Digital photography

The turf battle between Instagram and Twitter shows the sites have the wrong priorities, said Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic and its WordPress.com blogging service.

There's a danger when a company focuses too much on its own properties and pleasing its own advertisers at the expense of giving its users what they need, Mullenweg said here at the LeWeb 2012 show. Those problems are what's afflicted microblogging site Twitter and photo-sharing service Instagram, which Facebook recently acquired.

Twitter has been restricting access to third-party tweeting software and limiting access that third-party companies such as Instagram get to … Read more

Google's Street View is expanding across Brazil and Mexico.

The search giant today announced that its Street View coverage in Brazil now includes "colonial cities like Fortaleza, architecturally compelling cities like Brasilia, and coastal landmarks like Recife, Natal, and Salvador." All told, Street View now lets users comb through more than 70 Brazilian cities.

Google also announced the addition of 30 archaeological sites across Mexico, including the 1,100-year-old Kukulkan's Temple and the pyramids of Teotihuacan.

Google's Street View, which made its name as a service that let users virtually drive down city and suburban … Read more

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

By now, we have all seen how it happens. Pictures from "stars," such as Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton, are leaked on the Web, and all the gossip Web sites spread the pics like wildfire. People also probably remember the scandals that followed Brett Favre and Congressman Anthony Weiner when their pics were leaked and went viral. Even worse, many people out of the public eye will send risque pics to their significant others only to find the pics online when the relationship turns sour.

SnapChat (free) is an app that puts a time limit on pics sent … Read more

Adobe Systems today began selling Creative Suite 6, its mammoth but expensive collection of software for designers, artists, photographers, videographers, publishers, and others in the "content creation" business.

The software is available in the $2,599 Master Collection, the smaller $1,899 Design and Web Premium or Production Premium collections, or the yet-smaller $1,299 Design Standard collection. About three quarters of Adobe's unit shipments today are in these collections, but individual packages are available, too, such as Photoshop CS6 for $699 in its standard version or Illustrator CS6 for $599.

With CS6, Adobe tried to mix … Read more

Whether you're a fan of social video apps or not, there's something to be said for short, quick videos you make on the fly and then share with your friends. These apps are a lot like Twitter in that you can post your own short videos, follow other video creators, and view a feed of your favorites to see their latest updates.

This week's iOS apps have been out for some time, but over the past couple of weeks, social video app fans are choosing sides, downloading their favorites, and even posting to social networks to talk … Read more

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

Instagram's latest user numbers are sure to make Facebook a proud new papa.

More than 50 million people are now using the popular site and its mobile apps to upload and share photos with fellow users and friends. Instagram didn't officially release the news. The company's Press Center Web page still lists the number of registered users at 30 million.

Instead, the latest figure was obtained by tapping into the site's application programming interface, according to CNET sister site ZDNet. Instagram is apparently adding around 5 million new users per week.

CNET contacted Instagram for comment … Read more

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