Yahoo can't seem to catch a break where Flickr users are concerned. Just as everyone is coming to terms with the redesign that stirred a bit of an uproar on the Flickr forums, the company has introduced a new toolbar at the top of every page that has users upset yet again.
Web developer and photographer Nicholas Sherlock came up with a pretty cool customization recently. Inspired by Flickr's image montage layout that does proper justice to landscape and portrait photos alike, he took a stab at writing some code that does the exact same thing to any thumbnail gallery.
When Windows Phone and Windows 8 came out, Microsoft was eager to point out that the photos app on both systems was built to pull in photos from social networks and sharing sites like Facebook and Flickr automatically. The Windows 8.1 update, however, is scrapping integration from both of those sources, in addition to dropping support for network storage.
Ever since she started with Yahoo!, CEO Marissa Mayer has been making improvements big and small to every service the massive company has. One of the biggest changes came to Flickr, which received a full-blown overhaul. It makes sense, then, that Yahoo! would want to begin integrating Flickr into its other services, and that's exactly what today's update to Yahoo! Mail is bringing.
It looks like the ongoing revamp of Flickr isn't limited to additional storage space and a new user interface. Yahoo, the company behind Flickr, has acquired Ghostbird Software for an undisclosed sum in order to beef up Flickr's mobile offerings.
Texas-based tabletop photographer JD Hancock is a self-proclaimed nerd. But he's a nerd with a bent towards photography, and so the myriad action figures and toys he owns don't just sit unattended in their mint-condition boxes, they get to act out funny real-life scenarios through the lens of his camera.
Yahoo's recent Flickr redesign has been met with mixed reviews. After the release, a large number of users took to the Flickr Help forum and tore into everything from the look and feel to the team responsible.
General opinion at Yahoo, however, is that this is a just a small subset (albeit a very vocal one) of users, and the company is displaying its commitment to the new Flickr with the first ever (to our knowledge) Flickr TV commercial.
With the availability of a whopping 1TB of storage space now available to users on Flickr, it wasn't long before someone out there found other ways to put 1TB of storage space to good use. That is to say, the uploading of files other than images.
That's just what Redditor rlaw68 has done, allowing the user to upload packaged files by essentially tricking the Flickr servers into thinking you're merely uploading an image. The process involves putting two files in one folder, a GIF image (though some users have been able to do this with other image file extensions) and an archive file (such as a .zip or .rar), followed by combining them to create what only appears to be an image file.
After Yahoo! announced and implemented its major Flickr redesign, the company invited users to give their feedback on Flickr's help forum. Of course, the company was probably hoping for constructive feedback -- as in questions and polite suggestions. What it got instead was a tidal wave of negative comments bashing the new layout and, in some cases, the staff themselves.
When Flickr launched its site-wide redesign this past week, one of the things that saw a quiet revamp was the default user avatar. The company hired Greek designer Charis Tsevis to upgrade the original default icon -- an expressionless gray and black square face -- to something more colorful.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer found herself in the spotlight earlier this week following a controversial statement made at Flickr's NYC press event regarding pro photographers:
There’s no such thing as Flickr Pro today because [with so many people taking photographs] there’s really no such thing as professional photographers anymore.
Photographer Zack Arias took offense to the comment, and before long, a number of publications picked up the story, sparking discussion and debate on the matter. Some users even took to Mayer's Flickr page to voice their opinions.
We are at about that point in the year when Apple holds its ever-popular WWDC (Worldwide Developer's Conference) in California. The company's keynote is expected to include the unveiling of iOS 7, and the word on the grapevine indicates the next iteration of the mobile operating system could include deep integration with social networks outside of Twitter and Facebook.
Citing unnamed sources, 9to5Mac reports both Flickr and Vimeo will be "integrated deeply" into the operating system.
Flickr's recent transition to a "spectacular" new design and account structure has been anything but "spectacular" thus far. While some photographers have come out in support of the new design, reaction from the photographic community seems to be more negative than positive.
The new design was accused of being tailored towards the Facebook/Instagram/Twitter crowd and not photographers, Marissa Mayer made the statement that because of the prevalence of cameras there's not such thing as a professional photographer anymore, and it looked like certain Flickr Pro users would be "screwed" out of their Pro accounts ... We're guessing it's been a rough few days at the Yahoo! offices.
...there's no such thing as Flickr Pro, because today, with cameras as pervasive as they are, there is no such thing really as professional photographers, when there's everything is professional photographers. Certainly there is varying levels of skills, but we didn't want to have a Flickr Pro anymore, we wanted everyone to have professional quality photos, space, and sharing." -- Marissa Mayer, Yahoo Event, May 2013
Woah, there, Yahoo cowgirl...let's hold on just a second!
Yesterday, Flickr announced new changes that included a free, ad-supported terabyte of storage for all Flickr users. When I heard the news, I believed that Flickr Pro account users would be given an opportunity to stay Pro going forward. I thought this because this, in fact, was my understanding of what was told to me by a Flickr Senior Manager in a briefing earlier in the morning before the announcement.
Unfortunately, I found out the hard way yesterday that this is not the case.
Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion today, but that's not the only major move the company announced. Today Flickr users were also treated to a "spectacular" redesign. The service has been upgraded in major ways, and has been given a brand new look and feel.
Yahoo! just released a new weather app that takes advantage of beautiful photos provided by the company's Flickr community to pair in depth weather information with gorgeous photos of your city experiencing similar weather. The idea is that users don't just want to know the weather (numerically speaking), they want to see it.
Photo sharing is "in" these days. Just look around, and you'll find that pretty much every major social network has it as a major pillar of their service. Facebook is the largest photo sharing site in the world by volume. Google+ has all but absorbed the once powerful Picasa brand.
With so many services competing for your pixels, it's getting harder and harder to keep up with the best images from your contacts. It's something developer Arthur Chang calls "photo consumption fatigue," and he believes he has a solution.
Did you know North Korea had an official Flickr page? The country's account on the popular photo sharing service made headlines today after it was hacked and defaced by Anonymous.
Just days after news broke that Facebook is looking to incorporate the hashtag into its services, Flickr has already made the change on its end, adding the capability to its recently redone iOS app. The pound sign-driven communication aid comes to the Flickr app as part of the most recent update, and joins retro filters and @-based usernames in helping the service keep up with the times.
Online dating websites are a multi-billion dollar business nowadays, and more and more single-and-looking people turn to the Interwebs to find their soul mates. Photographers Patrick Eggert and Sophie Ellis met through the Web as well, but not through a matchmaking site: their relationship started through a Flickr comment.
Nikon's free online image service my Picturetown never really caught on; given the stiff competition from big names like Flickr and 500px and, let's face it, that unfortunate name, it's not surprising. But Nikon is calling a do-over and starting fresh with a new look, new features and a new name. Staring January 28th, my Picturetown becomes 'Nikon Image Space.'
What are the most popular photo subjects in each location of your city? Is there any easy way of finding out? Those are questions UC Berkeley researcher Alexander Dunkel is trying to answer, and he has his sights set on Flickr as a possible solution. By combining the location geotags and context tags attached to many (or most) of the service's photos, Dunkel is able to create tag cloud-style maps of any location that reveals the tags that dominate each location.
Flickr celebrated the 5th year anniversary of the launch of The Commons today. The massive collection of public domain photos now includes more than 250,000 images from 56 different libraries, archives, and museums.
We're used to Google frequently improving things on its end -- most recently adding pan and zoom to Google+ -- but a constantly improving Yahoo! is a fairly new thing.
After numerous improvements to Flickr and a new Flickr app, Yahoo! has turned its photographic eye on Yahoo! Image Search. From here on out, you'll be able to search all of Flickr's creative commons images straight from Yahoo!
When it comes to the Marissa Mayer/Yahoo!/Flickr love triangle, a little timeline of events is always helpful. So first we had Marissa Mayer, Google's 20th employee, take over as CEO of Yahoo! after several other people over the course of 12 months just couldn't cut it. It was around that time that the #dearmarissamayer movement began, with the message "Please Make Flickr Awesome Again" at the top of its list.
If you're a Flickr user, you can currently snag and open a Christmas present from the service a few days early. The photo sharing service -- which has been undergoing a renaissance as of late -- is currently handing out three free months of Pro membership. Simply log in to find a link to the present on your home page, or visit the Holiday Gift page directly.
Flickr is the latest photo sharing service to shift its mobile offering to become more like Instagram. Just two days after Twitter launched photo filters for its mobile app, Flickr has updated its official iPhone app with the same feature.
There are plenty of options to choose from if you're in the market for a new photography-themed T-shirt, but an unexpected player entered that market today: Flickr. The photo-sharing service announced that it has partnered with BustedTees to launch its very own T-shirt collection.
Flickr has quietly rolled out a great incremental update to its photo-sharing service. Individual photo pages now display a number of EXIF details under a new section labeled "Additional Info", found in the column to the right. With a quick glance, you'll be able to see the shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and focal length that a photographer was using when he or she snapped any photo.