Slashdot Mirror

On Friday, Silicon Valley photo-sharing and storage company SmugMug announced it had acquired Flickr, the photo-sharing site created in 2004 by Ludicorp and acquired in 2005 by Yahoo. SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill told USA TODAY he's committed to revitalizing the faded social networking site, which hosted photos and videos long before it became trendy. Flickr will reportedly continue to operate separately, and SmugMug and Flickr accounts will "remain separate and independent for the foreseeable future." From the report: He declined to disclose the terms of the deal, which closed this week. "Flickr is an amazing community, full of some of the world's most passionate photographers. It's a fantastic product and a beloved brand, supplying tens of billions of photos to hundreds of millions of people around the world," MacAskill said. "Flickr has survived through thick-and-thin and is core to the entire fabric of the Internet." The surprise deal ends months of uncertainty for Flickr, whose fate had been up in the air since last year when Yahoo was bought by Verizon for $4.5 billion and joined with AOL in Verizon's Oath subsidiary.

Sally Wiener Grotta and her husband Daniel wrote some of the first books and articles about digital photography. Sally was an award-winning photographer in film days, and has maintained her reputation in the digital imaging age. In this interview, she talks about how to buy a digital camera -- including the radical idea that most people really don't need to spend more than $200 to take quality photos. (We had some bandwidth problems while doing this remote interview, but the sound is clear so we decided to run it "as is" rather than try to remake the video and lose the original's spontaneity.)

jamaicaplain writes "In an extensive look at rebel communications, the New York Times reports that, 'In a demonstration of their growing sophistication and organization, Syrian rebels responded to a nationwide shutdown of the Internet by turning to satellite technology to coordinate within the country and to communicate with outside activists. To prepare, they have spent months smuggling communications equipment like mobile handsets and portable satellite phones into the country.'"

jamaicaplain writes "The annual Lyrid meteor shower will hit its peak this weekend and promises to put on an eye-catching display. NASA scientists plan to track the Lyrid meteor shower using a network of all-sky cameras on Earth, as well as from a student-launched balloon in California. Meanwhile, an astronaut on the International Space Station will attempt to photograph the meteors from space."

tramm writes "I've released an extension for the Canon 5D Mark II DSLR's video mode to enable functions that are useful for independent film makers. While the camera produces a great movie out of the box, the audio is a severely limited. My code adds features that should have been in the software, like on-screen stereo audio meters, live audio monitoring, reduced audio noise and crop marks for different formats. An introductory video shows the new features in use and an audio evaluation compares it to the stock firmware with very good results. It's similar to the incredibly flexible CHDK software for Canon's point-and-shoot cameras, but targeted at the film makers using the 5D. The Magic Lantern firmware is GPLed and new features will be written to make the camera even more useful on set. There is a wiki for documentation and development."

onethumb writes "The video game industry may be on the brink of a sea-change just like music has seen and movies are in the middle of now. Valve began it by selling millions of copies of Half-Life 2 online with Steam, and Ritual's about to really turn up the heat by proving that online episodic game development really works. We'll get better games, more frequently, and with new, innovative gameplay. I spent some quality time with SiN Episodes and it looks like everyone wins - Ritual, Valve, and you." From the article: "Everyone wants episodic games. Developers want it because they get to make better games (by listening to their fans suggestions every 6 months and incorporating it directly into the next chapter) and do it more cheaply (6 months of game development vs years. Do the math). Gamers want it because their favorite games will be more frequent, higher quality, and more innovative since developers can now take some risks with different & new gameplay. But figuring out if it's a money-maker is a big risk. Someone's gotta put their hard-earned dough on the line and try it out."

onethumb writes "The video game industry may be on the brink of a sea-change just like music has seen and movies are in the middle of now. Valve began it by selling millions of copies of Half-Life 2 online with Steam, and Ritual's about to really turn up the heat by proving that online episodic game development really works. We'll get better games, more frequently, and with new, innovative gameplay. I spent some quality time with SiN Episodes and it looks like everyone wins - Ritual, Valve, and you." From the article: "Everyone wants episodic games. Developers want it because they get to make better games (by listening to their fans suggestions every 6 months and incorporating it directly into the next chapter) and do it more cheaply (6 months of game development vs years. Do the math). Gamers want it because their favorite games will be more frequent, higher quality, and more innovative since developers can now take some risks with different & new gameplay. But figuring out if it's a money-maker is a big risk. Someone's gotta put their hard-earned dough on the line and try it out."

onethumb writes "Andy over at Digital Grin got his hands on a pre-release copy of Adobe's hot new app 'Lightroom' last week and has a nice review up. Adobe Lightroom, is designed to go head-to-head with Apple's own recently released Aperture. Is digital photo editing finally getting both powerful and easy?"

onethumb writes "Andy over at Digital Grin got his hands on a pre-release copy of Adobe's hot new app 'Lightroom' last week and has a nice review up. Adobe Lightroom, is designed to go head-to-head with Apple's own recently released Aperture. Is digital photo editing finally getting both powerful and easy?"

theodp writes "Can't get enough pictures of dogs' noses? Circular objects framed within squares? Newsweek reports on photo-sharing sites and picture blogs, where amateur shutterbugs looking to share their passions with the world happily blast their photos out to millions of people. Fotolog CEO Adam Seifer, who posts a picture of every meal he eats on Get In My Belly!, calls the Fotolog-Flickr-HeyPix-Smugmug phenomenon 'a million reality TV shows, only without the pain and humiliation.'" Update: 03/14 07:09 GMT by T : Reader onethumb points out an important aspect of such sites: "The new breed of photo-sharing services expose their APIs for geeks everywhere to enjoy. Both Flickr and Smugmug have growing APIs with thriving communities around them. Write your own photo-sharing application, sister web service, or software toy today!" (Here's a link to Flicker's API, and one to smugmug's.)

theodp writes "Can't get enough pictures of dogs' noses? Circular objects framed within squares? Newsweek reports on photo-sharing sites and picture blogs, where amateur shutterbugs looking to share their passions with the world happily blast their photos out to millions of people. Fotolog CEO Adam Seifer, who posts a picture of every meal he eats on Get In My Belly!, calls the Fotolog-Flickr-HeyPix-Smugmug phenomenon 'a million reality TV shows, only without the pain and humiliation.'" Update: 03/14 07:09 GMT by T : Reader onethumb points out an important aspect of such sites: "The new breed of photo-sharing services expose their APIs for geeks everywhere to enjoy. Both Flickr and Smugmug have growing APIs with thriving communities around them. Write your own photo-sharing application, sister web service, or software toy today!" (Here's a link to Flicker's API, and one to smugmug's.)

theodp writes "Can't get enough pictures of dogs' noses? Circular objects framed within squares? Newsweek reports on photo-sharing sites and picture blogs, where amateur shutterbugs looking to share their passions with the world happily blast their photos out to millions of people. Fotolog CEO Adam Seifer, who posts a picture of every meal he eats on Get In My Belly!, calls the Fotolog-Flickr-HeyPix-Smugmug phenomenon 'a million reality TV shows, only without the pain and humiliation.'" Update: 03/14 07:09 GMT by T : Reader onethumb points out an important aspect of such sites: "The new breed of photo-sharing services expose their APIs for geeks everywhere to enjoy. Both Flickr and Smugmug have growing APIs with thriving communities around them. Write your own photo-sharing application, sister web service, or software toy today!" (Here's a link to Flicker's API, and one to smugmug's.)

Jojo writes "After American Greetings got some lawyers to bring down a Penny Arcade strip (M i r r o r) last week, PA is now striking back.. IANAL, but I fear their latest strip might get them into real trouble this time." As always, PA cracks me up, but these are scary events. The banned strip is clearly a work of parody, which I believe is still legal in this country, unless that too changed recently.