Yahoo

Flickr Has Changed Hands Again!

An active user of Flickr, I was astonished to read that it is being acquired by SmugMug. The email said, “We’re excited to announce that Flickr has agreed to be acquired by SmugMug, the photography platform dedicated to visual storytellers.” This would be the third time in over a decade that Flickr has changed hands with its owners since its launch by the Vancouver-based Ludicorp in 2004. It was in early 2005 that Yahoo! decided to buy this image hosting company for $35 million. Then in 2017 Verizon acquired Yahoo! and all its assets in a $4.48 billion deal, and now it’s SmugMug acquiring Flickr from Oath Inc. for an undisclosed sum. Despite its base of over 90 million users, I think it’s becoming harder to sustain itself in competing with the established photo-sharing social networks, although it’s one of the few places where professional photographers (the folks who experiment with DSLRs) still venture out. I’m not sure what the future holds for Flickr, I adore it, to be honest, but I doubt that it has a long way left now. Given that mobiles are adept at capturing & sharing incredible photos & videos at higher resolutions, only time will tell if the era of image hosting platforms is entering its last lap.

Goodbye Yahoo! Photos

Current users might want to take note of this latest development. Yahoo! has decided to shut down it’s photo sharing service Yahoo! Photos and focus on its other twin, Flickr. I read this bit of rather surprising news on the Yodel blog. Curtains will formally come down on September 20, 2007 and the all the current users will be moved to a photo sharing service of their choice – Flickr, Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish, or Photobucket. For a complete list of the FAQs, you can click here or visit this page.

Microsoft's video venture : Soapbox

It all began when YouTube offered free video upload and streaming through Flash. One could now subscribe to RSS feeds and also embed the video on their blog or website. The contest for capturing this exciting space (and thus the imagination of the user) had now begun in earnest. Just recently, Yahoo announced it’s arrival on the scene by taking over the online video sharing website called JumpCut.

Microsoft also is ready with it’s reply to YouTube and its ilk. The video upload & streaming project is codenamed “Warhol” but is finally going to be known as Soapbox, although features do not seem to be much different from YouTube’s. Only time can tell if Soapbox succeeds in its endeavour or melts with time.

Move Over Konfabulator

Here comes Kapsules, a freeware desktop widget engine built exclusively for the Windows system. It is built upon the Windows Scripting Technology and is reliant on the .NET framework for it’s working. While Konfabulator was earlier written for the Mac OS X System and later ported for Windows, Kapsules is exclusively designed to be used by Windows components. Check out the widgets available for Kapsules and also preview the Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets.