chrome browser that I select and put in keywords. However, yesterday the toolbar sat on “Loading”. I first thought it was a internet connection problem, but soon found out that the new owners of Delicious have changed the website. But it broke the toolbar in doing so.

It made my show note collection a little harder to do. I ended up putting all my links in Google docs. When I called them up during the show, I didn’t get the pages, but the Google “You are being redirected” message. That meant I had to select each link redirect message.

A little about Delicious

Delicious is a bookmark cloud service. The program was on the chopping block by Yahoo! After public outcry, Yahoo! decided to sell the website. The new owners - Chad Hurley and Steve Chen saved it from extinction. But they also knew that Delicious was on Yahoo!’s list because the service wasn’t making the right amount of revenue. Therefore, it’s time for a change.

I read the GigaOm talking about losing their bookmarks. That was a case where they didn’t update their profile when told Delicious was switching servers. I remember the email on April 27th – it stated that if you didn’t update, your bookmarks will be gone. So no sympathy:

Yahoo! is excited to announce that Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. As creators of the largest online video platform, Hurley and Chen have firsthand expertise enabling millions of consumers to share their experiences with the world.Delicious will become part of their new Internet company, AVOS.

To continue using Delicious, you must agree to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks to AVOS. After a transition period and after your bookmarks are transferred, you will be subject to the AVOS terms of service and privacy policy.
Reasons to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks

  • Continue uninterrupted use of Delicious.
  •  Keep your Delicious account and all your bookmarks.
  • Enjoy the same look and feel of Delicious today plus future product innovations.
What happens if you do not transfer your bookmarks
  • Delicious in its current form will be available until approximately July 2011.
  • After that, you will no longer be able to use your existing Delicious account and will not have access to your existing bookmarks or account information.

I do agree with one thing the GigaOM article stated – Delicious might not fully know how people use the service. If they don’t fix the problems quickly, they are going to lose users to StumbleUpon and Reddit. But is it about fixing problems, or educating the users with the new features?

What I Really Like about the Redesign – Stacks

new delicious bookmark tool

new delicious bookmark tool with Stacks

This is actually a really nice addition to Delicious. It lets you have a visual list of your bookmarks, rather than just links. I have options to view in list or grid mode. I can even see in video mode – which my video show can be on the top of the list. If I create a stack for each show, it becomes a new set of show notes with a visual view.

Request – Bring Back the Chrome Extension QUICK

Right now they want you to drag a link to your bookmarks toolbar. Only problem is I don’t have my bookmarks showing (The hotkey to bring up the bookmark bar is “Shift-CTRL B”). I might get used to using it that way, but if there is an easier way for me to catalog my bookmarks, I will.

With a little learning, I think I will really enjoy the new Delicious site. It’s too soon to tell, but it could also become a great reference.

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Posted in internet

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