flickr

Flickr released an overhauled iPhone app today, capping a year of effort to reclaim its lost glory with software that it believes will become central rather than peripheral to using the photo-sharing site.

The new app is designed to show off individual photos better, to ease sign-up for new users, to speed photo browsing, and to improve discovery. Better smartphone support was critical, given how much activity has moved to mobile apps.

"Engagement to a high percentage is happening on mobile," said Markus Spiering, head of the Flickr product at Yahoo. "It really brings Flickr into the … Read more

Being reminded of what you were doing exactly one, two, or even three years ago to the day can leave you feeling a bit nostalgic. And that's exactly what the Timehop iOS app accomplishes.

We talked about Timehop once before, when it was an e-mail-only service. You would sign up by linking your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare, and Flickr accounts to the service. Then each morning you'd receive an e-mail containing your tweets, links, check-ins, updates, and photos from exactly one year (or longer) ago.

Later, sharing options were added. You could share an event you may have … Read more

Call it fate, or just pure luck. One insect species recently gained a scientific name due to an eagle-eyed taxonomist browsing images on Flickr.

Our short story begins with a simple upload: Amateur photographer Hock Ping Guek posted a series of close-up photos featuring a strange green lacewing insect to the photo-sharing service in May 2011. Guek, who observed the lacewing at a state park in the Malaysian state of Selangor, has a penchant for macro insect photography. … Read more

This Wednesday's top stories are sharing the love of data (but not the love of sharing data):

It began with Verizon, and now AT&T has joined the data-sharing movement. Starting in August, new AT&T customers will be signing up for "Mobile Share" plans. All have unlimited voice and text, but you pick how much data you need, and up to 10 devices can share from that bucket of data. Generally speaking, AT&T and Verizon's plan prices are pretty similar in the lower data tiers. Depending on your needs, one can … Read more

Yahoo's new Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer has lots of challenges ahead of her. One of those, the Internet hopes, is to fix the once beloved photo-sharing site Flickr.

Now making its way around the Internet: the new site DearMarissaMayer.com and matching Twitter hashtag that broadcast eight words contributors hope will inspire change: "Dear Marissa Mayer, please make Flickr awesome again" (a sentiment also expressed earlier today by CNET's Rafe Needleman).… Read more

Apple's iPhone 4 is still at the top of the list for Flickr users, according to Flickr's 2012 summer trends.

The phone, which was No. 1 last year as well, has beaten out several actual cameras -- the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EOS Rebel T2I, and Nikon D90 -- as well as its brethren, the iPhone 4S, which made the list at No. 3.

Flickr also complied the top photo trends from April to June among the 7.2 billion photos uploaded to the photo-sharing site. The trends includes -- surprise! -- outdoor activities:

Yahoo Mail has integrated a photo-sharing tool into its interface. No, it's not Flickr. It's a different photo-sharing tool.

Yahoo officially released its photos app today, aiming to give users a new way to organize all the photos ever sent to their inbox. With unlimited storage, that can be a lot of photos.

Dave McDowell, senior director of product management at Yahoo, said Yahoo Mail users exchange close to 500 million photos a day.

"The reason people share photos through email is there's more privacy and control of who sees the photo and (the app) is … Read more

The photo-friendly company Yahoo just got a new boost of professional images to pop up in image and video searches. In an announcement that it is partnering with stock photo agency Getty Images, according to VentureBeat, the search engine upps its esthetic image today.

Now when users search for images like Lake Tahoe, in addition to dozens of small thumbnails, they'll also see one enlarged photo of the Sierra Nevada lake taken by a Getty Images photographer. There is also a full-screen viewing option on some image searches and a video preview option when a user hovers over the … Read more

It's been nibbling around the edges, but Flickr plans to improve a central part of the photo-sharing site today by showing photos larger -- potentially a lot larger.

Using what it calls a "liquid layout" that adapts to the size of the browser window, the Yahoo site will show high-resolution images as large as possible on its main photo pages. The traditional accompanying information will show alongside -- maps, thumbnails of other photos in the photostream, camera information, and the like.

Here's a before-and-after comparison for a person using a larger monitor.

Flickr launched with photos … Read more