Google has cut the price to store photos at its Picasa Web Albums site by a factor of eight.
The photo-sharing site offers 1GB of photo and video storage for free, but now going beyond that limit costs less. The options now range from $5 a year for 20GB to $4,096 a year for a whopping 16 terabytes.
"Today we're dramatically lowering our prices to make extra storage even more affordable. You can now buy 20GB for only $5 a year--that's twice as much storage for a quarter of the old price, and enough space for more than 10,000 full resolution pictures taken with a five megapixel camera. Since most people have less than 10GB of photos, chances are you can now save all your memories online for a year for the cost of a triple mocha," programmer Elvin Lee said in a blog post Tuesday.
A lot of us have well over 5 megapixels per shot to contend with, but it's still interesting. When Google introduced the option to pay for extra storage in 2007, it cost $20 a year for 6GB.
The move is the latest to indicate that Picasa, although not a high-priority Google project like Chrome or search, does have a pulse. Last year, it added face recognition to the Web site and followed suit this year with the free Picasa photo editing software the company offers. And in March, Google started adding advertisements to the Picasa site.
Picasa is gradually getting more sophisticated, but as far as I can tell it has yet to dethrone Yahoo's Flickr as a preferred hub of at the center of a lot of photography activity on the Web. Picasa is fine for sharing snapshots with the family, but it's not really the place to join groups, chat on forums, and discover what the photography world is up to.
Picasa's more modest scope isn't a problem--plenty of people just want to share some photos, after all, and Google generally tries to offer services with broad rather than specific appeal--but Flickr has more vitality in this more social era of photography--at least among its "pro" subscribers who pay $25 a year.
Another interesting comparison is Facebook, with an extraordinary 2 billion photos uploads each month and a well-used system to identify who's in a photo that Flickr only just began offering. While Facebook has a strong social angle, though, it cuts down photos to a lower resolution and really is more a place for sharing snapshots than for digging into the world of photography.
Picasa's price cut raises an interesting prospect for photography enthusiasts, though. If it's going to set its prices to try to match some portion of the dropping prices of hard drives--not just this week, but regularly--it'll gradually become a more appealing place to back up photos in the cloud. Of course, like Flickr, it's chiefly for JPEG files, not the larger and more awkward raw files serious photographers often use. But even a JPEG backup is useful, especially with synchronization tools built into the Picasa software.
Paying Google $256 per year for 1TB of Picasa storage space is getting in the vicinity of the $100 price or so a 1TB external hard drive costs. Of course you only have to pay once for the hard drive, and even a slow USB hard drive is faster to access than photos on the Net, but Google's price includes backup and some assurance that you'll still have your photos if someone steals your laptop or your hard drive fails. Plus, of course, you get to share your photos.
A big gap here is support for raw files, something that SmugMug offers in its Amazon Web Services-based SmugVault. But that costs 22 cents per gigabyte per month, a price that rapidly gets steep when you consider how fast a modern SLR can fill up a 4GB flash memory card. SmugMug, a subscription-only site, caters to the serious set, though.
Those of you who hate the recent arrival of Yahoo's logo on Flickr now have an easy way to erase it--and get a number of useful features--as long as you're using an edgy version of Chrome.
Fittr Flickr lets you click 'EXIF' to expand a box below the image to show photo details.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)Chrome extensions let people customize the browser's behavior, and the Fittr Flickr extension from Gmail programmer Dan Pupius whips Yahoo's photo-sharing site into shape. Some people use extensions for using Delicious bookmarks, banishing ads, and filling out forms, but this is my favorite Chrome extension so far. You can also download Fittr from Download.com.
The Yahoo logo is ugly but not too bothersome in my eyes. Instead, what I like best about Fittr Flickr is its keyboard navigation options. Once the extension is installed, you can type "?" to see the options, but the two I now use a lot are "." and "," to navigate forward and backward through a person's photostream. Typing "s" will star a photo as a favorite, and in a nice Google touch harkening to the vi text editor, "/" will put your cursor in the search field.
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There have been plenty of ways to view Flickr photos and upload to Flickr from your iPhone using third-party apps. But Yahoo's Flickr for iPhone app is the company's first official take.
How is it? We're sorry to report that for avid uploaders, it's only so-so. You can search, view your photostream, and also friends' photostreams. You can also take and upload photos or video--for the latter, only if you've got the video-enabled iPhone 3GS. Commenting, e-mailing a photo, and tagging are also present.
So what's the problem? Flickr for iPhone is missing some management basics like deleting photos from the photostream, editing tags, and zooming in on a photo. These may seem small, but they add up to an experience that isn't fully baked. Catch all the pros and cons in the First Look video above, and share your own opinion in the comments.
Related story: Smile! Flickr has an official iPhone app
The official Flickr app for iPhone and iPod Touch offers search, browse, and upload features.
Better late than never? Following in the footsteps of countless third-party efforts, Flickr has finally made its official debut in the App Store.
The app hits the ground running--make that scrolling--with a slick Ken Burns-style slideshow of hand-picked images from the site.
An initial tap of the Recent, You, or Contacts button along the bottom leads you through a one-time authorization process (which requires a visit to Safari), after which you gain access to the respective user-account features on Flickr.
You can also search for photos and videos, of course, and do all the usual stuff with whatever you find: add to favorites, share via e-mail, leave a comment, etc.
Of course, the main appeal here is uploading: You can snap and upload a photo on the fly or choose an existing snapshot from your library. The app lets you assign the photo to a set, add tags (including a geotag from your current location), and choose a privacy level.
In short, the official Flickr app does just about everything you'd want it to (except batch uploads, that is), and with simplicity and style. It's free, of course, and it works with both free and Pro accounts.
So this begs the question: is there an existing third-party app that "does Flickr" better than Flickr's own app? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Yahoo widgets are designed to bridge the gap between the Web and your desktop. After you search through the company's listing of widgets and find what you like, you can download them onto your desktop.
But what if you're a social-networking fanatic? Certainly, being on the Web works fine for you, but Yahoo widgets might make it just a little easier to satisfy your desire to stay connected. Here are some Yahoo widgets that help you network with your friends right on your desktop.
Yahoo widgets for social networkers
Facebook Notifier Facebook Notifier tells you what's going on with your friends so you don't have to keep checking the social network to find out.
After you install Facebook Notifier, you'll need to authenticate your profile. From there, you can see status updates from all your friends. You'll also get real-time updates when messages filter in, you're poked, or you have some wall posts to check out. Whenever you click on one of those options, you'll be brought to the appropriate Facebook page in your browser to perform the desired action. Facebook Notifier won't give you as much control as other services in this roundup, but if all you want to do is see what's up with your friends, it's a good place to start.
Facebook Notifier gives you updates on just about everything.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Facebook(er) Facebook(er) is a neat app. After you install it on your computer, the widget allows you to change your Facebook status, check your messages, update your friends with events, and more. You can also view pokes, requests, and group invites. It's like having Facebook on your desktop. Plus, thanks to a nice design, you should be relatively happy with how easy it is to perform those basic tasks.
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Facebook(er) makes you validate your credentials to start using it.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Flickr has made significant efforts at improving its mobile interface over the last year, and has just put out a useful update for iPhone and Android users which builds on that. Through the wonders of the latest iPhone firmware update, the built-in Safari browser can finally acquire the user's location information and pass it off to sites that request it. Google's Android platform has had this as well, but with both operating systems now supporting it, Flickr has gone ahead and added a pocket-sized version of its nearby photo viewer.
Now, whenever visiting the site you can view photos within a few blocks of where you are. Although unlike Flickr's main site, you can't see where each photo has been taken. Instead, it simply narrows you down into a general radius and shows thumbnails of the most recent ones.
I use this feature all the time on Flickr's main site which incidentally you can still use, and have it locate you from either phone's browser. However, I found this new version to do a far better job at narrowing down precisely where I was, as well as loading photos that were properly sized and optimized to stream in over the air.
I'm hoping future iterations of this will let you do some of the filtering and exploration you're able to do in the main site. I'd also like to see a pocket-sized version of Flickr's places pages which aggregate photos of landmarks and cities.
Flickr mobile is now location aware if you're an Android user, or an iPhone owner running the latest firmware.
(Credit: CNET)
Track and update all your social networks under Zensify's single roof
"All your networks are belong to us." That could be the tagline for Zensify, a new iPhone app that lets you view, update, and share content from multiple social networks.
In other words, Zensify aims to take the place of standalone apps for the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr--or at least to save you the time of bopping from one to another just to read and post updates.
In addition to those three popular networks, Zensify can connect you with 12seconds, Delicious, Digg, Photobucket, and YouTube. (Support for more services is in the works, according to the developer.)
After you sign into your various accounts (a slow but one-time procedure), Zensify lists all your friends' updates in a single, scrolling timeline. It also presents a scrolling tag bar (this one along the top) so you can quickly filter the timeline based on current trends.
Then there's also the Tag Cloud view, which displays the aforementioned "trendy tags" in a word cloud. I've never been a fan, but it's definitely a neat way to sift through updates.
Zensify's Track tool lets you search all your networks, complete with modifiers for things like tags, usernames, and types of content. It also provides a handy batch of saved searches so you can quickly look for updates that have, say, photos or links, or that come from Flickr or Facebook.
Want to keep an update for future reference? Tap the star icon to mark it as a favorite. Want to post an update or photo to one or more of your own networks? Tap the Post icon. (Finally, an easy way to update Facebook and Twitter simultaneously!)
Unfortunately, while Zensify lets you share or reply to others' Twitter posts, there's no easy way to do likewise with Facebook entries. You can "tap through" to the friend's Facebook page using Zensify's integrated browser, but that's a slow and awkward process. The app really needs to add a low-level reply option.
Of course, it's technically called Zensify Preview, so a few rough edges are to be expected. As it stands, Zensify looks very promising, and I suspect avid social-networkers will like it a lot.
Supr Flickr is a new Firefox extension that's a hodgepodge of small changes that make the site better suited for power users. I like it because it quietly brings many of Flickr's deeper features front and center, keeping you from having to dig around too much to get at them. Things like viewing multiple sizes of a shot, remembering formatting tags when writing descriptions and replying to comments, and grabbing a photo's source link are all made simpler.
Supr Flickr makes replying to comments or discussion topics a simpler affair by including threading options.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Among its handier features, the add-on includes quick links to the third-party Hivemind search engine, which offers search filters Flickr's own search engine does not. It also vastly improves the ease in replying to other users comments, both on individual photos and in group discussion threads by supplying links to give the conversation threading.
Users may want to install this alongside Gina Trapani's Better Flickr extension, which gives you many of the same options and adds in things like a photo magnifier and improvements to viewing thumbnails, while letting you select which features you want to turn on and off.
Supr Flickr quietly adds enhancements to Flickr's photo pages including shortcuts to various sizes.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Social tool Radar.net has added support for Flickr on all its mobile applications, including the iPhone. Radar users who are also Flickr users can plug-in their account credentials and get the latest photos from their contacts filtered into Radar's activity feed. Likewise, if one of your Radar.net friends has a Flickr account their Flickr photos will begin to show up too.
At first glance, the iPhone version of Radar's app for photo viewing is not quite as good Flickr's mobile page, but it packs a punch. You can take a photo with your phone and send it to either Radar or to Flickr, and if you double tap on the image it gets rid of the rest of the UI and lets you zoom and rotate it within a virtual workspace. It's very fluid, although the scaling does not re-render the image, meaning large, detailed images suffer pixelization. Luckily, you can solve this by visiting the Flickr-hosted image using the built-in Web browser.
Radar lets you pick which one of your Flickr buddies you want to 'follow' in Radar's feed. You can also view previews of photos and the comments that accompany them.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Where the app is really a step up from Flickr's own mobile app is in helping filter other user's comments. You can filter the list of content to see both the latest comments on everyone's photos, and your own. Flickr has made considerable headway in helping users sort out these two areas of activity, but on the Radar app it feels like the conversation is more of the focus. As an added bonus, whatever comments you leave in the application will show up on the Flickr photo's page.
Upcoming features for future versions of the app will include support for geotagging, and playback of videos hosted by Flickr. Flickr only recently made mobile-friendly streams of video available to third-party developers, which means you'll start seeing them pop up in more applications over the coming weeks.
Radar is free in the iTunes App Store. It's also available on BlackBerry and Sidekick phones, though only iPhone users get the capability to post photos and pick which of their Flickr contacts they want to appear in the Radar stream.
Browser add-on Flickr Gallery Plus adds extended functionality to Flickr's set view, allowing users to click through to see full versions of each shot without having to reload the page. Once installed it will go out and pre-fetch the larger sized version of each shot, making big sets a cinch to speed through. This includes the addition of keyboard shortcuts (something you can't get in Flickr without a Greasemonkey script) which lets you go back and forth between shots using your arrow keys.
In addition to its thumbnail optimizer, the add-on includes a simple slideshow viewer that doesn't attempt to replace Flickr's own gorgeous slideshow tool. Instead, it simply fades together the pre-fetched pictures without leaving the page. You can set how long you want each photo to be displayed, anywhere from one to five seconds.
If you're a heavy Flickr user this extension is definitely worth the download as it will cut your page loads in half. It retains Flickr's slideshow tools and its same navigation; you also have the option to turn it on and off from a setting at the bottom of your browser.
Note: As with all experimental Firefox add-ons, you must be registered with Mozilla's Firefox add-ons site to download it. It's also available as a Greasemonkey script.
Flickr Gallery Plus lets you go back and forth between shots with your keyboard's arrow keys. It also pre-fetches each image--letting you load it without the page re-loading.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
