Photos

Social tool Radar.net has added support for Flickr on all its mobile applications, including the iPhone. Radar users who are also Flickr users can plug-in their account credentials and get the latest photos from their contacts filtered into Radar's activity feed. Likewise, if one of your Radar.net friends has a Flickr account their Flickr photos will begin to show up too.

At first glance, the iPhone version of Radar's app for photo viewing is not quite as good Flickr's mobile page, but it packs a punch. You can take a photo with your phone and … Read more

Considering all the horror stories we hear about photos hosted on Facebook and people, you know, losing their jobs over them, maybe this isn't such a bad thing: The social network acknowledged in a blog post on Sunday evening that 10 percent to 15 percent of the billions of photos it hosts were affected by a storage problem, replaced by a question mark.

But they aren't permanently gone, the post by engineer Evan Priestley insisted. "We've already repaired about one-third of affected photos and expect to complete repairs on another third tonight," he explained. "… Read more

Ever been stuck waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more for photos to upload? Short of getting a faster connection there's not much you can do with big image files. You can go the software route, and download something free and simple like Paint.net to do the resizing pre-upload, but you don't always have time to do this with every shot, and if you're like me you're kind of lazy.

Enter Shrunked, a great new extension for Firefox. It lets you resize a photo before uploading it. It works anywhere that doesn't use a … Read more

vPost's free-to-try application aggregates your multimedia into one interface and makes it easier to share and post online. You'll be able to attach up to five separate media files--up to 1.5MB--including audio and video clips, photos, text notes, and files stored on your internal memory or SD card. That makes it a contender for serious sharing and social networking junkies, especially with convenience tools like the Favorite button, which lets you automatically route a multimedia bundle in a click to a preset e-mail address (including the CC and BCC lines, you can squeeze out three). There's … Read more

vPost, which launched this week for BlackBerrys running version 4.5 and 4.6*, is a free-to-try application that aggregates your multimedia into one interface and makes it easier to share and post online. (*A version for the Storm is due later this month.) You'll be able to attach up to five separate media files--up to 1.5 MB--including audio and video clips, photos, text notes, and files stored on your internal memory or SD card.

At a lifetime purchase of about $10, the application seems a bit steep for something that can be accomplished, albeit slower, using the … Read more

WriteOnIt is a simple service that lets you caption and manipulate uploaded photos. Just like BigHugeLabs' Flickr toys project (story), it can take uploaded photos and stick them into magazine covers. It can also slyly insert them onto coffee mugs, billboards, art easels, and fake mirrors within ready-made photos.

You have very little control over the complicated bits, like transparency, placement, and cropping--which are all absent. However, with that simplicity you can very quickly put together something that both looks polished, and that could fool your viewer.

Of all the tools my favorite is the newspaper creator. You have five … Read more

LAS VEGAS--The bad economy has hurt the photography business, but there are a few areas of growth amid the gloom.

Among the bright spots are digital SLR cameras, photo books, memory-keeping moms, and Web sites adapted for mobile phone use., concluded InfoTrends analysts sharing research results at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show here Wednesday.

Overall, though, the mood is grim.

"It sure feels different at this year's PMA. There's not so much booth space, not so much traffic. The energy level is down. This recession feels different from back in '01 (which was) somewhat contained to the tech sector," said InfoTrends President Jeff Hayes. "Now it has become an issue of a consumer confidence crisis and has become a lot more broadly based. The photo industry is feeling this." … Read more

Billed as "an all-in-one application for organizing, editing, sharing, and presenting photo collections," Ashampoo Photo Commander makes some big promises. Ultimately it delivers, but this isn't a program for the casual user.

The interface struggles to present the various (and numerous) options. It's overwhelming at first, and with so much going on, the black background makes it a little difficult to read. "How-to" pop up windows were a welcome sight, and they helped us get our bearings. Presentation issues aside, the program really proved its stuff in action. Photos are easily imported and scanned … Read more

The Pandigital PanTouch Clear 10.4-inch frame (also known by the far-catchier name PAN1000DWPCF2) is not only fully loaded with features, but it's really thin, too, at just 0.3-inch thick. The 4:3 frame uses an HD-quality LCD with a 1,024x768 resolution and it has a full touch-screen interface on fingerprint-resistant, clear glass. It's all very exciting.

With an MSRP of $229.99 you better be getting more than just a thin, pretty touch-screen frame, and you do. There's integrated Wi-Fi for connecting to a home wireless network and you'll be able to use … Read more