by admin on August 18, 2009
For the longest time, the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi has been the most widely used camera on Flickr. With a 10.1 MP Lens, an image sensor vibration cleaning system, 9-point auto focus, and a mid-range price point, it’s easy to see why the Canon camera has been so popular with the photography enthusiasts on Yahoo’s photo-sharing website.
But while Canon has dominated, there’s another camera that’s been zipping up the Flickr charts. Actually, camera phone would be more precise, because we’re talking about the iPhone.
That smartphone, with its weak 2 MP camera and its lack of zoom, is now set to overtake Canon Rebel XTi as the #1 camera on Flickr. This is according to Flickr’s Camera Finder graphs. Actually, as the LA Times has already caught, the iPhone has already passed the Rebel XTi on a few occasions as the two duke it out for the top spot.
So what does this development mean? First, it’s a reflection of the intense popularity of mobile smartphones and specifically the rise of the iPhone. You always have a camera in your pocket (and with the 3GS, a camcorder too). Just as important is that it’s easy to upload your pictures directly from your mobile phone to your Flickr account. That’s something most digital cameras can’t do, since they aren’t connected to 3G or Wifi connections.
This doesn’t mean people prefer lower quality images over the higher resolution photos that can be captured with cameras of the Rbel XTi’s quality. Instead, it’s a sign that the world is becoming a more mobile place. Being able to get your photos to all of your friends while on-the-go is part of that mobile revolution.
Tweet This Post 
Delicious 
Digg This Post 
Stumble This Post
by admin on August 18, 2009
Google keeps on adding and testing new features for its Chrome browser. Things like extensions and Chrome for Mac are still missing, although available if you are adventurous and install Chromium, the open-source project for Google Chrome. Chromium has beta and development features that Google is testing before adding to the Chrome browswer.
Chromium got a new feature, as it occassionally does, but this one definitely caught our eye. The Chromium team announced the addition of bookmark syncing in the developer’s build of Chromium. The new feature will let you keep the same set of bookmarks on multiple machines as well as store them in your Google Docs. This is not unlike the very popular Firefox extension Xmarks.
Here’s how Google explained the new addition, as well as how to implement it:
As of today’s dev channel build, we’re adding a brand new feature to Google Chrome: bookmark sync. Many users have several machines, one at home and one at work for example. This new feature makes it easy to keep the same set of bookmarks on all your machines, and stores them alongside your Google Docs for easy web access.
To activate this feature, launch Google Chrome with the –enable-sync command-line flag. Once you set up sync from the Tools menu, Chrome will then upload and store your bookmarks in your Google Account. Anytime you add or change a bookmark, your changes will be sent to the cloud and immediately broadcast to all other computers for which you’ve activated bookmark sync (using the same XMPP technology as Google Talk).
A note: the Chromium Dev version is the least stable of the Chromium browsers. Windows can crash, new features can need tweaks, and we may never see bookmark syncing ever reach Google Chrome itself. However, this new feature still tickles our fancy, so if you’re brave, subscribe to the dev channel and get the update.
Tweet This Post Delicious Digg This Post Stumble This Post
by admin on August 18, 2009
When you are well known and have some cash in the bank, you’re probably going to get sued at least once in your life. When you are Facebook and you have 250+ million users, increase the amount of lawsuits by a factor of 10 or so. Yes, Facebook has been sued once again, this time for allegedly misleading members on the use of their personal information and for violating California privacy laws.
The Orange County lawsuit was filed on behalf of five Facebook users, according to the AP – a photographer, an actress, two children under 13 (despite needing to be 13 or older to legally use Facebook) and a “user of the original Facebook.” It seeks monetary damages, attorney’s fees, and a trial by jury.
As you’d expect, Facebook believes that there is “no merit to this suit” and intends to fight it. We could go on and on about past Facebook lawsuits, many of them similar to this one. There was the lawsuit seeking $70.50 in damages, the text messaging lawsuit, the iKimbo patent, a class-action lawsuit for Facebook Beacon, the famous ConnectU debacle, and most recently, Power.com suing Facebook over data ownership. We’re pretty sure this list is nowhere near comprehensive.
Look: Facebook faces these types of suits all the time, and most of the time they are either dismissed or settled. Yes, Facebook’s had some thorny affairs with privacy, but recently they’ve been moving in the right direction with Facebook Democracy. Allowing users to vote on their own Terms of Service and letting them vote on changes is more than most sites offer. Besides, this lawsuit complains about common practices being illegal, such as changing the Terms of Service. It essentially rails against Facebook for 40 pages on practically every one of its featurse.
From the parts that we’ve read, we suspect that this California lawsuit doesn’t worry Facebook very much at all.
Tweet This Post Delicious Digg This Post Stumble This Post
by admin on August 9, 2009
Earlier this week, Delicious launched a new redesign of its homepage and some new search features. Yesterday they showed off the details of the search features, which included time filters, a trends graph, tag filters, enhanced results, and suggestions.
Today they are elaborating on the new sharing features. Instead of copying and pasting URLs, you can now email or tweet bookmarks directly from Delicious. To do this, just add recipients in the new Send field when you save or edit bookmarks. Then click the Send field and you’ll see the Send tab with social network options.
Delicious highlights the types of recipients you can add in the send field:
- Email address. Enter any valid email address. We’ve included an auto-complete feature for email addresses you’ve previously entered to make sending emails easier.
- Delicious user name Enter any valid user name. We’ve include an auto-complete feature for Delicious users in your network.
- Twitter. Type Twitter to share the bookmark on your Twitter feed. Associate a Twitter account by logging into Twitter under the Twitter panel in the Send tab.
Twitter users can associate a Twitter account and send all saved bookmarks to Twitter by selecting “Tweet all bookmarks unless private” when adding the account. Users can also attach a 116 character message with them.
More information on the new sharing features as well as some on Delicious shortened URLs can be found here. Read this article for more about the redesign.
Tweet This Post Delicious Digg This Post Stumble This Post
by admin on August 9, 2009
by admin on August 9, 2009
