Every now and then I find myself working on slides in Keynote and writing Download Squad posts - and struggling to find a suitable image. Of course, Flickr is the best way to find images - their clear licencing and Creative Commons support makes finding images fairly straight forward. However, getting the image into Keynote isn't entirely painless. The workflow of browsing search results, viewing the image and then finding it at a suitable size (if it exists) takes time - however that's where Viewfinder steps in.

A native Mac OS X application (requiring Mac OS X Snow Leopard), Viewfinder allows you to search Flickr from the desktop apply filters to show only Creative Commons images, and specify a particular image size. Then, once you select an image you can download the image, set it as your desktop background - and most importantly - send images straight to Keynote for your slides.

If you're a heavy keynote user (or blogger) who frequently needs to find Flickr images for your work Viewfinder is indispensible. I've been testing it since early September and found it an incredibly convenient tool to have at hand. A licence costs £15 (roughly $25) and a free demo is available for you try from the Viewfinder webpage.

We've known for months that early-90's homepage service GeoCities was shutting down today, taking a big chunk of Internet history and a lot of hideous animated GIFs with it. That doesn't stop the web geeks at Download Squad from getting a little sentimental, though.

To paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi: we felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

So, let's take a moment to remember GeoCities. The easy website-creation service opened in 1995, and many Internet users set up their first homepages within its quirky "neighborhoods". Back before everyone had a .com, GeoCities sported long, convoluted URLs with directories like SiliconValley/Pines or SunsetStrip/Towers. In 1999, GeoCities was purchased by Yahoo!, and has been a Yahoo! property ever since.

Although GeoCities sites are all disappearing from Yahoo!'s servers today, you can still take a trip down memory lane. Archive.org has started a Special Collection to catalog the sites. The effort was supported by Archive Team and includes a collection of those ever-present "Under Construction" GIFs from the heydey of GeoCities.

Popular geek-centric webcomic XKCD paid its own tribute to GeoCities today, reskinning the site to look like a stereotypical homepage, circa 1996.

At long last, after what seems like an eternity compared to the usually-rapid pace that most social networks evolve at, Flickr has implemented people-tagging. The functionality that most consider a defining characteristic of Facebook is now available on Flickr.

We've all been there: waking up on a Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, last night's drunkenly-debauched memories slowly swimming back into focus through your rheumy, sleep-encrusted eyes. You stagger into the kitchen or your study -- maybe there's a nice cup of coffee waiting for you. You sit down at your laptop -- or turn on your iPhone -- and check your mail.

There's the usual spam, the banal good-luck chain-letters and perhaps news that your copy of Windows 7 has just been dispatched. And then you see it.

'John Doe has tagged a photo of you on Facebook!'

Suddenly you find yourself plunged back into your memories of the night before. Desperately you poke and prod at the memory, praying the holiest damn prayer you've ever prayed, hoping that you didn't do something you'd later regret... something you'd later see on your computer screen... something your mother should never, ever see...

Quickly you un-tag yourself, cursing your friend, his family and his loved ones, praying you've done it quickly enough to avoid disaster.

And now ...? And now it can happen to you on both your social networks!

But wait! No! Flickr has gone one step further than Facebook! With Flickr you block people from tagging you in photos! With Flickr you can specify that only friends or family can tag you -- or no one at all!

The only real problem of course is that people don't often use Flickr for 'wild night out' photos -- that's usually reserved for Facebook. But would it be too crazy to suggest that Flickr could tie into the Facebook API and tag your Facebook friends on Flickr? Or will Facebook simply turn around and enable similar privacy options on tagging?

[via TechCrunch]

Xoopit is a service that turns Gmail into a powerful media browser, letting you quickly view your attachments. Since Yahoo! acquired it, though, it's been available to Yahoo! Mail users, and now Yahoo! is looking to make it exclusive. Xoopit will become the My Photos feature of Yahoo! Mail, and it's being pulled out of Gmail completely. Even the Firefox add-on and Facebook app for Gmail are being discontinued.

How does Yahoo! explain removing Xoopit from its biggest group of users? "We will not be able to keep investing in our Xoopit for Gmail product, and don't want you to end up with a lousy experience." That's going to leave a lot of Xoopit Gmail users disgruntled. Here's how this move affects you if you're one of them: your Xoopit data disappears on November 13th, but your attachments remain untouch (albeit unindexed) in your account. I don't know about other Xoopit users, but losing the service certainly doesn't make me want to sign up for an email address with the company that took it away. Bad form, Yahoo!

Yahoo's FireEagle project has long been a great (albeit under-used) service to let you share your location with other websites. Services such as Dopplr, Brightkite and many others can all update & read your location and use the service to display location-based data.

On the iPhone, there's plenty of free applications that update FireEagle such as yofe, but what if you're working on a desktop or laptop computer? That's where Clarke comes in handy -- a small, open-source utility for OS X that runs in your menu bar, it'll figure out where you are based on the Wi-Fi networks around you.

In earlier versions of Clarke, the updates were based on Skyhook Wireless' database -- the same used by the original iPhone to triangulate your location -- however the utility was recently updated for Mac OS X Snow Leopard and now uses the OS' built-in Core Location system to figure out where you are when run on the newest big-cat.

A free download, developers can also grab the source code over at Github, and the application also lets you easily view nearby data from Flickr, Google Maps, OpenStreetMap and Yahoo Maps.

Yahoo! is embarking on a new marketing campaign to convince users that the company's web services are all about "You." The mission is to reposition Yahoo! as a consumer-focused company. A few days ago, we mentioned that Yahoo!, for example, was unloading enterprise email service Zimbra and classifieds company HotJobs, which aren't really aligned with the new mission statement.

That said, if you look at the company's first TV spot for the campaign, you'd be hard pressed to tell exactly what that mission was. For about 55 seconds, Yahoo! clearly wants you to hear the word "you" a lot. And that ad is certainly dynamic, features vibrant colors, and locations from five different countries.

But you have to wait until the last few seconds of the ad to even find out what the company is... and there's absolutely nothing in the ad to explain how you'll be able to "consumer, share, buzz, destroy, earn, flirt, or watch." Of course, a TV spot that showed Yahoo! Messenger, Mail, Buzz, Video, or other web-services would be a heck of a lot less interesting.

What do you think? Is the new ad effective? If you haven't visited Yahoo! in a while, does it make you want to give the company another try?

Users who clicked on booby-trapped banner ads served by Google's DoubleClick and a Yahoo-owned service called Right Media ended up having their machines infected by a trojan, according to a report from The Register. The sneaky ads showed up on the Drudge Report, Lyrics.com, slacker.com and horoscope.com. Google says that publishers who use DoubleClick have to approve the banner ads that show up on their sites, implying that these four sites are at fault for the attack on their users.

The trojan itself was installed via an infected PDF file that opened and closed when a user clicked an ad. It's called Win32/Alureon, and it opens backdoor access to infected machines. This is serious business, and it's hardly the first time we've seen "malvertising," but who's to blame when it happens? Should site owners who buy ads have to scan them first, or should the big ad networks be responsible?

It seems like just two years ago that Yahoo! bought open source communication platform Zimbra for $350 million. Oh right, that's because it was. But today it looks like Yahoo! is looking to sell Zimbra, along with a number of other properties that don't fit the company's streamlined mission statement including HotJobs.

While Zimbra's advanced email tools certainly made their mark on the recently updated Yahoo! Mail web client, but Zimbra's real strength lies in the fact that you can deploy the software on your own server and create a corporate network for email, chat, and calendar sharing. And that's not necessarily a business Yahoo! wants to be in right now. Instead the company is focusing on its consumer oriented products.

Commencing noon EST today, online collaboration provider drop.io becomes Yahoo Mail's default 'Attach Large Files' provider. If you're wondering where you've heard drop.io mentioned before, drop.the company was recently featured on Time's list of the 50 best web apps of 2009.

Built on top of drop.io's open API, the change is a significant boost for the drop.io service, which up until now has provided users with free storage in the form of unlimited blocks of 100MB, as well as offering a premium service for enhanced features.

It's not clear at this time whether Yahoo! Mail attachments will also be limited to 100MB nor the extent of the integration between Yahoo! Mail and drop.io, but rest assured I'll update this post as more details surface.

If you're willing to give Yahoo Calendar 2.0 Beta a try, you can now sync your Yahoo Calendar with the Calendar app on your iPhone. It doesn't require a separate app download or anything like that, just a quick and painless setup procedure. This is actual over-the-air syncing, with no need for plugging in and syncing with iCal on your desktop, and it helps Yahoo catch up to Google Calendar as a viable alternative for iPhone users.

Just go to "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" in your iPhone's settings, Go to "add account," "other," and then pick "CalDav account." Enter "yahoo" as the server, and put in your Yahoo username and password. Save and quit, and the next time you open your iPhone Calendar app, you should be prompted to pick which Yahoo calendar layer you want to use. Be aware that doing this upgrades you to Yahoo Calendar 2.0 Beta, and you can't downgrade again afterward.

(via Lifehacker)

Delicious isn't the only Yahoo-owned service to get a makeover this week. Flickr also added some new search features, which should make it easier to browse the site and find what you're looking for. The layout of search results has changed, giving users the ability to resize thumbnails and click for more info without opening a photo page. The results also automatically resize to fit your browser window, which is good news for users with extremely large or extremely small displays.

There's also a new sidebar, displaying related groups, photographers, tag clusters and places. My new favorite addition, although it may seem like a small thing, is that Flickr now actually tells you which search results it's showing you. Refining searches under the old system wasn't very transparent, but now you know whether you're in someone's photostream or searching all of Flickr, whether you're searching for Creative Commons images or not, and more. All in all, the new search page is a big win for usability.

The popular social bookmarking service Delicious has been stagnating a bit since Yahoo purchased it, inspiring competition from the likes of Pinboard. Yahoo hasn't complete abandoned Delicious, though. An update today adds new search and sharing features and a "Fresh" tab that uses Twitter trends to find the most relevant links on Delicious.

Now, when you search on Delicious, you can specify a time frame to search, as well as sorting by tags. Previews from sites like YouTube, Flickr and Yelp should be showing up next to relevant bookmarks soon. On the sharing front, quick email and Twitter buttons have been added, so you can share in a couple of clicks, right from the link.

After years of back and forth negotiations, Microsoft and Yahoo! have announced a 10-year deal to work together on internet search and advertising.

Under the agreement, Microsoft will get exclusive access to Yahoo!'s search technologies, which may then be integrated into the company's Bing search engine. What's more intriguing is that Bing will then "be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites."

In other words, while I (and probably many other people) tend to think of Yahoo! as a search engine first, and a web portal second, the partnership basically hands the keys of Yahoo! search over to Microsoft, leaving Yahoo! to focus on other aspects of its web portal and other properties including Flickr.

Yahoo! will also take over as the primary sales force for search ads on both Microsoft and Yahoo! properties, while each company will maintain its own display ad division.

According to the press release, it could take as long as 2 years for the whole deal to go through once it's approved by regulators.

Despite early reports that Microsoft was looking to purchase Yahoo!, today's announcement outlines the details of a partnership, not a merger. Yahoo! and Microsoft will continue to operate their own web portals, video sites, email, IM, and other properties, many of which will be in direct competition with one another.

The companies have launched a new website at ChoiceValueInnovation.com to provide additional details as things develop. Try not to laugh too hard at the name.

Yahoo! is beta testing an updated version of its homepage. The most noticable change is the ability to add any web page to the sidebar menu.

You can also get information from any site in the sidebar by hovering your mouse over the link. For example, you can get your latest updates from Facebook or a list of your latest email messages without leaving the page.

There's also a gallery of existing web sites or "applications" that you can add, including Gmail, Flickr, MarketWatch, and NPR. The ability to view a ton of web content all from one place makes the new Yahoo! a bit more of a personalized start page a la Netvibes, and less of an old-fashioned web portal that simply provides a list of links and a search bar.

There are also a few cosmetic changes including a smaller header area which makes more room for content lower on the page. You can check out the new beta version of Yahoo! by visiting yahoo.com/trynew.

While a number of free webmail services including Gmail offers users POP3 or IMAP access for use with an external mail applications like Outlook or Thunderbird, Yahoo! considers this a premium feature and requires you to pony up $20 a year for POP3 access. Paying customers also get some other nifty features like an ad-free interface. But if you just want to use Outlook to send and receive email, YPOPs! can help.

YPOPs! is a free and open source application that provides POP3 and SMTP access to free Yahoo! Mail accounts. it does this by basically setting up a server on your desktop. The program acts like a go-between that lets Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, Opera, or other mail applications talk to the Yahoo! Mail server. It does this by communicating with the server using HTTP and then setting up a POP3 server on your desktop to talk to your email application. As such, it's not technically a violation of Yahoo!'s terms of service. Or at least, that's what the developers claim.

YPOPs! offers instructions for configuring a number of email clients to work with the program. Outlook 2007 wasn't listed, and when I tried configuring YPOPs! to work with Outlook 2007 I was unable to properly connect to the server. Have any of you tried the program and had more luck?

[via Online Tech Tips]