Tag: Flickr

Flickr Previews New Design for Photo Pages

Flickr has rolled out previews for its new design of photo pages, which makes your image appear bigger. With the new look, a 25-percent larger picture fills the left side of a page, while its description, comments, meta information and more take rest on a right-hand side.

Yahoo has also made other changes like, promising a speed boost while loading the next image, which can now be done by clicking the current photo. Marissa Mayer and Co. say that this is an early version of the revamp, however, and that not all features have been included. To preview the fresh layout, just navigate to a photo and hit the “Try Our New Photo Experience” button, and you will be able to enjoy the new preview.

October 15, 2013
Yahoo! Buys An Image Recognition Firm ‘IQ Engines’ To Improve Flickr

Yahoo has Acquired IQ Engines, a company that develops image recognition software capable of categorizing pictures based on the people and objects featured in them. IQ Engines first made headlines back in 2010 when it snapped up a $1 million in funding for crafting an API that would allow its customers to provide a visual search engine of all sorts that could automatically categorize images on the go.

IQ Engines is supposed to be rolled into Yahoo’s Flickr team, to help and improve the widely used photo services search feature. It is the latest acquisition for Yahoo and some of the others are Tumblr, Xobni, Rockmelt, and Summly. Flickr is one of the best online resources available for photographers of all interests, but navigating through its massive photo catalog is not much user friendly. Yahoo’s purchase of IQ Engines might change that. According to the image recognition startup’s website, IQ will be applying its skills to improving photo organization and search functionality to the online photo repository. Hopefully new features will reflect in Flickr’s upcoming change log.

August 26, 2013
Flickr For Android Redesigned, 1TB Of Space For All Users

Flickr has finally updated its long-neglected Android app alongside a revamp of its web page. The announcement coincides with what Yahoo intends to be the “big reveal” of Flickr’s future: an ad-supported model with 1TB of storage for free users; paid users can pay $50/year to remove the ads, or $500/year to double the storage space.

It’s a gutsy move that is seen as necessary against, on the one hand, Google+ and its increasingly photo-centric nature, and on the other hand 500px, which is eating Flickr’s lunch in the amateur and professional photographer realm.

Flickr has been seen as largely neglected in recent years, left to wither while Instagram stole its mobile traffic and Facebook swooped the desktop.

The most notable development is the issuance of 1TB of free storage space to every Flickr user. The Flickr team notes in its official blog:

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.

And to help you fill your newly super-sized storage space, Flickr now also lets you upload up to three minutes per video of 1080p HD quality.

But there are ads — lots of them — that take away from the experience for the average free user.

To the mobile side, though the iPhone app has been beautiful for some time, the company’s Android app was, to put it bluntly, terrible. This new version improves everything about it, from the interface, which now has a left-side navigation bar, to the photo viewing workflow. Taking photos is still a bit annoying: you have two options for editing, which can be combined or used individually. First is the typical Instagram-like preset filters, many of which are actually quite nice and varied; the issue is that, even on a high-end phone like the HTC One they take over a second to apply. The second editing method incorporates the popular Aviary SDK, which is, while powerful, a cop-out from having to build their own functionality into the app.

Granted, photos look beautiful, and you can finally see all the EXIF data and creator information, much like on the iPhone. But the iPhone version feels like it’s been given more love, despite the fact that there is limited Android tablet support.

According to Yahoo, since its redesign, the iPhone-optimized Flickr app has led to a 25 percent increase in iOS usage in terms of photos uploaded and photos viewed.

With all the attention on Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr for $1.1 billion, the Flickr redesign may not seem so important. But the photo-centric portal is still hugely popular, and Android users now have another tool with which to take advantage of their excellent cameras.

[MobileSyrup]

May 21, 2013
North Korea’s Twitter, Flickr Pages Hacked By Anonymous

It appears that official North Korean Twitter and Flickr accounts have been hijacked and defaced by groups that are linked to online hacking activism collective Anonymous.

The hack attacks, reported by TheNextWeb, follow last week’s hacking of North Korean news site Uriminzokkiri.com, which was said to have resulted in the theft of 15,000 passwords.

Members of Anonymous inside North Korea are said to have assisted with the latest hack attack, which is retaliation for aggressive moves by the country’s regime and its development of nuclear weapons in defiance of international threats.

More hack activity is promised later in the month if the hackers can tackle the country’s “cyber army,” which locks down computer activity in the North and deals with the nation’s limited and walled-off Net infrastructure.

The North’s Uriminzokkiri Twitter and Flickr accounts stopped sending out content typical of that posted by the regime in Pyongyang, such as photos of North’s leader Kim Jong Un meeting with military officials.

Instead, a picture posted Thursday on the North’s Flickr site shows Kim’s face with a pig-like snout and a drawing of Mickey Mouse on his chest. Underneath, the text reads: “Threatening world peace with ICBMs and Nuclear weapons/Wasting money while his people starve to death.”

The image uploaded on Flickr

Another posting says “We are Anonymous” in white letters against a black background. Anonymous is a name of a hacker activist group. A statement purporting to come from the attackers and widely circulated online said that they had compromised 15,000 user records hosted on Uriminzokkiri.com and other websites. The authenticity of the statement couldn’t be confirmed, but the North’s official website did not open Thursday.

Tweets on the North’s Twitter account said “Hacked” followed by a link to North Korea-related websites. One tweet said “Tango Down” followed by a link to the North’s Flickr page.

North Korea opened its Twitter account in 2010. It has more than 13,000 followers. The North uses the social media to praise its system and leaders and also to repeat commentaries sent out by North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

Tensions have been high in recent days between North and South Korea, and the North’s military warned Thursday that it had been authorized to attack the U.S. North Korea is angry about sanctions against its nuclear program and joint military drills between the U.S. and South Korea.

[FOX]

April 4, 2013