flickr

Social photo-sharing site Flickr is adding a long overdue feature this week that lets users assign a name tag to people in photos. While the service is overflowing with photos of sweeping landscapes and close-ups of bug eyeballs, the Yahoo-owned company has noticed that many of its users are simply using it to share shots of friends and family, and that the existing tag tools were not made with people in mind.

The new system has been designed as a hybrid of the original tagging tools and Flickr's notes feature, all wrapped up into one. Users can tag a … Read more

Yahoo-owned social photo site Flickr went dark Tuesday at around 8:50 a.m. PDT. The outage, which remains ongoing at time of this initial post, is keeping users from accessing all parts of the site, however photos that had been embedded on third-party sites are still able to be viewed.

An update on Flickr's official blog, timestamped at 9:51 a.m. PDT, says "all hands are on deck," and the problem will soon be resolved. That was followed shortly thereafter by a post at 10:05 a.m. PDT saying that that outage "shouldn'… Read more

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.

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. … Read more

Online dating, meet the social network, meet real-time search.

That's essentially the elevator pitch of Gelato, an early-stage start-up that's presenting at the DemoFall 09 conference in San Diego this week. Founded by Steve Odom, a recently divorced entrepreneur who found himself wanting a more effective way to meet someone new than what was available, Gelato aims to give singles a way to meet someone who might actually be a good match.

The idea is, as Odom put it, Friendfeed for dating. Users create a profile and then are able to peruse "life streams" of potential … Read more

Flickr has added a new feature called galleries to showcase photos--and this time not just your own shots.

Galleries, announced on Monday, lets Flickr members assemble collections of up to 18 photos. The photos are shown on the page along with the gallery curator's comments.

Flickr has a reason for the 18-image limit: it wants to emphasize quality, not quantity.

"While it might seem like an arbitrary number, we want to give our members an opportunity to engage in activity that is similar to what a curator of a gallery or museum might undertake," the company said … Read more

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 … Read more

As a heavy Flickr user, half the time I'm accessing the site from my phone instead of my computer. So when Flickr got its very own iPhone application late Monday night (download link), I was excited to give it a spin. What I found though, is that despite some of its niceties, there are certain things you can only do on the mobile Safari version--many of which are important.

This in itself is odd. After all, native iPhone apps almost always do things Web apps can't, like store data locally, or make use of on-board hardware. This app does a little bit of both but is missing a few features that I think make viewing and managing your Flickr photos a more compelling experience in Safari's browser.

For instance, browsing photos cannot be done in landscape mode from the get-go. You're limited to viewing little thumbnails, then having to click on the image to load it again before being able to view it sideways. The need to do this every time there's an occasional photo in landscape mode can be a bit tiring, although you're encouraged to just stay in the full-screen mode. This isn't so bad if you're on a good connection, but if you're on EDGE, or a spotty 3G connection it, can drag on as it takes time to load each image.

But that's just a small quibble. My real complaint is that the app doesn't let you make any changes to photos you've already uploaded. For instance, you cannot rename a photo or video or give it a description unless you're uploading it. You're also unable to add tags or change its privacy level and licensing rights. This could get you into a sticky situation if you, say, uploaded a photo as public that you later wanted to change to private. Such an action would… Read more

At long last, Yahoo has released its official Flickr app for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. With a photo montage and a clean user interface, the photo app has the look. As long as you're not too needy, it also has the touch. In addition to viewing your photos and your friends' photostreams, you can also upload photos from the device to your Flickr account. If you've got an iPhone 3GS, the app also extends that uploading courtesy to videos that you can take on the spot or upload from your library.

The Flickr app supports comments, … Read more

Flickr has adopted a less severe way of handling copyright infringement claims after a small firestorm of controversy erupted about a photograph of President Barack Obama modified to look like The Dark Knight's rendition of the Joker comic-book villain.

Previously, certain copyright infringement complaints were met with the removal of an image, and if the complaint was overruled, the Flickr member who posted the image was allowed to repost it. After the Joker Obama case, Flickr decided to merely replace the image in question with a message, a move that means the discussion below the image is preserved and … Read more