flickr

iPhone stays No. 1 in Flickr popularity

Apple's iPhone 4 is still at the top of the list for Flickr users, according to Flickr's 2012 summer trends.

The phone, which was No. 1 last year as well, has beaten out several actual cameras -- the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EOS Rebel T2I, and Nikon D90 -- as well as its brethren, the iPhone 4S, which made the list at No. 3.

Flickr also complied the top photo trends from April to June among the 7.2 billion photos uploaded to the photo-sharing site. The trends includes -- surprise! -- outdoor activities:

Eclipse -- … Read more

Yahoo Mail rolls out (another) photo-sharing tool

Yahoo Mail has integrated a photo-sharing tool into its interface. No, it's not Flickr. It's a different photo-sharing tool.

Yahoo officially released its photos app today, aiming to give users a new way to organize all the photos ever sent to their inbox. With unlimited storage, that can be a lot of photos.

Dave McDowell, senior director of product management at Yahoo, said Yahoo Mail users exchange close to 500 million photos a day.

"The reason people share photos through email is there's more privacy and control of who sees the photo and (the app) is … Read more

Yahoo's image searches beautify with Getty partnership

The photo-friendly company Yahoo just got a new boost of professional images to pop up in image and video searches. In an announcement that it is partnering with stock photo agency Getty Images, according to VentureBeat, the search engine upps its esthetic image today.

Now when users search for images like Lake Tahoe, in addition to dozens of small thumbnails, they'll also see one enlarged photo of the Sierra Nevada lake taken by a Getty Images photographer. There is also a full-screen viewing option on some image searches and a video preview option when a user hovers over the … Read more

Flickr upgrades core experience with bigger photos

It's been nibbling around the edges, but Flickr plans to improve a central part of the photo-sharing site today by showing photos larger -- potentially a lot larger.

Using what it calls a "liquid layout" that adapts to the size of the browser window, the Yahoo site will show high-resolution images as large as possible on its main photo pages. The traditional accompanying information will show alongside -- maps, thumbnails of other photos in the photostream, camera information, and the like.

Here's a before-and-after comparison for a person using a larger monitor.

Flickr launched with photos … Read more

How Flickr's overhaul kept me from fleeing

I'm encouraged by the signs of change at Flickr -- enough so that I've decided my photos are staying put there.

After years of what amounts to neglect, it's now clear that management of Yahoo's photo-sharing site is aware of what it needs to do -- and that it's doing it. Step by step, the site is building itself into something more competitive.

It's got a ways to go, and I don't see any easy way to tap into the power that Facebook has for photo sharing, but I still see grounds for … Read more

Flickr takes next step in its year-long overhaul

Uploading photos to the Internet is about the least exciting part of photo sharing that you could imagine, but Flickr believes a new tool for the task will improve the site dramatically.

The new upload tool, set to arrive this morning, replaces an interface that's remained largely unchanged for years: select multiple photos, watch transfer progress bars crawl across the screen, then add titles, tags, and captions.

The new tool, which runs in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari for now and will support Internet Explorer later, uses new standards such as HTML5's drag-and-drop so that you can copy image … Read more

Dropping Instagram already? Try these Android alternatives

It seems like almost immediately after news broke of Instagram's updated terms of use policy, the hip photo-based social app became a lot less cool. Droves of Instagram users have been crying bloody murder, and many are already committing themselves to jumping ship.

Dramatics aside, the reality is that Instagram is not irreplaceable. We Android users should know, since until earlier this year, we were perfectly fine without it. As I said in my review, Instagram is fantastic for its bustling network of users, but it is certainly not a powerhouse shooter, and its filters are even getting a … Read more

Seven Instagram alternatives for the iPhone

Instagram created a social-media uproar last night when it changed its terms of service to state that it could license user photos for display by advertisers without consent and without compensation. Granted, Instagram isn't the first social-networking service to claim the right to use uploaded content, but the broad language with phrases like "without any compensation to you" spurred a quick and vocal backlash. And rightly so.

Fortunately, it took less than a day before Instagram began to realize its mistake. As rivals began to pounce on its fumble and users threatened to leave, CEO Kevin Systrom … Read more

The ten patents Facebook claims Yahoo infringed

Last month, Yahoo set off a bomb when it sued Facebook for alleged patent infringement. Today, Facebook fired back, denying that it violated any patents and claiming that ten of its own were infringed by Yahoo.

Here's what Facebook alleges.

Facebook says a wide variety of Yahoo services infringe its patents, including its Flickr photo sharing system. According to Facebook's countersuit, those servies include:

the Yahoo Home Page, Yahoo's Content Optimization and Relevance Engine ('C.O.R.E.'), [Flickr], and advertisements displayed throughout Yahoo Including on My Yahoo, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News, Yahoo Games, Yahoo … Read more