Later, gator.
Google has announced the shutdown of Hello, a sort of photo-messaging service that became part of the Mountain View family when Google acquired Picasa in 2004.
"All good things come to an end," a placeholder on the Hello.com home page says. "So it is with sadness that we say goodbye to Hello." Guess they weren't so sad that they felt the need to steer clear of goofy plays on words. Hello will fade away on May 15, though Google's photo-sharing service Picasa remains otherwise intact.
"We originally embarked on a mission to make photo sharing easier and more fun with Hello," the message on the site explains. "We plan to keep carrying that torch in new projects to come." That could be interpreted as a hint that Hello's technology may be seen in future Google projects--or not.
As Google Blogoscoped notes, Mountain View now has the domain hello.com. And it's not like Larry, Sergey, and the gang need to sell it for beer money.
Importing my Flickr feed into Facebook
(Credit: Facebook)This post was updated at 2:54 PM PT with comment from Facebook.
Facebook members now have the options to import their activity from a number of external social-media sites into the "Mini-Feeds" on their profiles, a post on the company blog explained on Tuesday.
Currently, this is limited to business reviews site Yelp, bookmarking site Delicious (owned by Yahoo), and photo-sharing sites Flickr (also owned by Yahoo) and Picasa (owned by Google). More are on the way, including Digg, the post by engineer Harry Huai Wang assured members.
With aggregation the hottest topic in social networking these days, plenty of sites from Pownce to Plaxo have opted to let members pull in feeds from external sites, and an entire genre of "lifestreaming" services like FriendFeed and SocialThing have sprung up for those social-media junkies who want to be able to track everything their friends do in one place.
But it's a bit curious on Facebook: most popular social-media sites already have applications built on Facebook's developer platform, and those can pull updates into the Mini-Feed--so at first glance, it seems slightly redudant.
Using the Mini-Feed import, however, requires no application to be installed on Facebook (read: it's easier), and is fully opt-in, unlike Facebook's controversial Beacon advertisements (of which Yelp is a partner). I originally speculated that perhaps Yelp, Picasa, Flickr, and Delicious were "partners" in a Mini-Feed import program, meaning that Facebook may have gotten some revenue out of the deals.
But a Facebook representative confirmed to me that there were no formal partnerships in place, meaning that it was more likely just an API integration--curious.
Apparently, fast-forwarding through commercials just isn't enough. TiVo announced on Monday that users of select photo-sharing services are now able to access their image collections through its set-top boxes.
The digital video recorder manufacturer has partnered with two photo-sharing services--the Google-owned Picasa Web Albums and Fox Interactive Media-owned Photobucket--in order to enable users to surf through their photo albums as well as their friends' and family members', provided that their TiVo boxes are broadband-connected.
A release from the company emphasized the fact that photos are viewable in the highest resolution possible, which on the TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD devices means full high definition.
In addition, the TiVo interface makes it possible for users to search the overall database of public Picasa or Photobucket images by keyword.
The Photobucket search interface on TiVo
(Credit: Photobucket/TiVo)It's yet another step in TiVo's quest to make its equipment more versatile than the standard DVR--and to make it an appealing choice in a market that remains tepid.
"At TiVo, we're focused on the entire entertainment experience, from movies to music, and in this case--memories," Jim Denney, TiVo's vice president of product marketing, said in the company's statement. "By working with these well-respected and popular photo-sharing partners, TiVo enables families to share their pictures in new, fun ways."
This fall, TiVo announced a deal with RealNetworks' Rhapsody to bring the subscription-based music service to its devices.
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