Monday, October 22, 2007

My Listening Habits This Year

Joelaz did this for me. It's spot on. This is my year in music. Wow. Thanks Joelaz!

My_listening_3



Here's a link to a larger view of this.

UPDATE: Joelaz says you just give this service your last.fm login and you can get one of these for yourself.

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Flickr To Add Online Photo Editing Tools Via Picnik

From: TechCrunch: Michael Arrington

flickrnik.pngFotoflexer may be my personal favorite among the many online photo editing tools, but Flickr has chosen Seattle-based Picnik to handle the long requested photo editing feature for Flickr users.

Currently, you can rotate photos on Flickr, but the editing stops there. When the new tools launch, users will be able to edit photos more extensively using the Picnik Flash based tools (see our review here).

The deal has been signed and implementation will occur sometime in the next few months, Flickr told me yesterday. Users will be presented with an edit option on the photo page. Clicking it takes the user to a new Flickr photo edit page, with the Picnik tools integrated via an iframe. After editing, users can add the edited photo to their Flickr account or, if they are a Flickr pro user, overwrite the original.

Business terms around the deal are not being disclosed at this time. Picnik is self funded to date.

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Friday, October 19, 2007

Flickr Launches New Geotagging and Places Pages

When I heard that Flickr was making announcements this evening, I assumed it was the long awaited integration of video into the service. That isn't happening (it will soon, though), but they are making significant upgrades tonight around geotagging and a new area of the site is launching called "Places Pages."

GeoTagging Updates

Flickr first launched geotagging for photos a year ago - to date 29 million public photos have been geotagged, with 150,000 new ones coming in each day. They aren't making any changes to the way photos are geotagged (using Yahoo maps), but they are updating the results pages for searches.

The existing pages don't show large numbers of geotagged photos effectively; the new pages do a better job by placing actual tags from photos on a world map. Users can quickly find photos based on tags and geotagged information. Enhancements to navigation are also being introduced.

Overall, the enhancements are good, but the real win here comes when devices auto tag photos via GPS devices. Until then, most users can't be bothered with taking the time to add the appropriate meta data.

Places Pages

Now this is more interesting. Flickr is launching "Places Pages," which are dedicated pages that provide users with specific information about places. We've uploaded an overview PDF to Scribd, here.

Pages are built around the Flickr concept of "interestingness," but based on places and tags. So China/bicycle shows popular photos of bicycles taken in China. Paris/architecture is another example. Any of 70,000 places can be viewed, optionally followed by any tag. Flickr is also adding in additional information on the place, such as weather and local time, as well as relevant Flickr groups.

The product will get better over time, too. Eventually users will be able to adjust pages by time or season, so pictures from New York in the Fall can be viewed, for example. Or pictures from a specific event that happened in a city.

Flickr now has over 1 billion photos and 37.7 million unique monthly visitors. 2.5 million news photos are uploaded daily by 15 million registered users. I wonder if founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield ever wish they hadn't sold out to Yahoo so quickly, for just a rumored $30 million or so in 2005…

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Compulab's EM-X270 brings DIY to smartphones


Compulab may start a trend in the do-it-yourself world with its introduction of a fully functional -- less screen -- handheld computer. Starting at $122 you get the basic module running an Intel Xscale CPU up to 520 MHz with either Linux or Windows CE and for a bit more cake can add cellular radio, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, camera, or VGA touchscreen to your handset. Of course, you'll need to design yourself a nice housing as they don't seem to carry any, but hey, that's half of the DIY fun right there. Good luck with those projects, and if you make something cool send us your pics.

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Thursday, October 18, 2007

Five iPhone Apps We Can't Wait To Install

iphone.jpg

Now that Apple is officially opening up the iPhone and iPod Touch to third-party developers, we thought we'd give software companies some projects to work on. Here are five iPhone apps we can't wait to get our hands on.

Adobe Flash: Adobe's ubiquitous plugin is installed on some 99% of PCs, but 0% of iPhones. This would let iPhone users play Flash-based games, navigate Flash-based Web sites, watch Flash-based video, and load Flash-based ads.

RSS Reader: Read the newspaper on the subway with one hand. Web-based RSS reading is possible using the iPhone's Safari Web browser, but it requires an Internet connection to load content. A real RSS reader -- like our favorite Mac-based reader, Vienna -- which stores feed content on the iPhone for offline reading is a no-brainer.

IM/Chat: Adium is hands-down the best instant messaging client for Mac, and would make another great app for the iPhone. Chat on AIM, Google Talk, and a dozen other IM networks with one piece of software. Even better: Skype, iChat, or a similar app that can handle Internet audio and video chats. Apple's wireless partner AT&T would hate this -- who needs cellphone minutes anymore? -- and this would kill the carrier's pokey EDGE data network, but could work great over wi-fi, and eventually, a 3G connection.

Slingbox: So far, the iPhone's video watching is limited to whatever is on YouTube or iTunes. How about streaming live television from your home cable connection?

Remote Desktop: Left an important file at home? Whether a lightweight VNC ("virtual network computing") app or a full-fledged version of Apple Remote Desktop, it would be handy to be able to access your home computer via iPhone. Such apps already exist for Palm Treos and other smartphones, so porting to the iPhone couldn't be too tricky.

Readers: Any other apps for our wishlist?

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