snapfish

Apple, Shutterfly, others set holiday shipping deadlines

If you still need that perfect gift this Christmas, you can always make something special, like a book, calendar, or other personalized item. But if you're going to do it, you should hurry.

Many of the services on the Internet that handle making personalized gifts have begun to announce shipping deadlines for customers to create the product and still have them in time for Christmas.

There are a number of places, including Apple, Shutterfly, Snapfish, and Blurb.com, that allow you to create a gift that is more creative--and certainly more focused and individual--than buying something off the shelf at a big box store. But people who want to take advantage of these service should get a move on. … Read more

HP's Snapfish acquires video host Motionbox

Hewlett-Packard's photo- and video-sharing service, Snapfish, on Monday announced that it has acquired video host Motionbox.

Snapfish, which was acquired by HP in 2005, has long had its own video-sharing tools, as well as a burgeoning photo-printing business. However, a business was never built around the site's video-sharing tools, which were used mostly for private sharing among friends and families.

Motionbox, on the other hand, began as a free and paid video offering, with a side business for selling DVDs and even flipbooks made out of user videos.

Alongside Motionbox's consumer offering, the company also ran a … Read more

HP DreamScreen: More than just a photo frame

HP has one big request for when you're talking about its new DreamScreen product line: don't call it just a digital photo frame.

Fair enough. The DreamScreen can display your photos effortlessly, but that just scratches the surface of what it can do. Available in 10.2-inch and 13.3-inch versions (both 800x480 resolution), the DreamScreen offers 2GB of onboard memory, plus slots for all standard flash media card types as well as USB storage. If loading your digital media via flash memory is too old-fashioned for you, the DreamScreen can also connect to your home network via Wi-Fi or Ethernet, and--according to HP--the included software lets you drag and drop the files you want to move to it via the network.

Beyond photos, the DreamScreen can also play videos (MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, H.264) and music (MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV) through its built-in speakers (or you can use the headphone jack to connect to an outboard stereo); it can also play music in the background while displaying a slideshow. But if you don't have a single audio file, you can instead opt for one of thousands of Internet radio stations or Pandora's streaming audio service instead.

But wait, there's more!… Read more

Photos: Snappy new tech from HP Labs

CNET News.com sister site Silicon.com went to the HP Labs facility in Bristol, England, to see what the researchers have been up to.

Check out CNET News.com's photo gallery for a glimpse of HP's emerging tech for its Snapfish photo site, its Mscapes location application, and even its stab at quantum computing.

The Real Deal: Online photo sharing

On our weekly Real Deal podcast today, Tom and I covered online photo sharing. It's not so much a comparison of the dozens of good photo sites we know of, but rather an overview of the issues for people confused about the whole space. Topics covered: Various services. How to pick a site. Privacy and copyrights. Online editing. And listener questions.

Yahoo Photos escape hatch now open

Yahoo Photos will be shut down in 99 days for some users, but Yahoo released tools Wednesday to let members move their pictures to alternative sites.

In a blog posting Wednesday, Tim Anderson, the senior product manager of Yahoo Photos and Flickr, encouraged the Yahoo Photos users to move their photos to Yahoo's other photo site, Flickr. But the company also will let members move their photos to four other sites: Snapfish, Shutterfly, Photobucket and Kodak Gallery.

Look at the options carefully before you switch. Some are offering perks such as free prints, and others don't support some … Read more

News roundup: YouTube rival cometh, Tabblo purchased, Kongregator goes public

NBC and News Corp. push new Web rival to YouTube. If you can't beat 'em join 'em, which is what AOL, MSN, Yahoo and MySpace are doing to combat media juggernaut YouTube. The companies have combined forces and are gearing up to launch a new online video service this summer. Besides user-submitted clips, expect to find full-length TV shows and paid-for movies from two major studios. ( CNET News.com)

HP to acquire photo start-up Tabblo. Photo sharing and printing service Tabblo is being acquired by Hewlett-Packard. In our hands-on we noted the ease and simplicity of its built-in printing … Read more