This is a massive move and also a risky one. Yahoo’s homepage sees about 170 million daily users who click in to do a variety of things. That huge traffic means that advertising placements earn big bucks from marketers — which inside sources said is typically upwards of $350,000 for a prime placement for a day, rising in price depending on complexity.

Thus, making any dramatic change to the powerful homepage is a big deal for Yahoo’s bottom line, especially in the important fourth quarter, when big advertisers spend a lot of money online and expect big results.

And the latest versions are certainly a major shift from Yahoo’s older look, with the latest using an interactive tiled approach at the very top that suggests the design spawn of Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Flipboard’s elegant social reading app.

As I noted last week, along with experiments in infinite scrolling, a simplified logo and giving search more prominence, Yahoo’s homepage change seems to be aimed at being consumed on touch-responsive, non-PC devices.

That’s no surprise, since Mayer declared in a recent earnings call that Yahoo was going to veer toward a “mobile first” sensibility. “Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company,” she said.

She also has to aim at being a reliable digital company, it seems. In a bit of unlucky timing — even as Yahoo prepped the home page redo, as well as major overhauls of other products — its hugely popular Fantasy Football offering went down right as eight games were about to start at 10 am PT.

Yahoo acknowledged the slowness in its servers on Twitter, noting: “We’re still working to fix fantasy server issue & will update ASAP. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience & appreciate your patience.”

Fantasy Football fans were livid, although this has happened before, especially to those who waited to do their lineup. But some were also funny about the screw-up, as you can see below:

Yahoo Fantasy Football site is down. The Republicans were right; America has officially collapsed. The apocalypse is upon us.

— Steve Fuller (@fullsteve) November 11, 2012

Dear Google, please develop a fantasy football platform. That will end Yahoo! as we know it. Love, Long Suffering Yahoo! Fantasy users.

— WFAN Audio Clips (@WFANAudio) November 11, 2012

As of two hours ago, Yahoo said it was still working on the problem. Presumably, it will be the first fix-it challenge for new COO Henrique De Castro, who starts this week.

Hopefully, Yahoo will not have such problems with the homepage rollout, once the final version is selected.

Until then, please check out two images of yet another version, which is similar — although not the same — as the one I posted last week. In the latest design, for example, the swooshy scroll at the top is smaller and a 300 by 250-sized ad unit is back in place at the top. Overall, it is a little bit more conservative, although still streamlined.

Here they are, along with a more dramatic one from last week and also a recent Yahoo homepage:

.

(Mark Sanchez photo: Debby Wong / Shutterstock.com)

Another week and yet another new design for the Yahoo homepage is being tested out on users — this time, it appears to be one (which you can see below) that looks a lot like Microsoft Windows 8’s touchscreen tiled approach (which is here).

After already putting out tests in the field with infinite scrolling, a simplified logo and giving search more prominence, the Silicon Valley Internet giant is apparently testing an even more drastically different redesign of its key landing page — one that seems to be aimed at being consumed on touch-responsive, non-PC devices.

As you can see from the screenshots below — which a user sent me, and which look exactly like what many Yahoo sources have described to me recently — the design uses big photos tiled across the top of the page. It suggests an ethos that is reminiscent of the new approach by Microsoft, as well as many others, such as Flipboard and Pinterest.

All of these encourage users to reach out and touch, scroll and swoosh. In fact, there are side-swiping arrows on the new Yahoo design.

Also part of the look, which is still being tweaked: More simplified icons for various Yahoo properties, fewer text links, additional social and personalization aspects and — perhaps most importantly — no advertising module at the very top.

That’s interesting, since Yahoo’s homepage is a big moneymaker for the company, because of its huge daily traffic. Thus, any new homepage design will have both massive consumer and financial impact on the company.

Sources said that one possible plan is to move from several 300 by 250-sized ad units to a single 300 by 600, which other sites like AOL have shifted toward. Such a change will not be without controversy for marketers.

It will also present a fresh selling challenge for new COO Henrique De Castro, who arrives at Yahoo from Google next week, and who will be helming sales efforts. (Hey, Henrique — get ready for my upcoming 360-degree profile of you!)

The latest redo is now being iterated under the regime of new CEO Marissa Mayer, under an awfully confident codename, Project Homerun. We’ll see if it is San Francisco Giant’s Panda-worthy, but sources said it is set to be released widely within the next two months.

But, while some new designs that have surfaced have been closer to the current version of Yahoo, the latest design is a more significant shift that would clearly lend itself well to mobile touchscreens, especially on increasingly popular tablets.

Along with Pinterest, Flipboard and Windows 8, other sites have done this, of course, most particularly pioneering content design done several years ago by BermanBraun’s Wonderwall for Microsoft’s MSN portal.

That’s no surprise, since Mayer declared in a recent earnings call — articulating what many desktop-trapped Silicon Valley Internet giants have also done recently — that Yahoo was going to also veer toward a “mobile first” sensibility.

“Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company,” she said in the third-quarter earnings call.

Here’s what that seems to mean for Yahoo, with the new homepage images, as well as one of the current one to compare:

The $50 “budget” smartphones, the latest in T-Mobile’s line of carrier-exclusive devices, hit the market earlier this month and offered some features on par with higher-end smartphones. As I wrote in my review of the phones, “the Huawei-made myTouch and myTouch Q … run 1.4GHz single-core processors, have five-megapixel rear-facing cameras, offer good call quality and are equipped with a Nuance-powered voice-command feature,” though I noted that the outdated Android Gingerbread OS might be a drawback for new smartphone shoppers.

But Consumer Reports is shooting down the idea that the cameras actually shoot five-megapixel photos. A blog post published earlier today reads, “According to Consumer Reports engineers, the phones’ rear-facing main camera, supposedly offering 5 megapixels, actually offers a maximum resolution of 3.9 megapixels. The problem showed up on multiple shots taken on several samples of both phones, all with software we ensured was up to date.”

The problem, Consumer Reports continued, stems not from the camera capabilities, but from the fact that the two phones automatically crop images to accomodate a widescreen 16×9 frame. In lopping off some of the pixels, it lowers the resolution of photos, resulting in “wide images that were only fair in image quality.”

Update: T-Mobile says Huawei and T-Mobile are aware of this issue and will be working on a software fix so that the myTouch and myTouch Q cameras can live up to the five-megapixel potential. For now, the Web page for the myTouch still claims a five-megapixel camera.

If you want a quick analysis of why Facebook would pay $1 billion for popular photo-sharing service Instagram, please ignore the obvious financials that just don’t add up at all and have most of the typically unshockable digerati shocked by the sheer amount of the price.

Actually, it’s pretty simple: Photos. Photos. And, oh yes, mobile photos — lots and lots and lots of them.

Astonishingly, Facebook users already upload an average of more than 250 million images daily, making it the most popular photo-sharing service on the Web.

But it’s not the best by far and not the most mobile, which is Facebook’s biggest weakness — that has been accomplished many others, especially Instagram, the favorite of power users who scoffed at Facebook’s weak tools. (The horror of no filters!)

Now — instead of all those billions of juicy digital photos snapped by an ever-growing legion of smartphone users loading up to the beautifully designed Instagram mobile app and living on the servers of the small San Francisco-based start-up — Facebook has now captured all these memories for its massive social networking site.

And while $1 billion seems an awful lot to pay for that privilege — Twitter is quaking with “OMG!” and “Wow!” and “WTF!” tweets about the acquisition — this is apparently priceless for Facebook in a deal that went down quickly and quietly in recent weeks.

That and the fact that the huge sum prevented Instagram from being scooped up by Google.

It’s a clear signal from CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — who rules all product efforts at the company — of his intent to dominate all innovations that have to do with owning the social experience.

Because while many Instagram photos quickly made their way onto Facebook — sharing on the service, as well as on Twitter, was a big part of the app’s offering — the future of the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company is tied to having control over key elements of the user experience.

Of all of those — communications, status updates, content linking — it has been photos that have become perhaps the most important part of Facebook, almost since its beginnings.

Photos are what allowed Facebook to grow so quickly and what made it more than just a blue sea of text and links to consumers. Its new Timeline depends on big, pretty photos, and Facebook even recently announced that it would allow full-screen viewing of high-resolution photos on its Web site, a pricey endeavor.

So, perhaps it was inevitable that Zuckerberg would pay up for Instagram, too — he knows a good entrepreneurial success when he sees one and apparently has the power to convince start-ups that he can make their bigger dreams come true.

Whether or not Instagram ever makes money is perhaps beside the point at this moment in time, as Facebook is poised to go public at 100 times the amount it forked over for Instagram.

But that it considers such a purchase worth as much as one percent of its expected valuation says a thousands words. And most of those words are “mobile” and “photo.”

As Ben Jacobs noted on Twitter: “Kodak goes bankrupt and Instagram is worth a billion dollars. 2012, y’all.”

Indeed. And, I have no doubt if Zuckerberg could figure out a way to shove all those Kodak moments from analog snapshots onto Facebook easily, he’d have paid up for that, too.

But for some reason, this stunning new version of the “Blue Marble” photo of Earth — taken on Jan. 4 by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite instrument on NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite — is vaguely comforting.

Perhaps because it speaks of a much bigger picture, and of how delicately and elegantly life hangs in the dark universe.

All via an amazing piece of tech, the Suomi NPP, which NASA said is the “first of a new generation of satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth.”

Enjoy:

(Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring)

After the departure of top Yahoo advertising sales exec Seth Dallaire, who decamped to Amazon this week, Yahoo did a little reorganization of its U.S. sales team.

(I promise to stop with the LOLcat images after this one for a while, but it is purrfect.)

Rather than go into the deets, you can just read the internal memo on it from Wayne Powers, SVP of advertising sales for North America:

Team:

These first few weeks of the year have been a phenomenal showing of Yahoo! pride and a clear display of the opportunities we’re poised to capitalize on this year.

In discussions with executives from our 100+ meetings with some of our largest advertisers, agencies, and holding companies at CES, it’s clear we’re changing the dialogue by having a consistent go-to-market strategy: Premium Content Experiences, at Scale, Across Screens; by listening to and engaging with our clients in meaningful ways; and by focusing on digital media and innovation. We were given the top performance rating by one of our Global Agency partners — out of the five media publishers they met with, we were ranked number one based on our continued commitment to providing clarity and consistency in strategy and to strengthening our partnership. Great work everyone!

With that context, there are some changes that I want to announce effective today. Seth Dallaire is leaving Yahoo! to run North American Sales at Amazon. While it’s never easy losing great people, we’re fortunate that he has a very talented team that will carry on the focus and momentum. Please join me in wishing him continued success!

As part of this transition, Mark Ellis will expand his role to take on leadership of the Global Agency and Client Partnership teams. He will continue to lead North American Field Sales.

I’m excited to announce that Peter Foster will to take on leadership duties and will serve as the lead for our partnership with AOL and Microsoft, Interclick, mid-market display, mid-market acquisition sales, and the Channel Reseller team, reporting to me. Peter joined us as part of the acquisition of 5:1 where he served as Chief Revenue Officer, and has a long career in the industry. He previously was SVP sales at ValueClick/Fastclick, one of the biggest ad networks in the world, oversaw revenue at Photobucket after it was acquired by News Corporation, was an early pioneer in the monetization space at L90, and held senior revenue posts at Kosmix and Hi5.

I’m also excited to announce that Marc Grabowski will take on an expanded role and now will head the combined Interclick and mid market sales teams. As part of this new team, Michael Katz, the CEO of Interclick, will lead all sales operations and data and performance optimization for the combined teams. Both Marc and Michael will report to Peter.

We are fortunate to have such a talented team here at Yahoo!. Ross and I are confident that Peter, Mark, and Michael will lead our efforts to change the conversation in this space and industry.

I want to thank everyone for their continued hard work and dedication. We have a great team and a lot to be excited about. We continue to hear feedback from the agencies and clients about our progress, so let’s keep up the focus and energy and deliver on our goals! Please let me or your managers know if you have any questions.

–Wayne

It’s not clear if Netflix’s recent series of snafus are Amazon’s gain or not. But in a just-released report by ForeSee, one went up and one went down.

It’s an easy guess which was which.

In the well-known customer satisfaction survey of the Top 40 online retailers during the holiday season — which ForeSee has been conducting twice a year for the last seven years — Amazon rose to its highest spot ever, while Netflix’s score dropped significantly.

Amazon got an 88 out of 100, up two points, while Netflix dropped seven points to 79. The survey noted that “Netflix saw scores drop in every single element of the website that ForeSee measures, including site content, site functionality, merchandise, and prices.”

Ooops.

(Netflix fared better with customers in another poll last week, conducted by Citigroup. As Peter Kafka noted: “They’re less happy than they used to be. But they don’t seem to be going anywhere.”)

But in the ForeSee survey, Netflix moved from being a consumer darling to just another face in the crowd. It garnered the average score, which is also 79, a number that has risen from 74 since 2005.

But Netflix was not the only online retailer hit. Also down: Gap.com (down 6 percent to 73), and Overstock.com (down 5 percent to 72).

But on the up: TigerDirect.com (up 8 percent to 79) and J.C. Penney (up 6 percent to 83).

In general, ForeSee concluded that consumers are starting to get the hang of this e-commerce thing, and have become less price-sensitive, too.

And here’s a pretty chart explaining it all (click on the image to make it larger):

Earlier today, well-known digerati dude Robert Scoble posted on his social feed on Google+ that the search giant was working on a social and news reader.

“I heard from someone working with Google that Google is working on a Flipboard competitor for both Android and iPad,” posted Scoble. “My source says that the versions he’s seen so far are mind-blowing good.”

If blowing the minds of hot Silicon Valley start-up Flipboard and Facebook is the goal, then Scooby-Don’t's rumor is pretty spot-on.

According to numerous sources close to the situation, Google is indeed working on rolling out the new product, which is currently called Propeller.

Sources said Propeller is apparently one of a number of new socially focused announcements Google is prepping, including new apps. But the timing for their launch is unclear.

Here’s what is: Propeller is a souped-up version of similar reader apps such as Flipboard, AOL’s Editions, Yahoo’s Livestand, Zite (which was just bought by Time Warner’s CNN) and Pulse.

Facebook is also making social versions of publications available within its site. So, instead of just seeing a sidebar on a news site of what stories your friends liked, you’ll get a personalized and reformatted version of the latest news when you visit that publication’s page within Facebook.

All these apps are part of the drastically changing habits of media consumers, helping them better navigate numerous social and media feeds — such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as news sites and more — using handsome interfaces and touch technologies.

Flipboard is the most prominent and elegant of these offerings, available only on the Apple iPad. The company is working on an iPhone version, too.

Flipboard’s traction among elite users, along with its high-level design ethos and strong reviews, is why Google tried to buy the well-funded company last year, sources said.

But Flipboard — which is backed by some of tech’s biggest venture players, who have invested more than $60 million at a $200 million valuation — declined the kind offer.

At the time, sources said, Google told Flipboard execs that if it did not buy the start-up, it planned to do a version of its own.

Hence, after I heard about the product earlier this year, I dubbed it the Flipinator.

Propeller is probably a better name, I will admit.

It’s not clear what Google’s Propeller will include in the product, such as Facebook integration, since the pair of Silicon Valley behemoths have not been able to partner over data exchange.

Which is an understatement, I know.

But sources said it would be available on both Apple’s iPad and Google’s Android tablets.

In any case, stay tuned and thanks to Scoobs for the tip!

[Photo credit: This Noogler Propeller Hat -- which is given to all new Googlers -- is in the collection at the Computer History Museum, the gift of Marcin Wichary; the image is by Mark Richards.]

A corporate traffic accident, like the one at Hewlett-Packard today, makes a lot of news, of course.

But it is also a time for our crack staff at AllThingsD — especially Adam Tow and John Murrell — to get in some real practice with Photoshop, in order to depict in snarky images what we are writing in our posts.

And, might I say, this HP mess is inspirational in that regard.

Here’s their lovely work from this disaster:

Related posts

• Hewlett-Packard Says Goodbye to PCs, webOS
• HP Pulls Plug on webOS Hardware, Leaves OS Future in Doubt
• HP And webOS: But They Seemed So Happy Together!
• Liveblogging HP’s “Everything Including the Kitchen Sink” Conference Call
• HP’s Apotheker: We Struck Out with WebOS, but Maybe Someone Else Wants a Swing?
• Viral Video: Like Palm’s Creepy Naked Lady, TouchPad’s Floating Celeb Heads Get the HP Boot
• Licensing webOS May Not Be Much of an Option for HP
• Hewlett-Packard’s PC Business: What Happens Next?
• Worth More Dead Than Alive: Could HP Turn a Profit on Palm’s Patents?
• With HP’s Raising of the World’s Biggest White Flag, Will Jon Rubinstein and Todd Bradley Surrender Too?

After Google’s legal head David Drummond let forth with a blog post about how Microsoft and Apple had formed an evil patent cabal against the search giant, the software giant’s PR head Frank Shaw was not having any of it.

In his post, Drummond had claimed the pair ganged up on Google and had not offered to partner over key former Novell patents, in an attempt to stop the growth of its Android mobile operating system.

Except not, according to an email that Shaw posted on Twitter from Google’s legal counsel Kent Walker to Microsoft’s legal head Brad Smith.

Tweeted Shaw: “Free advice for David Drummond – next time check with Kent Walker before you blog. :)”

It was followed by the image of the email, in which Walker seemed to turn down an offer of a partnership over the patents. “After talking with people here, it sounds as though for various reasons a joint bid wouldn’t be advisable for us on this one.”

Smith also piled on on Twitter, noting: “Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no.”

Wax on, Google!

Here’s the image of the email:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Pixazza is dead. Long live Luminate.

Well, from a brand perspective, at least, as the image advertising start-up changes to an easier-to-say name and also launches a new platform for image applications.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up — which is backed by Google Ventures, CMEA Ventures, August Capital, Foundation Capital and Shasta Ventures, as well as by angel investors Ron Conway, Gideon Yu and Maynard Webb — aims to do for Web photos what the search giant did for text.

The new name for the company that called itself “AdSense for images” pretty much speaks for itself.

In addition to Luminate’s previous sharing, commerce and advertising apps, the company will offer information, navigation and public service apps, which you can see below

Luminate says its interactive images are viewed three billion times per month.

Here’s the official press release for the name change, as well as the image app platform:

PIXAZZA, INC. REBRANDS ITSELF AS LUMINATE, INC.

New Name Better Reflects Vision For Making All Online Images Interactive

Company Enables Images at Rate of 30 Billion Image Views per Year

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — July 27, 2011 — Pixazza Inc., the worldwide leader in making images interactive, today announced its new company name — Luminate, Inc. With its new services and the introduction of a groundbreaking new platform (see separate release: Luminate Launches World’s First Platform for Image Apps), the company opted to rebrand itself with a name that better reflects its bold vision of making every image interactive.

“We started the company to change the web by offering information relevant to online images, engaging consumers in a novel way while offering advertisers and publishers additional revenue streams,” said Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Luminate. “We’ve since developed the technology and scale to enable images to do even more. Moving forward as Luminate, we will continue to elevate the role of the image and dramatically improve the web experience.”

Rapidly scaling to accommodate the new demand for interactive images, Luminate now reaches more than 150 million unique visitors per month.

Its publisher network also has grown to more than 4,000 publishers, and the company enables images at a rate of 30 billion image views per year. This is significant because just as page views are commonly used to measure web site traffic, Luminate tracks image views, which count the number of times a web publisher serves up a Luminate-enabled image. It is a clear marker of audience interest.

The name change and announcement of the Luminate™ platform for image apps, comes on the heels of an innovative partnership with Hearst Digital Media. The company’s explosive momentum has also been a draw for top talent including CRO and head of publisher development, Chas Edwards, formerly of Digg; Terry Murphy, CFO, formerly of LiveOps. Luminate also added Elliot Schrage, the Vice President of Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy at Facebook, as a strategic advisor to the Luminate Board.

Please visit www.luminate.com to learn more about how Luminate is changing the way consumers, publishers and advertisers use and interact with online images.

LUMINATE UNVEILS WORLD’S FIRST PLATFORM FOR IMAGE APPLICATIONS

Company Brings Images to Life with Image Apps Designed to Create Rich Consumer Experience

Luminate Transforms Images Into a Canvas to Shop, Share, Comment, Examine, Curate, Search and Socialize

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — July 27, 2011, Luminate, Inc., formerly known as Pixazza, Inc., today unveiled a groundbreaking new platform for image applications. For the first time ever, consumers can launch applications within the individual images on their favorite websites.

With this exciting new platform, Luminate opens a new world of image apps, breaking down a wall and bringing flat, static images to life. Online images become more than visual stimuli — they become a gateway for accessing rich and relevant content across the web. The apps available on the Luminate™ platform will allow consumers not only to conduct their favorite everyday online activities such as shopping, sharing, commenting and navigating directly from the images, but can also facilitate entirely new services made possible by the development of apps specifically for images.

“Image apps transform images from static pixels into interactive experiences,” said Luminate CEO Bob Lisbonne. “Just as phones evolved from merely voice calls to smartphones with apps, now consumers can enjoy relevant apps inside every online image. The explosive use of images fueled by mobile, social, and cloud computing trends sets the stage for Luminate’s pioneering new image apps platform.”

How It Works:

When a consumer sees the Luminate icon in the corner of an image, it indicates that the image is interactive. Consumers simply mouse into the image and choose from a variety of image apps. They can easily share an image or specific points within an image with their friends, discover statistics about their favorite athletes, see where to purchase similar products to those featured in a photo, uncover the latest information about a particular event, reveal geo tag or Wikipedia information, read more content about the people or places featured in an image, listen to music or see a movie trailer related to an image.

Image Applications:

Image applications will span a number of key categories including: Commerce, Information, Social, Organization, Advertising, Navigation, Public Service, and Presentation. Luminate’s platform currently offers such applications as: unique Twitter Share, Facebook Share, and Email Share apps that give consumers the power to select precisely what they want inside an image and share it with others; an information app called Annotation that allows publishers to quickly and easily tag any spot within an image and add information relevant to that image; a commerce app called Products, which enables consumers to mouse over the image and interact with tags on the picture; and an Advertising app that offers publishers a seamless way to place relevant advertisements within an image.

Luminate plans to roll out new applications frequently to address the varying needs of consumers, publishers and advertisers. Its platform is designed to ultimately enable the development of any conceivable app that is relevant to a particular image. It is this capability that will help define the future of web images.

This cutting edge platform for image apps comes from the company that pioneered the use of images as real estate for delivering ecommerce and advertising three years ago as Pixazza, Inc. With the introduction of the new platform, the company has been rebranded as Luminate, Inc. (see separate release: Pixazza, Inc. Rebrands itself as Luminate, Inc.) as it takes the next step in executing its vision to make every image on the web interactive.

The Luminate Approach:

What makes the Luminate platform so compelling is its breakthrough ability to link images with applications and content beyond the website where the image is viewed. To create the best possible consumer experience, Luminate focuses on all of the data relevant to a particular image or part of an image. Luminate has long employed a unique recognition system that combines visual algorithms with human crowdsourcing. With its new platform, the company has multiplied the sources and ways to uncover information about images. In addition to the data derived from its team of experts, the company can avail itself of information from end users and publishers with the goal of creating a richer, more immersive experience for the end user. Luminate has the most sophisticated system in the industry for tagging relevant content.

“The reason images remained stagnant for so long is because it is remarkably difficult to contextualize their composition and link them to other pieces of relevant content across the Internet,” said James Everingham, CTO of Luminate.

“We were the first to develop the technology to overcome these complexities, turning images into an even more valuable asset. With our platform and the introduction of image apps, we believe that the entire Internet can become connected in a more meaningful way.”

To learn more about how Luminate is changing the way consumers interact with images, please visit www.luminate.com.

No, really–nothing.

Instead of the expected agonized love gaze of Bella and Edward, which is as per usual in “The Twilight Saga” movies, the first poster for “Breaking Dawn, Part One” is just an empty scene of, um, dawn breaking.

Still, it’ll be stared at by teenaged girls in the badillions.

And you can, too (click on the image to make it larger):

Kodak scored an early win in its ongoing IP skirmish with Apple this week when an International Trade Commission judge found in its favor, ruling that Kodak’s digital camera technology did not infringe upon Apple’s patents.

ITC Judge Robert Rogers said late Thursday that the patents at issue in the case–U.S. Patent No. 6,031,934: “Computer vision system for subject characterization” and U.S. Patent No. RE38,911: “Modular digital image processing via an image processing chain with modifiable parameter controls”–have not been infringed. He also found one to be invalid.

The full ITC still needs to formally accept or reject Rogers’ decision, so this isn’t yet a done deal. But things are certainly looking good for Kodak.

Earlier this year, it sued Apple and Research in Motion claiming the companies are infringing its technology for previewing photos and processing images of different resolutions.

A full ITC Commission decision on that isn’t expected until late June, but if it goes Kodak’s way, the company could be in for a windfall. Kodak Chairman and CEO Antonio Perez has said victory in that case could generate as much as $1 billion in royalties.

Yesterday afternoon, BoomTown pumped Sonos CEO John MacFarlane full of fancy tea and queried him about today’s rollout of its new Android controller for the innovative wireless music players.

As has been previously reported, the Santa Barbara, Calif. consumer electronics company will finally be launching an app for the Google mobile operating system.

Sonos will also be releasing a free software update for its software to make it easier to play Apple AirPlay music sources, as well as offer multitasking for the Apple iPad and Apple iPhone.

Until now, Sonos has been boosted by its Apple app that allows you to control its various players wirelessly with a smartphone or tablet.

The impact of the iPhone and the iPad on sales of its various devices has been clear enough, with just under one million sold. But the move to Android is key given the explosive growth of the mobile platform.

Here’s the video interview I did with MacFarlane, as well as an image of the app on an Android phone:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110419/sonos-john-macfarlane-talks-about-new-android-controller-launching-today-and-more/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110324/facebook-communications-kingpin-joins-pixazza-board/ http://allthingsd.com/20110324/facebook-communications-kingpin-joins-pixazza-board/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:02:41 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41947 Yesterday, BoomTown posted a video interview with Pixazza CEO Bob Lisbonne about the photo tagging service that has nicknamed itself “AdSense for images.”

Now, the Mountain View, CA, start-up has added someone who might know a thing or two about it. Former Googler Elliot Schrage–who is now Facebook’s global communications, marketing and public policy head–is joining Pixazza’s board as a strategic adviser and observer.

Before joining both the Silicon Valley search giant and social networking powerhouse, Schrage had another thing in common with Pixazza–he also worked at retail behemoth The Gap, one of the companies that uses Pixazza’s technology tools.

“I’m impressed by Bob, Jim and the Pixazza team and delighted to have the chance to work with them,” said Schrage in an email to me.

The Pixazza network now reaches about 85 million unique visitors per month, according to Quantcast.

Essentially, the company lets publishers match and link images of products or places with its network of advertisers, via a single line of code.

When users on that site mouse over the photos, they get rich information about pricing and more, as well as a clickable way to purchase the items.

Here is Lisbonne’s blog post on the Schrage appointment, as well as the video of the interview I did with him recently:

Pixazza Is Now Friends with Elliot Schrage

One of many favorite lines I remember from Netscape’s CEO Jim Barksdale was “smart isn’t what you know, but how fast you learn.” The history of Silicon Valley demonstrates the wisdom of that adage when you consider that no company starts life with perfect knowledge; they all experiment, discover, and iterate rapidly. The best startups not only harness the knowledge of their employees, but look to their investors, advisors, and supporters as well.

Today, we feel particularly fortunate to welcome someone new to the Pixazza fold, a world class executive responsible for helping to expand the reach of two of the Internet’s premier companies. Elliot Schrage has agreed to join our board as a strategic advisor and observer.

Elliot’s current role as vice president of global communications, marketing and public policy at Facebook, coupled with his previous experience as vice president of communications and public affairs at Google, make him an ideal resource as we work to change the way consumers interact with images on the Internet. In an auspicious coincidence, Elliot previously served as the senior vice president of global affairs at The Gap–one of Pixazza’s long time advertisers.

Pixazza is pioneering the use of images as a new canvas for delivering to consumers relevant information, ecommerce, and advertising. We look forward to collaborating with and learning from our new “friend” Elliot.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110324/facebook-communications-kingpin-joins-pixazza-board/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110323/liveblog-is-yahoo-still-in-search-apparently-its-answers-not-links/ http://allthingsd.com/20110323/liveblog-is-yahoo-still-in-search-apparently-its-answers-not-links/#comments Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:20:14 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41913

At least once a day, BoomTown gets a call from investors, analysts or other troublemaking types–you know who you are!–wondering why Yahoo is still plugging away in search.

With a declining market share in the arena and a search technology outsourcing deal with Microsoft, it’s not a bad question to ask.

But Yahoo begs to differ, introducing a new feature called Yahoo Search Direct at a press event in San Francisco today.

I liveblogged it, natch.

10:14 am: I was late, as per usual, but walked in just as the session was getting started.

Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving–looking fetching in a purple cashmere sweater–was talking about search.

He immediately turned it over to Shashi Seth, Yahoo’s head search dude, who immediately said: “Answers not links.”

Huh?

Actually, the product is pretty nifty, showing a lightning-speed box that shows more robust search results, although not unlike offerings from both Microsoft’s Bing and, of course, Google Instant.

While both have different takes, it is essentially a direction in which search brings in maps, photos, and–of course–advertising.

You can see a movie times example here (click to make the image larger):

10:23 am: Wait, it was over before it started! Whoa. No more bells and whistles?

And I still was enjoying Irving’s sweater and I wanted to touch it, but that would have been wrong.*

Seth then took questions from the reporters.

“We believe the next generation of search…people are looking for answers,” he said.

Very true, but perhaps not so much from Yahoo anymore.

Still, Yahoo Search Direct is a laudable try and it’s also nice to see some innovation from the long-troubled company.

“We are the premier digital media company,” said Seth, parroting a new description of Yahoo that the Silicon Valley company is now using since its recent sales meeting in San Antonio.

I asked a question about whether there is a dedicated app for the tablet of Yahoo Direct Search, which sources had also told me was shown to the troops in Texas.

Yep! It will be ready later this year.

I also asked about how much all this search innovation was costing compared to return on the investment.

No answers from either Irving or Seth.

Someone then asked if there would be a lift in market share from the feature.

That’s the plan, Stan!

10:41 am: More questions about the comparisons to Google Instant. Of course, it’s the same type of thing, in the contest to win the King of Relevancy crown among consumers.

Google Instant. Yahoo Search Direct. Quora. My dentist, who seems to know everything. In case you didn’t know, dentists are very erudite.

Seth noted that even though Yahoo has only 15 categories covered in Yahoo Search Direct, there will be hundreds to come, as well as more features on top of this feature.

Personally, I want my search delivered to me on a silver tray by a man in a purple cashmere sweater.

Speaking of purple, the demo dude kept putting Elizabeth Taylor into the query box, which depressed me. Violet eyes now closed forever.

That was the real story today.

As if to round out the event, someone asked whether critics are right about whether Yahoo should still be in search.

“We’re in this for good,” said Irving firmly.

“Look, we are not focused on the past,” added Seth, who was not here in this very room at a similar Yahoo search event years ago, when similar promises were made about search going away from a page of blue links. “I don’t even know if you’d call it search in three years.”

What would you call it then?

“Find,” joked Irving. And later, “It’s actually ‘found.’”

Apparently, Yahoo was lost and now is found via Yahoo Search Direct.

*By the way, I touched the sweater, which was–in fact, Blake–periwinkle, which is a twee version of purple.

(You can see a video interview I did with Seth after the demo here.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110323/liveblog-is-yahoo-still-in-search-apparently-its-answers-not-links/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110322/pixazzas-bob-lisbonne-talks-about-adsense-for-images/ http://allthingsd.com/20110322/pixazzas-bob-lisbonne-talks-about-adsense-for-images/#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:50:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41827

Recently, BoomTown took a walk down digital Memory Lane with Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Pixazza, the photo-tagging service that has nicknamed itself “AdSense for images.”

That’s because Lisbonne used to be a big wheel at Netscape Communications, the iconic Internet browser company that truly changed the digital world–before crashing and burning in a very public way.

We talked about the old days, of course, but more about the new days and his business focused on putting all kinds of advertising within online images.

The Mountain View, CA, start-up–which is backed by Google Ventures, CMEA Ventures, August Capital, Foundation Capital and Shasta Ventures, as well as by angel investors Ron Conway, Gideon Yu and Maynard Webb– aims to do for Web photos what the search giant did for text.

At least that’s the hope.

Pixazza is selling itself as a win-win for online publishers–who certainly could use one.

Essentially, the company lets publishers match and link images of products or places with its network of advertisers, via a single line of code.

When users on that site mouse over the photos, they get rich information about pricing and more, as well as a clickable way to purchase the items.

Quite possibly annoying, but Pixazza is growing quickly anyway, with the company claiming 20 billion image views per year and reaching 70 million unique visitors a month on sites deploying its technology.

There are rivals in the space, of course, such as GumGum and Vibrant, but Pixazza does come armed with $18 million in venture funding, as well as that relationship with Google.

Here’s Lisbonne talking about it all in a video interview I did at Pixazza’s Silicon Valley HQ:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110322/pixazzas-bob-lisbonne-talks-about-adsense-for-images/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110308/video-chief-twit-leo-laporte-talks-about-podcasting-expansion-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20110308/video-chief-twit-leo-laporte-talks-about-podcasting-expansion-and-more/#comments Tue, 08 Mar 2011 22:47:50 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41380

Right before the Oscars, BoomTown motored up to Petaluma, Calif., a lovely town in Northern California, to be in studio on Leo Laporte’s “This Week in Tech” online show.

(That is him waving from in front of TWiT Global HQ, wearing mouse ears with TWiT logo, his outfit for a party later–click to make image larger.)

TWiT is just one of the more than two dozen online video shows put out by the energetic Laporte via the TWiT Netcast Network, whose expansion has been heartening to see given the programming–though decidedly geeky–is really top-notch.

That’s because, while the shoot-the-breeze about tech tone is there, the smooth-talking and erudite Laporte keeps the conversation lively and, thankfully, civil.

TWiT is all supported by advertising and listener donations, which seems to be going well for Laporte, a longtime Silicon Valley player.

So much so, that he’s moving the operation from the charming but makeshift TWiT Cottage to a bigger facility down the street with tricked-up studios.

Here is Laporte talking about this and more in a video interview with me from his fave spot behind the microphone:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110308/video-chief-twit-leo-laporte-talks-about-podcasting-expansion-and-more/feed/ 9 http://allthingsd.com/20110228/video-nings-andreessen-and-rosenthal-talk-about-new-social-chat-service-mogwee/ http://allthingsd.com/20110228/video-nings-andreessen-and-rosenthal-talk-about-new-social-chat-service-mogwee/#comments Tue, 01 Mar 2011 02:56:21 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41116

Yes, it’s actually called Mogwee, which was the codename for the new mobile social communications service being launched tonight by Ning, the high-profile social networking platform co-founded by Silicon Valley icon and investor Marc Andreessen.

Part Twitter, part SMS, part Path and any number of such social start-ups, Mogwee actually stands for “more great weekends,” said CEO Jason Rosenthal, who has been focusing Ning on premium offerings.

BoomTown interviewed Rosenthal and Andreessen–who is also chairman of Ning–at an overpriced tea salon in San Francisco last week about the latest entrant into the crowded socializing of smartphones market.

The Mogwee app was approved today for the Apple iPhone and iPad. The Google Android version is coming in about a week and the one for Research in Motion’s BlackBerry is to come after that.

Also on deck: Integration with big social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Currently, the only way to bring in friends is via your cell phone’s address book.

Once loaded, you can use Mogwee to chat live, share photos, play games, make analog plans and–horrors–throw sheep.

As you can see from the video and screenshots below, a user creates any series of “Hangouts”–such as a whiskey one by Andreessen–for real-time groups or one-to-one chat.

Here is the video interview I did, as well as a look at the service (click on the images to make them larger) and a blog post Rosenthal did about Mogwee:

I’d like you to meet Mogwee.

In January I talked to you about the custom social revolution that is fueling our business as more and more customers come to us to create powerful, custom social websites for their group, band, cause, classroom or business. Since then we launched the Ning Design Studio, major enhancements to the Ning Engagement System, and are in beta with our next killer feature, Paid Access. We have more on the way as Jonathan shared in his recent road map post, and I can’t wait to see Ning help even more customers bring their websites and brands into the social age.

With our road map in place, our business growing and the team humming–I spent some time last fall working with Diego, our CTO and Marc, our Chairman, to think about the next major area for Ning to tackle. We have this awesome team, a deep bench of talent, and 5 years of experience in group and social dynamics. We also knew that with the advances in smart phones mobile was going to be a critical part of the next break through services.

Enter Mogwee–with a very small team (just 2 at first) we began work on a new product–it would be both mobile and social at its core–not an adaptation of an old service for mobile. It would also rethink the modes in which we communicate for the modern age–a native app with chat as the backbone, real time and asynchronous sharing, additional mobile services built in–and it would be fun. A fun, consumer social product, that would be great for anyone to use!

I’ve been asked a few times–how does this relate to Ning? I believe that innovation (not the word, the act) is critical to making Ning a great company, not just building one great product, but a host of amazing new products for the future. Is Apple just the iPod? Google just Search? HP just a printer? We need to be pushing into new businesses that make sense and relate to our “social” DNA. We have an extremely talented engineering team–giving them new challenges and the freedom to invent makes Ning a better company and one that attracts and retains amazing people who want to do amazing things.

After several months of preparing we take Mogwee on its maiden voyage, launching today in Apple’s App Store, and very quickly after for Android and the web, we’re feeling excited, and for the 6 people now working on Mogwee–pretty tired.

Mogwee is a new social communication service that brings together all of the things you love to do with your friends and family on your phone. From chatting live and sharing photos, to planning a night out or playing a game, with a single tap, Mogwee gives you instant access to everything that makes life fun. I can’t wait for you to give Mogwee a try!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110228/video-nings-andreessen-and-rosenthal-talk-about-new-social-chat-service-mogwee/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110209/former-apple-and-popcap-engineer-launches-app-to-make-iphone-camera-useful/ http://allthingsd.com/20110209/former-apple-and-popcap-engineer-launches-app-to-make-iphone-camera-useful/#comments Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:12:23 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3404 A new app called VisualList offers a simple but natural extension of the iPhone’s camera, allowing users to organize and remember things by taking a picture of them.

Many of us already pull out our smartphone to take a quick photo to document a shopping list, the diagrams on a whiteboard or the contents of a moving box. It’s just quicker and more informative than writing things down.

VisualList isn’t some massive feat of engineering; there’s no image recognition or anything like that. And it’s a lot simpler than other personal memory apps out there, like Evernote. What the iPhone app does is organize photos into checklists and let users tag items through the touchscreen, then formats the lists into emails and Facebook albums for sharing.

The app was created by Martin Gannholm, who worked at Apple on projects like the Newton for 10 years ending in 1995, then founded the hosted enterprise software company Allegis, and more recently worked on engineering projects at Microsoft and PopCap. The self-funded two-person company behind the app is called Way2Clever.

Gannholm is charging $2.99 for VisualList and anticipates selling future thematic versions–for instance, a wedding-themed app for users to take pictures of the dresses they try on or the centerpiece arrangements they want to re-create, or what have you.

Three bucks seems a bit much for something users can nearly do without an app, but perhaps not in the context of a big, expensive or ongoing project that’s helped by thinking visually–say, remodeling a home.

Having played around with the app, I’ll say it seems like the kind of thing Apple and other smartphone makers could think about making part of their own camera software.

Update: As of Feb. 10, VisualList’s price has been lowered to $0.99.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110209/former-apple-and-popcap-engineer-launches-app-to-make-iphone-camera-useful/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110128/heres-what-a-display-ad-in-your-gmail-looks-like/ http://allthingsd.com/20110128/heres-what-a-display-ad-in-your-gmail-looks-like/#comments Fri, 28 Jan 2011 13:15:02 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=28825 It looks like any other ad you’d typically ignore on the Web!

This screenshot comes from Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land, who got Google to acknowledge that yes, it is indeed playing around with conventional-looking Web ads in its mail service, which typically only offers text ads: “We’re always trying out new ad formats and placements in Gmail, and we recently started experimenting with image ads on messages with heavy image content.”

Sterling’s post sent many of us Web/ad nerds scurrying to our Gmail accounts to see if we could find evidence of Google’s experiment, but I have yet to see any others. If you find one, please pass it along to me at (peter@allthingsd.com) and I’ll share it with everyone else.

Here’s another example, courtesy of Shyam Somanadh. His pithy description: “First image ad in my Gmail right panel. I had a sudden Hotmail moment there.”

And a broken ad, from Nicholas Wilhelm’s phone:

And one from Hunter Hebert:

And Jeremy Day:

And Rob McAninch:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110128/heres-what-a-display-ad-in-your-gmail-looks-like/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110125/pixelmator-co-founder-mac-app-stores-30-percent-cut-definitely-worth-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20110125/pixelmator-co-founder-mac-app-stores-30-percent-cut-definitely-worth-it/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:20:51 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=56346 Here’s a hell of a developer testimonial for Apple’s new Mac App Store. Pixelmator just hit the million-dollar milestone. And it’s been available in the App Store for only 20 days. Quite a feat for an indie image-editing app competing with some leviathan rivals.

Pixelmator co-founder Aidas Dailide told me the company sold about 33,000 copies of the software at $29.99–a limited-time discount from its standard $59 price–to gross $1 million. And he said he had no problem paying Apple the 30 percent cut of sales it demands of App Store vendors, something critics have labeled “the Apple Toll.”

“The 30 percent cut is definitely worth it,” he said. “The increase in sales and exposure is worth much more than that. Especially in our case.” And just how much of a sales increase from the pre-App Store days did Pixelmator experience? Dailide wouldn’t say, though he did remark that “the jump in sales was dramatic.”

Which is a point worth noting, because earlier this month Pixelmator made the Mac App Store its exclusive sales channel.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110125/pixelmator-co-founder-mac-app-stores-30-percent-cut-definitely-worth-it/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20110124/occipital-uses-its-360-degree-view-sees-microsoft-in-its-rear-view-mirror/ http://allthingsd.com/20110124/occipital-uses-its-360-degree-view-sees-microsoft-in-its-rear-view-mirror/#comments Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:00:20 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=2736 Tiny Boulder, Colo.-based Occipital hit pay dirt with its first mobile app. Called RedLaser, the program–which uses an iPhone’s camera to identify and scan a product bar code–was sold last June to eBay.

Now, the five-person start-up is racing to rapidly improve its second program, a panorama photo-taking app called 360.

The app uses the iPhone’s video-recording feature to create an immersive panoramic photo (see YouTube video to really get a sense for what it does). I’ve used it a bunch in recent months to capture everything from interior scenes of the Boston Library to a snowy Copley Square to shots of Stanford’s women’s basketball team snapping UConn’s 90-game winning streak. The app debuted at the end of July, mere weeks after the team sold RedLaser to eBay.

However, the Occipital team feels a renewed urgency to add a bunch of features quickly. In December, Microsoft offered a demo of a similar technology it hopes to add into its Bing for iPhone app.

What the 360 app does well, said co-founder Jeff Powers, is create such panoramas quickly and easily. However, the options to share that panorama are limited, especially if one wants to share an immersive photo as opposed to just an unrolled flat image. Also, one of the downsides of the app’s speeds is that it only captures a part of the scene once, meaning it misses out on the opportunities to improve on that initial image with additional data. Also, unless a user is particularly skilled, there can be visible seams within the panorama.

Powers said the company hopes to address all of those issues in the next release.

“We’re trying to satiate that exact urge to capture the scene and share it with other people,” Powers said in an interview. “We’ve nailed the ‘It’s really fast and easy [part]‘; we havent nailed the ‘It’s really good quality and easy to share’ part.”

Powers said he is also hoping to get the next version of 360 out in the coming months, “hopefully before they [Microsoft] come out with whatever they come out with and before any others.”

Occipital, which grew out of the TechStars Boulder program, also hopes eventually to bring 360 to other mobile devices.

“We’re very very interested in Android,” Powers said. One of the challenges, though, is 360 works very closely with the phone’s camera. With the iPhone, that only means understanding one or two different models, as compared to dozens of Android phones–meaning lots of extra support and development time.

“It is a big endeavor to support all of these devices,” Powers said.

The company also hopes to create an expanded Web presence, beyond a current gallery of 360-created panoramas.

As for Microsoft, it says its panorama feature is still a prototype, with no firm date for when it will be added to the Bing iPhone app.

At the December event, Microsoft’s Blaise Agueras y Arcas demonstrated Bing’s forthcoming panorama abilities in a video interview with Mobilized.

“This is still experimental, but we are coming out with it very soon,” he said.

Here is the video that shows what the 360 app can do:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110124/occipital-uses-its-360-degree-view-sees-microsoft-in-its-rear-view-mirror/feed/ 0