I’ve mentioned a few times already that I became a big fan of P2 theme for WordPress. I currently maintain multiple installations of it, just…
After the news of Google Reader demise broke out, I, like many others, started looking for an alternative. There are many RSS readers out there,…
As most of you know, I spent most of the yesterday in Nicosia, attending the second ever TEDxNicosia event. I know quite a few people who wanted t…
How Google built its new messaging platform for Gmail, Android, iOS, and Chrome… and what took so long
“We want to make Flickr awesome again,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said.
Flickr is getting three big updates. All users will get 1 terabyte of photo storage for free. The site’s s interface is also being redesigned to focus on full-resolution photos — both in photo browsing and in search — rather than words and links. Users will be able to share the full-resolution photos by email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr.
This sounds amazing! Also:
Flickr Pro, which had allowed users to pay for more storage space, is going away. “There’s no such thing as Flickr Pro today because [with so many people taking photographs] there’s really no such thing as professional photographers anymore,” Mayer said (though she acknowledged that there are “different skill levels”). There are still a couple of paid options: Users can pay $49.99 a year for an ad-free interface, and can add a second terabyte of data for $499.99 per year. It’s unclear what will happen with existing Flickr Pro memberships that users have already paid for.
I’ve been a paying customer of Flickr for years. It was worth every penny. But, at the same time, it was difficult to convince my friends to use it as there were some severe limitations for free accounts. It’s nice to see them gone now.
The only weird bit of the blog post is this:
And, in addition to the iOS app Flickr launched last December, Yahoo is launching an Android app.
Flickr already has an Android app. So I’m assuming they will just revamp that as well.
Developers tend to spectacularly underestimate the effort involved in such a rewrite (more on that below), and spectacularly overestimate the value generated (more on that below, as well).
I think this is the greatest innovation in web-based email since Gmail’s own release of large mailboxes (what was it? 1 GB?). Web mail has all the benefits of a website, but offers greater contextual focus. Adding specific actions to message has been a possible with extensions and plugins for a long time, but those were traditionally added by the recipient. Giving such power to the sender is quite interesting.
Of course, there will be a variety of misuses – spam, phishing, etc – but, I’m sure there will be an even greater variety of useful functionality. Like this “Send money with Gmail” example. Here is more information on what’s possible.
One day, I’ll grow up enough to use an organization tool. This one will probably be it.
Sendy is a self hosted email newsletter application that lets you send trackable emails via Amazon Simple Email Service (SES). This makes it possible for you to send authenticated bulk emails at an insanely low price without sacrificing deliverability.
Quinico is an open source web application designed to help you easily improve your website’s performance, reduce errors and optimize for search engines (SEO). Quinico can constantly monitor your websites and alert you when there is a problem that requires attention. Using Quinico, you can automate the continual tracking, reporting and alerting of the following:
- Google search engine rankings of all of your important keywords (supports all google domains and languages)
- Google Pagespeed metrics including suggestions for improvement (mobile and desktop strategies)
- Page weight breakdown (mobile and desktop strategies)
- SEO url metrics (utilizing SEOMoz)
- Webpagetest performance metrics (including first and repeat views)
- Google webmaster metrics (keyword impressions/clicks, crawl errors, top search queries)
Slashdot shares a story of mine-seeking dolphins making a historic discovery – a 11-foot long torpedo from 19th century. Apparently, there were only 50 of this ever made, and this is the second one being discovered.
When first created, the Howell torpedo had major implications for helping the United States be the dominant naval force in the world. The design was quickly outdated, though. Only about 50 were ever made, between 1870 and 1889, when the technology was surpassed.
The 11-foot long torpedo is made of brass and had a range of 400 yards while traveling at 25 knots. Not bad for the 1800s.
The dolphins themselves follow simple system for alerting the Navy of any found objects. They take a dive and, if they find nothing, touch the back of the boat with their snouts. If they find something, they touch the front of the boat.
Sharks with laser beams and telepathic seals: it’s your move now.