BoomTown did an interview last night with outgoing RealNetworks (RNWK) CEO Rob Glaser after the announcement yesterday of his departure from the company he founded and led for 16 years.

That will be posted later today, but here is a profile of Glaser I wrote after spending time with him in Seattle, when I was covering the Internet for The Wall Street Journal.

It’s from Feb. 12, 1998–yes, that means Rob and I are genuine Web antiques–and focuses on Glaser’s decidedly complicated relationship with his former employer, Microsoft (MSFT).

As you will see, it comes from a much different era of the Internet, when Microsoft was much scarier, RealNetworks represented innovation and the medium was still in its infancy. My favorite line is a description of Glaser as “radiating so much intensity that his face resembles a clenched fist.”

Here it is:

Rob Glaser learned the software business as one of Bill Gates’s most aggressive proteges at Microsoft Corp. So he knows all too well the anguishing strategic decision that most software entrepreneurs inevitably confront: Go head-to-head against Mr. Gates and risk annihilation. Or cooperate with him–and risk annihilation.

Now an Internet entrepreneur himself, Mr. Glaser thinks he has another strategy: A delicate dance with Microsoft that combines a little bit of competition and a little bit of cooperation.

His newly public company, RealNetworks Inc., popularized the use of realtime audio and video on the Internet’s World Wide Web. It already has more than 18 million registered users of its free “streaming” software for receiving multimedia over the Net. It also has a rapidly growing business selling server software for transmitting audio and video to Website operators.

But it stands squarely in the path of the strategy that has drawn Microsoft into trouble with antitrust regulators: Emulating innovative products, integrating them into its operating systems and then giving them away free. RealNetworks’ daunting task is to prove it can do a better job of outmaneuvering Microsoft than Netscape Communications Inc., the browser pioneer whose market share and profitability have been devastated by Microsoft’s integration strategy.

Mr. Glaser insists he and the software giant can coexist. “I learned an amazing amount from Bill,” he says, speaking in staccato bursts and radiating so much intensity that his face resembles a clenched fist. “We knew we could either compete head-on like Netscape or do something a lot more interesting.”

His strategy is known internally as “coopetition.” Out of mistrust, Netscape two years ago rejected an unsolicited offer from Microsoft to become a partner and investor. But Mr. Glaser approached his former colleagues last summer seeking just such an alliance. In July, he sold a nonvoting 10% stake to Microsoft for $30 million, and licensed RealNetworks’ technology to the software giant for another $30 million. Microsoft also agreed to bundle RealNetworks’ software with Internet Explorer.

In making the deal, Mr. Glaser helped himself to Microsoft’s cash and prestige and calculated that Microsoft wouldn’t consider streaming technology to be as strategic to its future as the browser.

“What we were trying to do in the partnership is to set it up so that our success would not disadvantage their core business,” Mr. Glaser says. “Microsoft is a very paranoid company and so we have tried to create an environment where while they might be covetous of some of our success, analytically they would not fear it.”

The deal gave Mr. Gates the opportunity, if he so desired, to clone RealNetworks’ products during the period when they were licensed to Microsoft. “There’s no question they could use our own technology to become extremely vigorous competitors and try to put us out of business,” says James Breyer, a director and member of Accel Partners, a venture-capital firm that helped finance RealNetworks.

So Mr. Glaser needs to stay ahead of Microsoft by rapidly improving his software, accumulating enough customers to become the standard for sending audio and video over the Internet and diversifying into related businesses.

Last month, for example, he announced an agreement with one of Microsoft’s archrivals, Sun Microsystems Inc., to finetune his software to perform better on Sun’s popular Internet servers than on Windows-based servers.

“They are neither friend nor foe, but Microsoft is most certainly the environment we live in,” says Mr. Glaser, now 36 years old. “It’s how we work within that environment that will make all the difference.”

Mr. Glaser’s own personality seems suited to the relationship’s contradictions. He has been a committed liberal since his days at Yale University, where he wrote a column called “What’s Left” for the student newspaper. He initially named his company Progressive Networks to reflect his politics. And he donated 700,000 RealNetworks shares to causes related to freedom of speech and environmental issues after the public offering, and promises to contribute 5% of the company’s future profits as well.

But he became a notoriously hardcharging and sometimes arrogant manager after he joined Microsoft in 1983, at the age of 21. Some colleagues dubbed him a “screamer.” When deadlines approached for projects, several former colleagues at Microsoft say he became increasingly revved-up, downing one Diet Coke after another and erupting at even tiny mistakes. “My intensity sometimes manifested itself in less positive ways,” Mr. Glaser concedes.

“Like Microsoft, Rob was smart, young, perhaps a little hard to take, and convinced he was absolutely right about a lot of stuff,” recalls Mike Slade, a friend of Mr. Glaser’s at Microsoft who now runs an Internet publishing company, Starwave Corp. “But that was what was rewarded at the company and everything was going too fast there for a lot of management training.”

The pace did take its toll. Even though Mr. Glaser rose to become vice president of multimedia systems and one of Mr. Gates’s favorites, his last years at Microsoft were rocky. Some at the company point to an internal power struggle with Microsoft’s head of technology, Nathan Myhrvold. “They both wanted to be Bill’s boy genius and visionary for the company,” says a colleague. “Obviously, Nathan won.”

Mr. Glaser dismisses tales of infighting, blaming his departure on a diminishing feeling of “joy” in his work. “I began to think that Bill had the best job of all,” he says. In 1993, at the age of 31, he resigned, with about $15 million of stock in his pocket.

His retirement didn’t last long. Soon after, he saw a version of the Mosaic browser, the first graphical interface software for navigating the Web. He had an epiphany, he says, realizing that the Internet could eventually become a major purveyor of audio and video.

Mr. Glaser sank about $1 million of his own money into a start-up that would first produce software for compressing and transmitting sound. With additional funding from friends, such as Lotus founder Mitch Kapor, RealAudio 1.0 quickly made its debut in April 1995.

RealAudio was greeted with more than a little disdain from the Internet elite because it was a tinny and unsatisfying experience for most users. But it gave the Internet a voice, and Mr. Glaser kept plugging away, improving fidelity and striking deals with more content providers to use it on their Web sites. The hook: Free player software for consumers.

He is attempting to repeat the process with RealVideo. It currently provides small, jerky moving pictures but will, he believes, someday transform the Internet as data transmission speeds increase. In a recent demo of the player, Mr. Glaser selected a music video by the languid singer Jewel, he joked, “because she doesn’t move around too much.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been developing its own Media Player and NetShow streaming software, partly with technology acquired by purchasing VXtreme, a RealNetworks competitor.

The Microsoft products are now free. But the company may decide to charge for the latest version of NetShow coming out this year, which would be good for RealNetworks. Meanwhile, Microsoft will continue to bundle RealNetworks’ player software with the Microsoft browser, also good for RealNetworks. And the day after RealNetworks’ Sun deal, Microsoft announced an agreement to make its own Media Player compatible with RealNetworks’ server software, yet another positive development for RealNetworks.

“The user only wants it to work,” says Rich Tong, a Microsoft marketing vice president. “So it is good business to work with RealNetworks to set standards for compatibility and expand the market for all of us.”

Skeptics assert that RealNetworks has forged only a temporary truce with Microsoft. Like Netscape, it must continually confront the challenge of trying to make money on technology that Microsoft gives away. RealNetworks charges $29.95 for an enhanced version of the player it gives away free, and $695 and up for its most powerful server software.

Some large companies are snapping the products up. Mercedes Benz, Eastman Kodak and Lockheed Martin are buying RealNetworks’ latest software, RealSystem 5.0, to bring their internal networks to life. Boeing Co., for example, uses RealNetworks’ software to communicate with employees world-wide and conduct training sessions. A variety of media concerns such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the Public Broadcasting System, AOL, Fox News’s 24-hour newsfeed and Paramount Pictures use it as well.

Mr. Glaser recently cut a deal with Macromedia Inc., the largest provider of animation-editing software, to transmit animated material over the Internet. RealNetworks is also operating multimedia Web sites for other companies, and has a joint venture with MCI Communications Corp. to create a broadcast network on the Web.

All these initiatives are running up big bills. Earlier this month, RealNetworks reported that revenue more than doubled for 1997, to $32.7 million from $14 million the year before. But heavy research and development spending tripled losses to $11.2 million, or 40 cents a share, from $3.8 million, or 14 cents a share. The company’s high costs, plus the looming threat of Microsoft, have depressed the stock, which hovers at around $16 a share, only slightly above the $12.50 a share it opened at when it went public in November.

But Mr. Glaser exudes confidence. His intense personality seems calmer these days. Once divorced, he now has a steady girlfriend and is traveling more frequently, including a summer trip to New Zealand, Australia and French Polynesia, where he made the decision to take RealNetworks public. His 13.5 million shares are worth $218.5 million. And he thinks he has Microsoft figured out. “People in Silicon Valley see things unnecessarily in black and white: You either hate Microsoft or you are a vassal of them. I am saying there is a third way.”

Yahoo is set to announce the sale of its Zimbra open-source email unit to VMware tomorrow, said sources, for a figure north of $100 million but below the $350 million the company paid for the unit in late 2007.

A week ago, BoomTown reported that the sale of Zimbra was likely.

Sources said there is a large employee-retention element to the sale to encourage Zimbra’s talent to make the move to VMware, as well as full retention of intellectual property by Yahoo for technology used in its email products. There will be ongoing IP giveback to VMware (VMW) over a period of time.

In addition, other sources said that Yahoo (YHOO) is about to consider bids it has solicited for its small business unit, which the company has also been trying to sell for some months.

Sources added that Yahoo will not sell the unit if it can’t get a decent price for the division, which is estimated to be worth many hundreds of millions of dollars.

When queried about the sale of Zimbra, Yahoo released this statement:

“We do not comment on rumors or speculation. Zimbra plays an important role today in the company’s communications services. Zimbra technologies have played and will continue to be integral to our leading Yahoo! Mail and Calendar offerings and a key differentiator for the company.”

BoomTown reported in late September that Zimbra was for sale by Yahoo, which has been targeting for “de-acquisition” assets that are not central to the strategies of the company’s new management.

Late last year when announcing its new $100 million marketing campaign, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said at a media briefing, “Most of our assets are very core to the company. Those that aren’t, where it makes sense we will sell and where it makes sense we will shut down.”

Yahoo has done just that with several properties, such as its JumpCut video-editing service.

But Zimbra, as well as its small business and jobs sites, have been on the block.

One source noted that the reason VMware was interested in nabbing Zimbra is that its execs want to expand “up the stack” from the Silicon Valley software company’s position in virtualization.

And Yahoo is no longer interested in running Zimbra’s white-label, open-source email commercial product, which serves the university and ISP markets. There, its main rival has been Google (GOOG).

VMware has not replied to an email query.

This week: A Skype visit with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Israel Derdik and his high-flying media suite, Aviary, a Web-based media-editing platform that enables users to alter, save and present their multimedia creations, all in the cloud.

Who: Israel Derdik, or “Iz” to his friends.

What: CTO of Aviary.

Why: Aviary is a Web-based media-manipulation suite comprised of flash-based tools for in-browser image editing, pattern generation, image effects, image markup, screen capture and audio editing. Let’s call it Adobe (ADBE) Lite.

Where: @iz (Twitter); aviary.com/about (corporate bio); Hewlett, New York (analog place).

Who else: Sumopaint, Pixler, Garage Band.

Five Stats You Won’t Find in His Facebook Profile

Worst Job: Tech Support Intern, Prudential Securities.

Has a Geek Crush on: Gina Trapani, Lifehacker.com.

Gadget of the Moment: Chartbeat app for iPhone.

Wishes There Was an App for: Home automation. “I want to have little touchscreens in every room of the house to control lights, HVAC, alarms, all of it. Basically, I want the touchscreens.”

First Computer: Commodore VIC 20. “My dad brought home a VIC 20 when I was six or seven. We played these little games on it–it had a tape drive. I’ve been hooked ever since.”

Bio in 140 Characters

Born in Brooklyn. CS degree from Brooklyn College. Became an intern at ConEd. Bubble of Web 1.0 burst. Then co-founded Aviary.

The Five Questions

What makes Aviary different from Adobe CS or Garage Band?

Aviary can do lots of things, but there’s nothing to install. It’s flash-based and runs right in your browser. The benefit of running that stuff in the cloud is every time you save it, it saves to our servers, and you can access it from any computer.

We also make it easy to do the basic edits on Aviary. Then, for example, [you could] move the project to Photoshop for more heavy-duty stuff. You can also open other peoples’ works–if they haven’t made them private with a premium account–and see how they did something. We call it “creation on the fly.”

Are users ready for this?

Absolutely. We’re seeing it [cloud computing] more with Gmail; people are moving more of their applications to the Web. I think online image editing is still in its nascent stages, but it’s going to get there. [Aviary is] definitely building for the power user, the top of the pyramid, but it will trickle down.

You just completed a successful round of funding. How will Aviary expand?

Well, we’d love to get into bed with Flickr [Yahoo’s (YHOO) popular image-sharing site]. We can already pull images right from your Flickr account, and very shortly we’ll be able to push images back via their API. Currently, there’s a big hole for video editing and stuff for YouTube.

That’s a really, really tough problem to solve because of the file sizes involved. There is also music creation possibly, as opposed to just looping things together and adding effects.

Every geek has a memory where they saw something new and had to say to themselves, “Dang, I love living in the future.” What’s yours?

I’ll tell you exactly what it is because it really stands out. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Wannado City in Florida. It’s a kids’ amusement park that’s entirely indoors. It looks like a huge city, and the kids can do all the jobs–they can be police officers, and there’s fire trucks going back an forth that the kids can sit in, and there’s a bakery–it’s a really cool place. But what struck me as cool is that they give this bracelet to each person in the family when you walk in, and at any given moment you can walk to a kiosk, swipe your bracelet and see where anyone else in your family is in the building. I assume they are using some kind of RFID tags, but when I saw that I was like, “Wow, that’s really awesome.”

If you could change one thing about the Internet, what would it be?

The worst would have to be bad advice in tech support forums. Sometimes, I go on there, and there is just really bad advice. I look at it and think, “I could do that better.” Incompetence drives me crazy.

The In Living Color Interview

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091113/almost-famous-aviarys-israel-derdik/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090506/quickoffice-brings-editing-to-iphones-but-put-it-on-hold/ http://allthingsd.com/20090506/quickoffice-brings-editing-to-iphones-but-put-it-on-hold/#comments Thu, 07 May 2009 01:04:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090506/quickoffice-brings-editing-to-iphones-but-put-it-on-hold/ I am typing these words in a full-fledged word processor on an Apple iPhone. It’s a third-party app that allows you to edit, format or create Microsoft Word and Excel documents, and then send them back to a PC or Mac where they can be opened in Word or Excel. Oh, and it has cut, copy and paste in its word processor — a capability long missing from the iPhone that isn’t due from Apple (AAPL) itself until this summer.

Devotees of older smart phones, tired of iPhone hype, will be quick to note this is no innovation. Devices like Windows Mobile phones, Palm (PALM) Treos and BlackBerrys have made these abilities available for years. But, for the 37 million iPhone and iPod Touch owners, it’s potentially a major step forward, closing a hole in a hand-held computing platform that is otherwise more elegant and versatile than any other.

This new app, called Quickoffice, has some nice features. Its cut, copy and paste function is very well designed. It can save files locally on the phone. It has a built-in email function for sending files to others, and it can upload or download files to and from a PC or Mac, or to and from online storage.

But there’s a catch. While Quickoffice, which is also available on other platforms, did work OK in my tests, it has some major drawbacks that keep me from recommending it right now. The product’s maker, Quickoffice Inc., acknowledges these and is working to fix them by summer. But, especially because Quickoffice costs $19.99, a Rolls-Royce price in the iPhone’s app store, you might want to hold off on buying it until the fixes are in place.

In particular, Quickoffice can’t simply load and edit any Word or Excel file you receive as an email attachment. The company claims this is a built-in iPhone limitation, but it’s still a big problem for users. Instead, to get files into Quickoffice for editing, you have to transfer them using a Wi-Fi network from your PC or Mac, or from the iDisk online storage feature of Apple’s MobileMe Web service, which costs $99 a year.

Also, amazingly, Quickoffice shipped without any automatic typo-correcting function or spell checker. For various technical reasons, it couldn’t even use the one built into the iPhone. So, you have to do a lot of correcting of typos once the file gets onto a computer. For instance, the first words of this column, as originally created in Quickoffice, read: “I am typing these words in a full-feledged word pricessor … ” I had to clean them up in Word on my laptop.

The Quickword app on iPhone

And, while you can view a text or spreadsheet file in landscape mode, you can do only limited editing of text documents in this mode, and no editing at all of spreadsheet documents viewed in landscape.

Quickoffice for the iPhone consists of three modules. One is Quickword, the word processor. The second is Quicksheet, the spreadsheet program. These two, also separately available from the app store at $12.99 each, can handle standard Microsoft (MSFT) .doc and . xls files, but not Microsoft’s newer .docx and .xlsx formats. The third module, called Quickoffice Files, merely transfers and displays files, but doesn’t allow editing or creating them. It handles a much wider variety of file types, and is sold separately for $1.99.

Cut, copy and paste is implemented nicely. You simply double-tap to select a word or triple-tap to select a paragraph. Small dots appear at either end of the selection, allowing you to expand or contract the selected section of text. Once your selection is done, you can then cut it or copy it, or change its formatting. To cut or copy your selection, you just choose cut or copy from a popup menu. To paste, you tap once elsewhere in the document, and then select Paste from a popup menu. You can paste text copied or cut from one Quickword document into another, but not into any other app on the iPhone. (Apple will add that ability this summer.)

Quickword is the better of the two main modules. It has an impressive suite of features, including the ability to bold or italicize characters, change fonts and colors, create bullet points, and undo or redo changes. All of this formatting was retained correctly when I transferred the files to a computer, and vice versa. Quickword doesn’t have every feature of Word on a computer, but its feature set is strong.

Quicksheet has 125 functions. It also does formatting of cells well, and has undo and redo. Again, it isn’t as powerful as Excel, but its capabilities are decent. Unfortunately, unlike in the word processor, I found some problems in Quicksheet. In one simple spreadsheet I imported, it failed to properly display text that stretched across multiple cells, and failed to do a simple recalculation that worked perfectly in Excel. Also, it lacks cut, copy and paste.

Getting documents into the app is a pain. Unless you have a MobileMe account, on either Windows or Mac, you have to type a geeky numerical address into a Web browser and then choose a file from your computer using the browser page that comes up.

Quickoffice is an OK start, but it needs a lot of work.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090506/quickoffice-brings-editing-to-iphones-but-put-it-on-hold/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090416/yahoos-jumpcut-jumps-off-cliff-but-you-can-send-your-videos-to-yahoos-flickr/ http://allthingsd.com/20090416/yahoos-jumpcut-jumps-off-cliff-but-you-can-send-your-videos-to-yahoos-flickr/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:01:29 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=12328

You could see this one coming a mile out: After telling users they could not upload new videos late last year, Yahoo is finally shutting down Jumpcut.

“This was a difficult decision to make, but it’s part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo!,” said Jumpcut in a note to users today.

That’s code for the stylings of new CEO Carol Bartz, who is hard at work axing many of Yahoo’s similarly lagging services.

She has reportedly been readying plans to sell off Yahoo’s lackluster HotJobs employment listing service, for example. And there will surely be more to come, from the many companies Yahoo has gobbled up in the last few years and has done nothing much with.

Such as the sassy video editing service, which was bought by Yahoo in 2006 amid high hopes of the Internet giant becoming a big player in the hot online video market.

That honor, as it turned out, went to YouTube, which was more cats-on-skateboards-oriented than tools-oriented.

Yahoo (YHOO), ironically, was poised to buy YouTube in the month after it grabbed Jumpcut, until it was snatched away in a last-minute acquisition grab by Google (GOOG).

Now, Jumpcut is a wrap.

Curiously, Yahoo is making users download the videos to their computers, and then suggests they upload them to another Yahoo property, Flickr, which now allows video.

Why the company doesn’t just let people migrate the videos is probably due to the silos of tech at Yahoo, which are infamous and which the company is trying to fix.

But not today.

Thus, Jumpcut sent this note to its customers:

Dear Jumpcut user,

After careful consideration, we will be officially closing the Jumpcut.com site on June 15, 2009. This was a difficult decision to make, but it’s part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo!

Very soon, we’ll be releasing a software utility that will allow you to download the movies you created on Jumpcut to your computer. We’ll send instructions to this email address when the download utility is available.

Once you download your movies, you may choose to upload them to another site such as Flickr, which now allows video uploads. You can find out more here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/video/

Thanks for your understanding and thanks for being a part of Jumpcut.

The Jumpcut Team

And, for a trip down memory lane to happier times, here is the memo Yahoo wrote when it bought the San Francisco start-up:

SEPTEMBER 27, 2006

Jumpcut Joins the Yahoo! Video Family

Yes it’s true!

Jumpcut just announced they’ve agreed to join us, which will make Yahoo! Video an even better place for people to create, share, and discover great video online. If you haven’t heard of Jumpcut, it’s a San Francisco-based startup that has a passionate community of users and a great suite of online video editing capabilities.

Ever since Yahoo! Research Berkeley launched the International Remixer, our interest in this space has been pretty clear–we couldn’t stop talking about how cool it is to mashup multimedia of all kinds.

So needless to say, we are very happy to have Jumpcut join the Social Media group here. They’ll be bunk-mates with Flickr, and just around the virtual corner from Delicious, and Upcoming.

Please head over to Jumpcut’s blog for the official word.

Jason Zajac
VP Social Media

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090416/yahoos-jumpcut-jumps-off-cliff-but-you-can-send-your-videos-to-yahoos-flickr/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090402/is-office-finally-coming-to-the-iphone-you-betcha/ http://allthingsd.com/20090402/is-office-finally-coming-to-the-iphone-you-betcha/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:10:29 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=15905 Is Microsoft truly committed to bringing its major productivity applications to mobile devices? Of course it is. Will Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone be one of them? Absolutely. How can I say that with such certainty? Well, because Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft’s Business Division, hinted at Web 2.0 Expo yesterday that it would be. But more importantly, because Microsoft formally announced it last November. From the Microsoft Office Web Applications Q&A:

“Q: Do the Office Web Applications require Internet Explorer?

A: No! Office Web applications will work across multiple platforms and browsers including Safari and Firefox, too.

Q: Will the Office Web Applications work on the iPhone?

A: Yes, in the Safari web browser.”

OK, sure it’s not a native app, but Microsoft (MSFT) says it will support “lightweight editing,” which is likely all you’d want to do on an iPhone, anyway.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090402/is-office-finally-coming-to-the-iphone-you-betcha/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090402/is-office-finally-coming-to-the-iphone-you-betcha-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20090402/is-office-finally-coming-to-the-iphone-you-betcha-2/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:10:29 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=15905 Is Microsoft truly committed to bringing its major productivity applications to mobile devices? Of course it is. Will Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone be one of them? Absolutely. How can I say that with such certainty? Well, because Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft’s Business Division, hinted at Web 2.0 Expo yesterday that it would be. But more importantly, because Microsoft formally announced it last November. From the Microsoft Office Web Applications Q&A:

“Q: Do the Office Web Applications require Internet Explorer?

A: No! Office Web applications will work across multiple platforms and browsers including Safari and Firefox, too.

Q: Will the Office Web Applications work on the iPhone?

A: Yes, in the Safari web browser.”

OK, sure it’s not a native app, but Microsoft (MSFT) says it will support “lightweight editing,” which is likely all you’d want to do on an iPhone, anyway.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090402/is-office-finally-coming-to-the-iphone-you-betcha-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080417/adobe-web-photo-site-is-great-for-editing-but-lacks-some-basics/ http://allthingsd.com/20080417/adobe-web-photo-site-is-great-for-editing-but-lacks-some-basics/#comments Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:01:00 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080417/adobe-web-photo-site-is-great-for-editing-but-lacks-some-basics/ The biggest name in photo software for many years has been Adobe’s Photoshop. But, as more and more photos migrated online, Adobe (ADBE) became concerned that people would associate photo software less with its own locally installed programs than with Web-based products and services.

So, last month, the photo giant introduced Photoshop Express, its free Web-based service for storing, sharing and editing photos, in an effort to compete with established online photo services such as Yahoo’s (YHOO) Flickr, Google’s (GOOG) Picasa Web Albums, or the photo-laden Facebook social-networking service.

Photoshop Express has many of the same features as Flickr and its ilk. It gives you two free gigabytes of photo storage. But Adobe is hoping to make its mark with editing.

Most online photo services offer little or no editing, assuming you’ll do that using software on your computer before you upload your pictures. But Photoshop Express, borrowing from Adobe’s deep knowledge of photo editing, offers the nicest set of Web-based editing tools I have seen. They are sophisticated for a consumer application, yet easy to use. They edge out those in Picnik, a pioneering Web-based photo editor I hailed last year.

These slick editing tools are not only available for use with photos you’ve uploaded from your hard disk. You can also use them to edit pictures stored in your accounts at Facebook, Picasa Web Albums and another big photo-storage service, Photobucket — all without leaving Photoshop Express. You can even move pictures between Photoshop Express and these three services just by dragging and dropping.

Adobe’s new service is available in the U.S. only, at www.photoshop.com/express.

I’ve been testing Photoshop Express and its service overall is pretty good, even though it’s still labeled “beta.” It’s a nice example of the Web 2.0 trend, where programs accessed via a browser can look and feel like applications that live on your computer.

But Photoshop Express is rough around the edges. It can be slow at times, and it’s missing some obvious features, like the ability to easily download publicly shared pictures from other members or to print photos. Adobe says it is working on these things.

Photoshop Express isn’t meant to replicate all the features and power of Photoshop. It’s more like a Web-based version of Photoshop Elements, Adobe’s consumer software package.

I tested Photoshop Express on multiple computers: PCs running Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows XP and Windows Vista, and Macs running Apple’s (AAPL) Leopard operating system. I used it in all three major Web browsers: Internet Explorer for Windows, Firefox on both Windows and Mac, and Safari, also on both platforms. It worked fine in all of these operating systems and browsers, though it does require Adobe’s free Flash software.

For my tests, I uploaded from my computers dozens of photos, from very large images captured with good digital cameras to smaller shots from cellphones. All were handled perfectly by Photoshop Express. I also opened and edited pictures in Photoshop Express from my accounts on Picasa Web Albums and Facebook. All of this worked well, though uploads of large images can be slow if your Web connection is pokey.

Photoshop Express is a handsome product, presenting your photos on a gray background with controls and features arrayed at the top and bottom, and down the sides, in a logical, clear manner. Your own photos are presented in a section called “My Photos,” and can be organized into albums. Photos that other Photoshop Express users have chosen to publicly share are organized into collections called “Galleries,” which can include multiple albums. You access these community photos by simply clicking on “Browse” or performing a search.

For each album you create, you can choose to share it publicly or to keep it private. Whichever option you choose, you can email friends either a link for viewing the album or a single photo. Your own photos can be downloaded at a variety of resolutions, including original size.

When you view shared galleries or albums, they appear as slide shows. You can select a number of slick effects by which the slides appear, allowing them to zoom and glide into place from various directions.

The editing features really stand out. In addition to standard tools such as auto-correction and red-eye elimination, Photoshop Express lets you touch up areas; adjust exposure, saturation, and lighting; and even make certain colors pop — so grass is greener, for instance. And, in most cases, it shows you small example images illustrating the changes, then previews those changes in the larger main image just by moving your mouse over the example. You can revert to your original at any time.

Unfortunately, there are a number of problems. Photos, especially large ones, can take awhile to appear in the editing module and to snap into focus. Captions sometimes get lost or mixed up when you move photos to other services. You can view shared albums only as slide shows, not as individual photos.

Still, Adobe has made a good start with Photoshop Express, and it’s worth a try if you want better online editing for your pictures.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080417/adobe-web-photo-site-is-great-for-editing-but-lacks-some-basics/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20070829/printer-digital-picture-frame-in-one/ http://allthingsd.com/20070829/printer-digital-picture-frame-in-one/#comments Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:01:00 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20070829/printer-digital-picture-frame-in-one/ Digital picture frames store numerous images and display them in a mini-slide show, adding life to a room filled with unchanging, framed print shots. And digital shots always have a leg up on prints because they can be edited, cropped and improved. But people value the permanency of prints, which they can hold, frame or add to an album.

This week, I tested a product that marries prints with the digital frame: Hewlett-Packard‘s $249 HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center.

The A826 is the latest in H-P’s series of compact countertop home snapshot printers, meant to turn out small photos quickly. But it has an unusual form, with a large seven-inch screen that also allows for images to be displayed in slide shows, like a digital picture frame. This touch-screen also lets users edit shots using a finger or stylus. Pressing one button prints the image in about a minute and a half.

HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center

This new model, due in stores this weekend, is meant to work as a home photo kiosk, so it’s a bit bigger than H-P’s compact photo printers, which have built-in handles for portability and take up less space. The A826 is also pricier than these smaller printers — $70 more than the newest model.

I liked the idea behind this photo printer, editing station and digital frame. Its large screen, 5.6 inches of which are used for the photos, was a welcome change to most photo printers with preview screens that can’t be seen without squinting. But I was disappointed by some of the A826′s features. The newly added ability to draw on images, for example, yielded results that looked fine on-screen but printed out looking like scribble. Removing red eye didn’t seem to improve images on the screen; only when printed did these shots appear red-eye free. And the touch-screen wasn’t as sensitive as I would’ve liked, requiring a few tries to get some buttons to respond.

I couldn’t help but compare the A826 with standalone digital frames. Unlike almost all such frames, the A826 lacks internal storage meaning that in order to keep a slide show going, a memory card, USB drive or camera would need to be plugged into the device. Some digital frames also come with built-in wireless networking to pull images from the Web; the A826 doesn’t have this capability.

This device is hard to miss. Its rounded edges are covered in a stylish white plastic, and the screen is surrounded by black and a pretty shade of pale blue, making it look like a prop from the Jetsons cartoon. It measures roughly the same width as H-P’s compact photo printers, but stands more than twice as tall with the screen at the top so users don’t have to bend as far down to see images. Photo paper measuring 4 by 6 or 5 by 7 inches feeds into the back of the printer in a neat, enclosed compartment that holds up to 100 sheets.

A tiny speaker on the front side of the A826 emits cutesy chimes whenever the device powers on or finishes printing a photo, which I liked. It also uses its large screen for illustrating how to perform tasks like loading paper or inserting a print cartridge.

I got started using the HP Photosmart A826 for its digital frame capabilities, inserting my digital camera’s SecureDigital memory card into a slot below the viewing screen and queuing up about 400 images from my memory card. Images appear on the screen six at a time and in the bottom left corner of each there is a white circle, which can be touched to give it a red checkmark, putting it in the slide-show queue. Tapping the center of any shot magnifies it for editing.

I marked about 30 photos and played them in succession by touching a Slideshow button on the far right edge of the screen. This touchscreen button and others — representing Menu, Back, Print, Scroll Left and Scroll Right — line the left and right black borders of the screen. Only the buttons that make sense to choose at any given time will glow, so users know which ones can be selected and, therefore, can navigate a little easier. For instance, in the Get Creative editing menu, only the Scroll Left, Scroll Right and Back buttons glow.

I folded up a flap that covers the memory-card slots and left my slide show playing for a while on my kitchen counter. It worked like a digital picture frame, for the most part. If the A826 isn’t used for about 10 minutes, it will automatically switch into slide-show mode — a feature I found useful for moments when I didn’t remember that I left it on. This automatic slide show switches over to a black screen after about an hour, though programmed slide shows stay on until turned off.

Touching the screen when an image appears, mid-slide show, will pause the slide show for editing or printing. I used my finger to do simple editing, and most options are offered in large touch-screen buttons, though in more than one instance I had to press buttons with my finger a few times to get them to work. A small white stylus helped, especially for drawing on photos.

I drew cartoon bubbles coming out of people’s mouths and wrote little messages like, “Hey y’all!” bubbling from a Texan friend in a shot from her trip to Europe. These touches can be done in different colors and line thicknesses, and mistakes can easily be erased. They looked good on-screen, but when printed, turned pixilated and detracted from the photo.

I tried some more normal photo editing, such as cropping photos, enhancing a photo’s brightness and removing red eye. The last of these options didn’t work so well in my photos, seeming to leave eyes glowing on the screen. When I printed these shots for the sake of testing, I realized that red eye was actually removed in almost all instances. But this is confusing for users who don’t want to waste ink and paper finding out whether or not the image was corrected.

I found the A826′s most useful photo-enhancing option to be the ability to add captions to shots. These can be entered by using an on-screen keyboard, choosing from five fonts and six colors. The caption can be dragged around the screen to test where it will look best. These typed fonts looked professional and neat, especially compared with my own drawn-on editing.

Printing on the HP Photosmart A826 worked without a problem. It comes with five 5-by-7-inch sheets of paper enough ink for 20 4-by-6-inch prints. Value packs of paper and ink for 120 4-by-6-inch prints cost $35. The printer automatically detects whether it’s loaded with photo paper measuring 5-by-7 or 4-by-6 inches, and prints accordingly. A 5-by-7-inch shot takes a bit longer to print, but looked rather good.

The HP Photosmart A826 seems like it was designed with good intentions, and its large touchscreen is an improvement all on its own. But too many features of this device didn’t work the way they should, from red eyes that didn’t appear fixed on-screen to the touchscreen that didn’t always respond right away. H-P will find an eager audience with this home photo kiosk, but it needs improvement.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email: mossbergsolution@wsj.com

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