Flickr
Latest
Flickr adds a virtual photography category as more games embrace photo modes
Flickr is adding a new virtual photography category to help users find and categorize images they capture in their favorite video games.
Flickr is putting explicit content sharing behind a paywall
Flickr will require a paid account to share NSFW photos — and free accounts will only get to upload a limited number of private shots.
Amazon Web Services outage subsides after unplugging services for hours
An AWS outage has affected access to many Amazon services, as well as platforms like Roku, Adobe and Flickr that rely on the servers.
Flickr owner: We need more paying subscribers to keep this going
It looks like Flickr needs more paying members to continue existing. Don MacAskill, the CEO of SmugMug, which purchased the photo repository from Verizon-owned Yahoo last year, is asking users for help. "...Flickr -- the world's most-beloved, money-losing business --... needs your help," he wrote in separate emails sent to free and Pro members.
Flickr protects all its users' Creative Commons photos
Flickr has taken extra steps to protect the photos on its platform uploaded under the Creative Commons license. On March 12th, the service will purge free tier users' photos until they only have 1,000 items saved -- not including CC-licensed items, that is. Flickr clairifed after it first announced the purge last year that it will not delete any Creative Commons photo. Now, its VP of Product, Andrew Stalden, has revealed that the platform will leave all CC images untouched, even those uploaded in the future. Further, Flickr will now memorialize accounts owned by deceased members to make sure they never get affected by the new free tier policy.
Flickr postpones photo deletions for free users to March 12th
Don't panic if you missed the February 5th deadline before the new owners at SmugMug (previously Engadget's parent Verizon) started deleting Flickr photos beyond the 1,000-image limit for free accounts. SmugMug has postponed the deletion period to March 12th in the wake of feedback and "complications" with photo downloads. While it wasn't specific about what those issues were, USA Today reported "unresponsive" downloads and sluggish deletions, with requests for archives going unanswered days later.
Flickr will start deleting your photos tomorrow if you're over its limit
If you have lots of photos on Flickr but don't intend to pay for a Pro account, you have mere hours left to consider your options. As warned, the newly Smugmug-owned Flickr will start deleting free users' photos and videos beyond the 1,000-item limit on February 5th. There are exceptions if your additional images fall under a Creative Commons license, but you also can't upload more pictures until you're under that limit. It's not too hard to safeguard your photos if you'd rather not pay $50 per year, although it might require more work than you think.
Flickr won’t delete Creative Commons photos when its free tier changes
Last week, Flickr announced that it would be changing its free tier, allowing users to store just 1,000 photos and videos rather than providing them with 1TB of free storage as it had in the past. Those wanting unlimited storage would need to upgrade to its Pro plan. However, the company said those sticking with the free tier would need to reduce their stored photos and videos down to the 1,000 limit by February 5th, after which Flickr would begin deleting items until their account was down to 1,000. Now, the company is clarifying what this means for Flickr Commons and Creative Commons users.
Flickr limits free plan to 1,000 photos or videos
Flickr is killing its 1TB of free storage in favor of a no-cost plan where you're limited to 1,000 photos or videos, no matter the file size. The move comes amid a raft of changes at the photo hosting service, which SmugMug bought from Yahoo earlier this year.
Pro photo storage site SmugMug buys Flickr
Long before Minecraft exploded from a development tool to a game purchased by Microsoft for billions of dollars, there was Flickr. The photo-sharing started in 2004 based on tools built for a never-released MMO before being purchased by Yahoo (now a part of Oath, the parent company of Engadget) in 2005 for more than $20 million. Now the service and its 75 million~ accounts have been purchased by SmugMug, a smaller competitor focused on professionals. SmugMug is a similar site that started in 2002, but from the beginning it has focused on serving people willing to pay for its privacy and storage, as opposed to Flickr, where most people are using free accounts. Over the years competition from social networks and newer photo apps like Instagram chewed away at Flickr's active users, and its influence has stagnated. SmugMug claims that together, the two services represent "the world's most influential photographer-centric community" where "perspective is shared, not forced."
America’s cash-free future is just around the corner
Shake Shack's next burger joint at Astor Place in NYC doesn't want your money -- at least not the physical variety. In an effort to reduce the "friction time" between paying for your meal and eating it, the company plans to replace human cashiers for automated kiosks which won't accept actual bills and coins, only cards. This move is part of a global trend away from cash-based economies and towards Star Wars-style credits. But could such a monetary revolution actually benefit all Americans? Don't bet on it.
Finding the dog pictures you want on Flickr just got easier
Flickr is finally catching up to the likes of Google Photos and Google Search. Now when you check out Yahoo's photo sharing site you can find all manner of visually similar pictures just by clicking the "..." button on an image. From there, you should find relevant and, as the name suggests, similar photos to what you had in mind. Yahoo explains that this uses computer vision to achieve its results. There's a lot in that post to digest, but the key takeaway is that with time, it'll get better at delivering the bloodhound photos you're craving. And if you want to try using Yahoo's Locally Optimized Product Quantization for your own sorting techniques, it's open source. Get crackin'!
NASA has shared its massive GIF archive with Pinterest and GIPHY
NASA's been making a concerted effort over the past year to share its enormous archive of images and video with the internet. Last October, the agency teamed up with Flickr to feature thousands of Apollo era mission pictures. Thursday, NASA once again opened its vault -- this time to unload thousands more animated GIFs onto its Pinterest and GIPHY pages. If you already have accounts on either of these platforms, you now have full access to NASA's archive. And thanks to GIPHY's API integration, you'll be able to embed these images into your tweets directly from the Twitter app.
Nearly half of Flickr's photo uploads come from smartphones
It's no secret that Flickr is popular with phone-toting photographers, but it's now reaching a tipping point. The Yahoo-owned image service has posted its year in review, and it notes that 48 percent of photo uploads now come from smartphones. That's a big jump over the 39 percent from 2015 -- it's now clear that you're in the minority if you uploaded shots from a dedicated camera. The numbers for conventional cams aren't exactly pretty.
Yahoo asks potential buyers to bid before April 11: WSJ
Despite Marissa Mayer's best efforts, Yahoo is struggling to stay relevant. The company is still worth a lot of money, but most of that can be attributed to its stake in Alibaba, an enormously successful e-commerce firm in China. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, the ageing technology giant has put itself up for auction. A letter sent to possible buyers, and seen by the broadsheet newspaper, states that Yahoo has asked for preliminary bids by April 11th. These could be for some or all of its business, including Yahoo Japan and web services like Tumblr and Flickr.
Microsoft's AI no longer listens to 'Hey Cortana' on Android
Less than two weeks after Microsoft introduced its hands-free AI helper, Cortana, to Android mobile devices, the company has yanked the feature from the US market. Users used to be able to say "Hey, Cortana" and then issue a command, just like "OK, Google" natively does for Google Now. However, the feature appears to be incompatible with Google's voice recognition system and, in some cases, could make the phone unusable for commons tasks -- like making phone calls.
Flickr's Gear VR app takes you inside 360-degree photos
We've known Flickr was planning to jump in the VR game since September, and now its first project has arrived. The photo repository's app for Samsung's Gear VR lets you browse its collection of "VR Photos" with the help of the headset and the requisite Samsung handset. By "VR Photos," Flickr means its library of 360-degree equirectangular images and the photo site boasts over 14,000 total. This view of the Aurora Borealis from Finland will give you an idea of the types of images you can expect to encounter.
Flickr takes advantage of iOS 9 and your iPhone 6s
The pressure-sensitive touch on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus was practically tailor-made for quickly glancing at photos, so wouldn't it make sense that major photography apps let you do just that? Flickr sure thinks so. It's launching an updated iOS app that takes full advantage of iOS 9, including 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s line. You can peek at photos, people and notifications with a firm push. It'll even flip through your camera roll if you swipe at the same time, giving you a quick way to share the right snapshot. As you might've guessed, that extra dimension also gives you home screen icon shortcuts that help you post photos that much sooner.
Flickr's new image compression was almost invisible, until it wasn't
Ugh, it's all pixelated. Ugh, artifacts. Compression is otherwise a pretty useful trick for squeezing more stuff (photos, video and more) into less space, but something typically gets lost in the process. Sometimes it's indistinguishable, other times it screams at your eyes, offending your gentle sensibilities -- or something. Usually, however, it's somewhere in the middle, which was Flickr's problem. The photo service offers users 1TB of free storage at original resolution -- which is still good going, but users started to notice a change in compression used for the various image sizes it also offers: smaller files but bigger issues with artifacts and details lost. That said, Flickr made the changes in late 2014, but it wasn't until much more recently (alongside a recent redesign) that eagle-eyed users began to notice that something had changed.
Flickr wants you to explore photos in VR
Some day you could be flipping through your vacation photos while wearing a VR headset. At the XOXO Festival taking place in Portland, Oregon this weekend, Flickr is showing off an early preview of a virtual reality experience that it hopes to integrate with its photo service. The demo at the festival was with an Oculus DK 2 hooked up to a PC and the idea is that you'll be able to use the headset specifically with 360-degree panoramic photos. I tried it on and indeed I was able to look all around me in 360 degrees to view an entire scene. To flip through the slides, I looked down at a pair of pink and blue balls for a couple of seconds, which triggers the next photo to load.
