The last time Flickr tried this there was such a backlash that they supported both the old Flickr IDs and corporate overlord ones. But that was then, and this is now... The Flickr News blog just announced that as of March 15th, the only access to your Flickr account will be via a Yahoo! ID. So, the last holdouts in denial of the acquisition will either have to quit the service or link to a Yahoo! ID. This official thread has been created to voice your concerns \ questions to the Flickr staff and community.
We're told that this change is in preparation for some large projects later this year (ohhh - anyone have any ideas??). We've seen this requirement already with the recent updates to Flickr Mobile and Yahoo! Go that only allow Yahoo! accounts.
The same post also mentions the addition of a couple of limits:
Maximum number of Contacts will be 3000
Maximum number of Tags per picture will be 75
These changes are pitched to improve system performance. Flickr has started an official thread for any comments about the limit changes.
These days, most social services integrate with the Flickr API, so I thought nothing of it when I saw that I could set that up. However, according to a post on Mashable!, it looks like this is a shiny new feature (we love those here).
Further investigation finds a post on the MyBlogLog blog where the developers announce this new way of adding pictures to your profile.
The Mashable post gets into additional thoughts for Yahoo! property integration - Yahoo! IDs is a given, and del.icio.us makes sense also. I'd also like to add Yahoo! 360 - for those of us that use it, it'd be nice to incorporate the MyBlogLog tracking into the 'official' blogging service from 'Big Daddy'.
If you already use MyBlogLog, we'd love to see you in our Community.
I could have sworn that Yahoo! Messenger already did this, but according to this post from the Yahoo! Messenger blog, you can call any 800 (or other typical free - 877 / 866 / 888 / etc. call) and not use any minutes from your Yahoo! Voice account.
This announcement coincides with the upcoming Yahoo! promo for the movie "The Messengers", something to do with a 'click-to-call' (whatever that is) campaign they will be running. Hopefully, this isn't the start of getting ads played before you make a call.
In addition, the post mentions a new minor upgrade to v8.1.239. We're told that changes include voice quality improvements and minor fixes for it running in MS Vista (but why not just run the Vista version instead??)
The voice quality continues to be decent, certainly good enough that I've dropped long distance and international calling from my landline - preferring a combination of my cell & Y! IM to call around the world.
If you're looking to move your family to a new abode, an important consideration is often the quality of the schools in the areas you are looking for.
To help with the decision, Yahoo! Real Estate has added a nationwide school search feature to it's service. The schools are displayed on the embedded Y! Map, so you get all the zoom \ pan \ images that you'd expect.
Each school is linked to more information such as Student \ Teacher Ratio and even Parent Reviews. The data it uses comes from a partnership with GreatSchools.net and gives you the ability to search on District \ Level or Grade. Also, a neighborhood map of the school is displayed with easy access to local amenities - Grocery stores \ Parks \ Gas Stations, etc.
Combine this with the Zillow data that's available from the same service, you have a powerful way to research your next home.
I'm not sure how this functionality can be found - I pulled the current version of Y! Messenger from the official website, and it doesn't yet have Sametime or LCS listed - maybe I'm just a little impatient...
[Update: I just booted my PC and the options appeared auto-magically...]
From the Yahoo! Cool Thing of the Day blog: Yahoo! Research continues working to merge several of it's social properties in interesting ways - this time with the upcoming release of Tagmaps. Tagmaps aim to integrate tags with Yahoo! Maps - with the tags overlaid on top of the map. As you Zoom/Pan the map, relevent tags get place on the display.
Yahoo! has created 3 demo apps:
World Explorer - integrates Flickr Photos as well as tags to the map
Night Explorer - similar to Worl Explorer, but the pictures are from nighttime
Trip Explorer - instead of using Flickr Tags, this app pulls in from Y! Trip Planner
As well as these, you can also put the Flash component on your own page - pulling from your own data sources.
I'm a huge fan of tagging, and its great to see Yahoo! starting to pull all this together into some cool demos. Hopefully we'll see this rolled out at some time. For more information, here's the FAQ
For those of us that are regular users of MyWeb, this list will look awfully familiar - it reads like a decent enhancement of the 'social bookmarking for the masses' service that's been out for a while now.
However, the post from the team mentions this:
"Yahoo! Bookmarks will focus on personal saving, organization, and recovery while our comrades at del.icio.us will concentrate on meeting your social bookmarking and sharing needs. For users of MyWeb, your bookmarks are safe, and in a few months you'll be able to roll over to either Yahoo! Bookmarks or del.icio.us."
I'm not sure how I feel about this - I use both MyWeb and del.icio.us, and MyWeb is clearly the easier of the 2 (especially with the integration of Yahoo 360). That said, I am happy that they have thrown their support over the acquisition as it matures.
More details and screenshots can be found on Techcrunch. If you want to try it yourself, it's available here...
This morning, I opened up Firefox as usual and was greeted to a new button on my Yahoo! Toolbar: "Upgrade Now!"
Hitting the button takes you to the Yahoo! Toolbar page and the download starts automatically. Before installing, I checked the Add-Ons dialog (in Firefox 2.0 RC3) and didn't see it listed as a possible upgrade - I'm guessing that Yahoo! hasn't hooked this version into the Mozilla upgrade process yet (Note to Devs: please do this - so that you work like all the other add-ons).
This version (now v1.3.0.20060829) doesn't have the integration with Symantec like it is with the IE toolbar and no new buttons were shown on the 'Add \ Edit Buttons' option. However, the Search field now uses Suggest functionality that's been on the Y! Search page for a while, and there are links on the Y! button to some of the newer Yahoo! properties (Yahoo! Current TV, Yodel Anecdotal)
If anyone has any insight as to other changes in this new version, I'd love to know.
If you don't have the Upgrade Now button, you can download the latest version from the Y! Toolbar site.
Yahoo! has just announced it's Yahoo to Go service on Windows Mobile smartphones (like the sleek Motorola Q). The application has been around on some Nokia phones for a while, and was previously announced to be pre-installed on some Motorola handsets next year. This release will expand the service to the millions of devices running Windows Mobile 2003 SE & 5.0.
The application brings together a set of Yahoo! services into a neat little package:
Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! Search (Local, Web and Image)
Yahoo! Photos
Yahoo! Address Book and Calendar
Yahoo! News, Sports, Finance
The download will be available tomorrow from the Yahoo to Go Mobile site - I wonder if it'll run on my old Dell Axim X5???
You'll be able to logon to the service (using a newly assigned ID \ password that's specific to the phone) and enjoy simple upload \ viewing of all your photos. For the rest of us, we'll have to make do with the 'upload by email' feature.
Unfortunately for us, the Flickr team still hasn't fixed the Mobile Flickr site if you use your Y! ID to access the service, so you can't view any of the photos from your phone...
Y! Answers also gets a write up (Note: Registration required - or just use BugMeNot) in today's Washington Post - looks like the mainstream media has caught up with the rest of us...
The past couple of days have seen a lot of activity on the Yahoo! Mail Beta group, with several of the members reporting a new version hitting the servers.
Unlike the past couple of updates, this one brings in new features for us:
Home Page changes
Calendar Bar
Map integration
Options pages integrated with client
Unfortunately, it's not hit my server farm (us.f308) yet, so I can only report what I'm seeing in the Group. Likewise with Guillaume Belfiore, owner of the group and a longtime Yahoo! fan - he's put together a nice preliminary review based on screen captures sent his way. Ryan Kennedy (one of the devs) also posted this about it.
Expect to see this pushed through to all users over the next few days.
Marshall's post highlights some posts from Flickr users that noticed today a new Maps option on their photo page - one of the enterprising users, James & Vilija's, grabbed a screenshot (and posted it to Flickr).
This would absolutely rule and makes all kinds of sense. There have been otherways to geotag photos, but they have been limited and not applicable to the less technically inclined.
Integrating with Yahoo! Maps would make this easy to pin them to the right location, Yahoo! Maps already generates GPS Co-ordinates when you right-click on them, and hopefully will add tags automatically to the photo for easy searching later.
The last time Flickr tried this there was such a backlash that they supported both the old Flickr IDs and corporate overlord ones. But that was then, and this is now...
