Stocksy aims to bring the soul back into stock photography

Bruce Livingstone, founder of the iStockphoto site that grew from a small stock-art community to a multimedia juggernaut, is launching a competitor called Stocksy United today that he hopes will bring the business back to its roots.

Stocksy is a startup, but it won't attract venture capital, won't be acquired by a larger rival, and doesn't have an exit strategy. Instead, it's a cooperative run by its own photographers who get paid a relatively high percentage of the royalties generated by each image sale: 50 percent. On top of that, photographers split the profits left over … Read more

YouTube vice president touts paid subscriptions

YouTube is clearly eyeing paid subscriptions, though it won't reveal if such an option has gotten the green light.

Speaking with reporters in Los Angeles yesterday, Robert Kyncl, a YouTube vice president, said that paid subscription channels are "incredibly important" in order to create "additional revenue streams" for content creators, the Wall Street Journal reported today. YouTube has reportedly already been chatting with producers about offering channels that would require a fee.

Possibly debuting as soon as next quarter, the first of such channels would charge users between $1 and $5 a month and initially … Read more

Yahoo brings back former employees with Jybe acquisition

Yahoo has picked up a new app and brought some former employees along for the ride.

Announced today, Yahoo has acquired Jybe, an iOS app that recommends books, movies, and restaurants based on a user's personal tastes. Jybe's service and app kicked off about two years ago.

The Jybe team consists of five people who used to work at Yahoo. The team will join Yahoo's platform organization to focus on targeting and personalization, according to the company.

"This will be a 'coming home' for the team -- all five are former Yahoos," Yahoo said in … Read more

Another Yahoo exec leaves the fold. Is Mayer to blame?

Yahoo has lost another top executive to another company, and more are likely to follow suit, says AllThingD's Kara Swisher.

James Carroll, who had served as senior vice president of Yahoo's consumer and global platform group, is taking on a key role at domain-hosting firm Go Daddy, say Swisher's sources. Formerly employed by Microsoft, Carroll was "responsible for Yahoo's content, social and membership platforms and the international delivery of all Yahoo products and services worldwide," according to his LinkedIn profile.

Carroll is a familiar face to Go Daddy CEO Blake Irving. Irving was formerly Yahoo's chief product officer … Read more

Google Drive goes down for many users

Google Drive was having some hiccups earlier today but apparently has since recovered.

The online file storage site had been inaccessible for a large number of users today. On its status page, Google initially said that it's "investigating reports of an issue with Google Drive" as of 7:17 a.m. PT and that it will "provide more information shortly."

A second update on the status page offered a bit more information:

We're aware of a problem with Google Drive affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Google … Read more

Google scraps Chrome's RSS extension along with Reader

Google's decision to kill its Google Reader service has caused some collateral damage: the end of a related Chrome extension that let the browser handle RSS feeds.

RSS and the similar Atom technology make it easier for people to subscribe to regular updates published on Web sites, and Google Reader was a popular way for people to read that content. Google announced that it's scrapping Google Reader on July 1, but it's already gone ahead and withdrawn the feed-finding Chrome extension.

The extension would detect Web sites' feeds then let people use a variety of RSS reader … Read more

Google Reader news forces FeedDemon to shutter, too

How do you kill a FeedDemon? Apparently, all it takes is a decision from Google.

In a blog post, Nick Bradbury, the founder of the popular RSS feed manager FeedDemon, cites Google's call to shutter Google Reader on July 1 as the final "nail in the coffin" for his desktop and laptop app. Bradbury mentions numerous serious concerns, such as spending time with his family and recently being forced to take a day job, but he also talks about the inner workings of FeedDemon.

The software, he explains, relies on Reader for synchronization, "and there's … Read more

Microsoft pins Hotmail, Outlook outage on hot data center

Outlook and Hotmail users can blame the recent outage on an overheated data center, Microsoft says.

On Tuesday at around 1:30 p.m. PT, the two online e-mail services suffered a service disruption, rendering them inaccessible to many users. Microsoft started to bring them back online the rest of the day and on into Wednesday. But access wasn't fully restored until 5:43 a.m. yesterday, according to the company.

Microsoft's status page confirmed that the problem was repaired but offered no details as to the cause. Now the company has revealed the source of the glitch … Read more

Outlook, Hotmail are back up following lengthy outage

Outlook and Hotmail are up and running once again.

A problem had rendered both online e-mail services inaccessible to many users since yesterday. But Microsoft's status page now shows both of them are back in business.

The page gives no details as to what caused the outages or how they were resolved.

Hotmail, Outlook, and SkyDrive were all hit by downtime yesterday, starting at around 2:30 p.m. PT. Many users had taken to Twitter to report the outage and express their frustration over the inability to access their e-mail.

Microsoft's status page shows that the problem … Read more