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Start Spreading the News: Yahoo Gets New Times Square Office, Offers Free Terabyte on Flickr and Updates Design to Look Like 2013

Kara Swisher — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:10:46 +0000

At a media event in New York today, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced a new office in Times Square for the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

“From one Mayor to another,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Mayer (get it?) about locating in Manhattan’s iconic location, which will house 500 Yahoo employees.

But not Tumblr, which will remain blissfully downtown, even after its $1.1 billion all-cash acquisition by Yahoo announced today.

“We’re very happy that Tumblr is a home-grown company,” said Bloomberg,

Irony alert: Yahoo’s new digs in the Big Apple is actually the old HQ of the New York Times.

“Twenty years ago there were a lot of Yahoos in New York,” said the Bloomberg, channeling Jackie Mason and then touting the local tech industry and reeling off the stats.

Boiled down: Geeks rule.

Mayer also talked briefly about the acquisition of Tumblr and repeated the trying-really-hard-to-be-wacky, “we’re going to try not to screw it up” promise.

Mayer then introduced another promise — a commitment to fix Yahoo’s last major acquisition screw-up, Flickr.

Yahoo exec Adam Cahan, who is in charge of the photo-sharing service and who uses the term “awesome” quite a lot, came on next to show the changes.

He introduced a new design, which looks kinda like Instagram and kinda like Flipboard and kinda like Apple and kinda like Facebook’s homepage. It does bring Yahoo up to speed with others in the key photo-sharing space, which is good.

(Sorry, I cannot be more detailed, since I could only see it via Internet, because AllThingsD.com was not invited to the event by Yahoo.)

From what I can tell, it’s very image-centric with big photos and little text.

Cahan also introed a new Google Android mobile version and said that Flickr will offer a terabyte of space for free to users, which is about 537,731 photos.

Then he talked about a terabyte a lot, claiming that “no other Internet company has offered you a terabyte” of space. (Well, I would imagine Google and Facebook will now do so in a New York minute.)

Some very nice man with a German accent demoed it. (Again, I am not there and did not see a name going by on screen, and I can’t ask Yahoo PR his name.)

It’s purty, for sure, and nice to be able to upload photos in their full fidelity without worrying about space constraints.

Mayer called it “spectacular,” “bigger” and, of course, “awesome.”

It is certainly much more striking than how the antiquated Flickr homepage used to look like — which was circa 1969. But, like I said, kinda like what others have already done, although these updates are certainly a welcome change for Flickr.

Mayer then ran a very cute video for the changes, which, well, was kinda like an Apple video.

“Flickr was awesome once and then it languished,” said Mayer, declaring victory already. “And now it’s awesome again.”

In a Q&A after, Mayer, Cahan and the nice German guy answered questions about integration of Tumblr and Flickr (not yet!); how it was like or not like Instagram (no cropping apparently — which is exactly what is fantastic about Instagram); the terabyte (it’s awesome!); and more Tumblr deets (you know them already); monetization; and a bizarre one about redundancy so you don’t lose photos.

Mayer also said that Yahoo had bought 11 billboards in Times Square to show off Flickr and noted there was a party after for the media. (Except the unchosen, so I am enjoying a nice glass of Cabernet all by my lonesome. Frankly, it’s awesome!)

(Photo credit: Kevin Tachman for Times Square Alliance.)

Evernote's Phil Libin Talks About Global Expansion, Google Incursion and More! (Video)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:32:42 +0000

Last week, I motored on down to Evernote’s spanking (and quite delightful) new offices in Redwood City, Calif., to talk to Phil Libin, its CEO and co-founder, about what has been happening of late at the popular note-taking software startup.

Things have recently been made more interesting with the entry of search giant Google into the sector, with a renewed competing mobile app effort called Keep (which is really a version of its older Notebook offering) for the Android mobile operating system.

Libin seemed sanguine about the move, noting that Evernote’s Android app has a much better user base than Keep. Instead, he said that the company — which has attracted about $250 million in total funding that has valued it at close to $2 billion — is more focused on bringing out new versions of Evernote, which allow a user to save text, Web links, photos and more, as well as on continuing to widen its productivity-app portfolio.

Also a priority is a recently launched premium, business-oriented version of Evernote, as well as even more international expansion, which makes up an increasingly large part of its user base of 45 million (a small number of whom currently pay to upgrade).

Libin talked about all this and more, including continuing to tout his “100-year” strategy for the company (it’s good to plan ahead!) in this video interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

Circa's Matt Galligan on Building a Different Kind of News Reader (Video)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:01:00 +0000

Earlier this week, I went for a visit to the San Francisco HQ of Circa, the startup that always seems to get lumped into the mobile news reader aggregation category with others such as Pulse, Zite and Flipboard. While it shares some obvious similarities — there is no original news gathering going on here with all of them — the approach that it has taken is different and a bit more nifty.

Built currently for the Apple iPhone, the mobile-designed app is aimed at rejiggering how readers consume breaking news. To do this, a team of writers crunches and munches small bits of information about a range of current news events from a variety of sources and forms them into separable flashcard lists to make up a story.

Circa is using the odd phrase — “atomic units” — to describe the end product, which users can swipe through quickly to get the key elements of a story, along with adds of art, photos, maps or graphs. While some disparagingly call it a Cliff Notes for breaking news, it is much more like a television report or a just-the-facts feed from wires services. If you want to get even more digital, it reminds me of a smart and collated version of Twitter.

While it could use more sourcing — I like to know from whence my atomic units are born — it’s a still a good way to consume news on the fly on a smartphone. Users can also follow favorites stories, which are updated and which increases engagement.

I talked about it all with CEO Matt Galligan, one of Circa’s several founders, as well where the next version of the product is going (expect an Google Android and perhaps an tablet version, for example)

How Circa is going to make money is a good question — it has only a few million in seed funding — since it does require people to create the stories, rather than some algorithm. But the market is hot in the acquisition arena for this category. Both Pulse and Zite have been bought (LinkedIn and CNN), as well as the decidedly less substantive Summly (Yahoo picked it up for the excessive price of $30 million), so one could see Circa also getting snapped up at some point.

Until then or whatever news breaks on it, here’s my video interview with Galligan:

[ See post to watch video ]

Hassle-Free Photo Books in One Couch Sitting

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:16:59 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Though digital photos give us the instant gratification we crave, they’re all too fleeting, quickly forgotten after they’re posted or left buried on phones, memory cards and desktop programs.

For this reason, physical photo books are big crowd pleasers. But they can take days or weeks to finish. I speak from experience, having started three unfinished iPhoto books in the past two years.

KeepShot shows the photo book in the middle, photo sources on the left and three editing options on the right.

This week, I tested a free iPad app that simplifies the book-creating process: KeepShot. It launched Tuesday in Apple’s App Store and is from MyPublisher, the first company to create affordable custom physical books from digital images, back in 1994.

I’ve used this app for the past week to create four books, including my own wedding album — a year and a half after tying the knot. KeepShot is a delight to use. It tosses out all of the things that drive me nuts about bookmaking software programs, namely long upload times, restrictive layouts and cheesy themes. It lets you see your book in a view that takes up the whole iPad screen.

Books cost between $20 and $70 for a 20-page volume, not including shipping, though prices can jump for additional pages or features like lay-flat paper ($20 more per book) and super-gloss pages ($10 more per book). (To mark the launch of this new app, MyPublisher is offering a free 8.75-inch-by-11.25-inch photo book, a $36 value, to the first 10,000 orders.)

A choice of background colors, right, allows for customization.

It took just nine minutes to completely upload one book via Wi-Fi, though another with huge photo files from a professional photographer took closer to 40 minutes.

If you’ve ever used a traditional desktop bookmaking software program, including MyPublisher’s, you’ll recall the dizzying number of intricate adjustments that can be made to any photo, layout, design or background pattern. Before KeepShot, I had a hard time imagining doing any book editing without a computer mouse, but after a couple of days with the iPad app, my fingers’ on-screen gestures were able to create a photo book with no problem.

Working on an iPad on my lap is a wholly different experience than working at my computer: It never felt like work. While watching TV shows, I relaxed on the couch with my iPad, dragging photos into my KeepShot book and tapping an icon to change page layouts. On a short flight from Washington, D.C., to Boston, I opened my iPad in a cramped seat and created a book of photos from a trip to Argentina and Uruguay.

An obstacle to creating photo books is that many photos are posted on social networks. KeepShot imports images from Facebook, Instagram and Flickr, along with pulling in photos from the iPad photo library. If an image’s resolution is too low, KeepShot will warn you before you submit the book. I don’t keep my entire iPhoto library on my iPad, so I had to plug my iPad into my MacBook to sync a few albums from iPhoto.

The first view in the KeepShot app shows the books you’re working on, including finished books. They appear to be resting on an elegant countertop with out-of-focus furniture in the background, like we’re glancing at a room in your house. To make a new book, tap on a giant plus button and choose from 12 designs.

Tapping once on a book opens it for viewing and you swipe forward or backward to turn pages. Tapping on any page opens a book for editing, and this is where you usually find a cluttered mess of options. But KeepShot instead shows the book in the middle, photo sources on the left and three editing options on the right (layout, background and customize). Want to see just the book as you edit? Grab a tiny handle and drag photos off the screen to the left, then tap an arrow on the right to hide editing options.

One of my favorite KeepShot features is its flexibility. The app’s 12 design layouts are a guide, but you can change layouts at any time and place images directly on the page where you want them, as large or small as you want, in the frame of your choice. A smart Arrange option lets you choose which images show when two overlap by adjusting a slide bar. A Customize option lets you drop objects and stamps onto pages, though some are a little tacky, like an “Awesome Lover” stamp.

At any time during editing, tap a small “i” icon in the top left to see animated videos on how to use features. These were a big help when I forgot how to do something.

People should receive their books between four and eight days after submitting to MyPublisher, the company says. I ordered books in three sizes (pocket hardcover, classic hardcover and deluxe hardcover) and selected a variety of options, including lay-flat pages, standard printing and superior gloss pages. All of the books looked outstanding, with sharp images and thick, heavy pages that felt professional.

KeepShot has turned photo books from a laborious chore to a fun and less intimidating iPad experience.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

Winter Is Coming, Today! "Game of Thrones" Meets AllThingsD.

Kara Swisher — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:01:02 +0000

Last week, at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, premium cable powerhouse HBO debuted the third season of its hit series “Game of Thrones” for a huge audience of Silicon Valley geeks, VCs, entrepreneurs and people who like to wear furs, leather, metalwork and body paint.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.

As part of the night’s festivities, which also included an after-screening party with numerous cast members in attendance, Walt Mossberg and I interviewed George R.R. Martin, the fascinating author of the fantasy novel series, as well as the television show’s creators, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff.

When we asked Martin, who has a bone-dry wit, about how digital he was in terms of social media, he noted: “I would still prefer to tie messages to the legs of ravens.”

So would we.

Here’s the video of that interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

(Photo credit: James Joaquin)

After Two Years in the Works, Picturelife Comes Alive

Lauren Goode — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:58:34 +0000

This might be a familiar occurrence: You tether your phone or camera to your laptop, or insert your SD card. IPhoto opens … almost. The icon at the bottom of the screen bounces … and bounces … and then iPhoto opens.

But the photos are sort of disorganized. Maybe it’s not even iPhoto. Maybe it’s another default photo-storage service or your go-to cloud app, like Dropbox.

The creators of a new service called Picturelife think they have a better backup solution.

Picturelife, which has been in the works for the past two years, is coming out of “stealth” mode today, showing off a new-new design and introducing video support in addition to storing photo files. The service is the creation of Nate Westheimer, director of New York Tech Meetup, OMGPOP’s Charles Forman (who dazedly walked into traffic after Zynga bought the casual game company for $180 million) and Jacob DeHart of Threadless.

Last fall, TechCrunch reported that the company raised $4 million in funding.

Picturelife’s approach is to work with all of the key photo apps, cloud services and social networks to allow for easy imports and syncing of photos across computer and mobile. As with most photo-storage services, photo files can be synced over Wi-Fi or by physically tethering a phone or camera to the computer.

But if you want to import an album from Facebook, you can do that, and share photos from Picturelife to Facebook and Twitter, too. Photos can be imported from Instagram, Flickr, DropBox, Tumblr, Foursquare and SmugMug as well, and won’t appear as duplicates in Picturelife.

The app’s search function uses natural-language tech to pull up photos and videos, so you can search by using a specific name or GPS location or just phrases like “photos from last summer.”

Westheimer says the service isn’t meant to replace other cloud-storage services — it’s supposed to work with them, offering a more organized photo-storage service and eliminating the need for local storage or a backup hard drive.

Picturelife costs $7 a month or $70 a year for 100 gigabytes of storage, and $15 a month or $150 a year for 300GB. It works on both Mac and Windows computers, and on iOS and Android mobile devices. The company plans to introduce terabyte options, as well as physical photo printing, in the coming months.

SmugMug's Camera Awesome App: 13 Million Downloads, Android on the Way

Lauren Goode — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:27:18 +0000

One year after SmugMug launched its settings-filled Camera Awesome app for iOS, the company says that the app has been downloaded 13 million times — surpassing even Instagram’s first-year downloads — and that users have shared more than 250 million “awesomized” photos through the service. It also claims two million monthly active unique users. An Android app is coming soon, though SmugMug declined to say exactly when that would launch.

Qwiki Shuts Down Web Platform, Launches Social Mobile Video App

Lauren Goode — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:30:07 +0000

Mobile social video apps have been getting a lot of attention lately — if not for their porn problems, then for their sheer quantity. Now Qwiki’s getting in on the craze.

If you’re not super familiar with Qwiki, it could be because the startup has kind of been all over the place. It first launched in 2010 as a video search engine, planting its roots in San Francisco; then migrated to New York last year to launch a video publishing platform, working with media brands like ABC News to help reporters cobble together video reports.

But after seeing mild success with that platform — founder and CEO Doug Imbruce says the iPad version of the app had around two million downloads — Qwiki’s shutting down its website and adopting a new focus, with a mobile-only video app.

It clumps together the media from your iPhone’s camera roll, smartly organizing groups of photos or videos by date, location, and time of day. It selects a song from your iTunes library based on what you’ve been listening to recently. From there, you can throw on a filter, add more media and edit the captions, or, you can just go ahead and create a Qwiki, up to a minute long.

The new, free app hits Apple’s App Store today. An Android app is expected in the next three to six months.

While it might immediately bring to mind Twitter’s new Vine app, Qwiki is quick to point out that this app is supposed to offer more than just a snapshot of a moment. Case in point: My last few Vines were utterly fascinating, Scorsese-like videos of a drained glass of beer and a humdrum train ride, whereas my test Qwiki (below) was a fun, photo-and-video slideshow of a week-long vacation.

“We don’t want to be the world’s 10th video-sharing app. There are plenty of those,” Imbruce acknowledged. “We want to be the first real storytelling app.”

But Vine’s not the only app in the same category. There’s also Socialcam (acquired by Autodesk), Viddy, Keek, Tout, Mobli, Magisto and Animoto, to name several. Animoto might be the closest comparison, although that app charges a monthly fee for full features. Storytelling, social sharing — however you frame it, they’re all about creating and sharing video through mobile.

And it’s hard to say how long this social-mobile-video moment will last, especially as smartphone makers build more sophisticated photo and slideshow options right into phones.

However, I will say there’s something very appealing about the new Qwiki, based on my brief experience with it. It’s super simple to use. Even the Qwikis I didn’t fuss with much turned out pretty well, and they were easy to share via text, email and social networks.

Play the Qwiki: Vacation in Costa Rica

Demystifying Advanced Compact Cameras

Lauren Goode — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 14:00:24 +0000

For a lot of people, a “point and shoot” camera translates to “scratch your head, read instruction manual, Google some stuff, aim camera, point, shoot and frown at grainy or under-exposed photo.” In other words: It’s complicated.

It hasn’t always been this way. But more compact digital cameras now come loaded with features that were once reserved for bigger-bodied, pricier models. This is part of a broader strategy by camera makers to convince you to buy a camera other than the one built into your smartphone. But it doesn’t necessarily convince you that you know what you’re doing with these cameras.

[ See post to watch video ]

What do all those numbers on lenses mean? What’s a “CMOS” sensor? Does the ever-increasing number of megapixels really matter?

In this column, I’ll attempt to answer these questions and more.

Sensors

  One area that digital camera makers have been focusing on is sensors. Image sensors are basically chips, ranging in size from your pinky nail to a postage stamp to a poker chip, that capture light and convert it into electrical signals to create a digital image.  

The larger the sensor, the more light it is able to capture, thus allowing for better photos in low light. Think of it as the difference between using a Dixie Cup or a bucket to collect rainwater — the rain, or in this case, the available light, has a better chance of hitting a larger surface.  

Many smartphones have tiny sensors, which is why, even as they boast higher megapixels (more on that below) they still don’t take great photos in low light. A basic point-and-shoot might have a 1/2.3-inch or 1/2.5-inch sensor, while a high-end professional camera will have a full-frame, or giant, sensor.

But there’s a growing, in-between category of advanced compact cameras, ranging from around $300 to $600, that’s getting a boost from better sensor technology.   For example, Canon’s PowerShot G1 X has a large 1.5-inch sensor –- the largest that’s ever been in a Canon PowerShot model. The popular Sony RX100, which is also a point-and-shoot, has a one-inch sensor. Fujifilm’s new X20 compact camera has a ⅔-inch sensor that’s comparable to the sensors in Fujifilm’s higher-end cameras.

 All of these cameras cost around $600 or more, compared with the less expensive Canon G12, Canon S95, Panasonic Lumix LX5 or Nikon Coolpix P7000, which cost between $300 and $400.

The former not only have slightly larger sensors, but also have “CMOS” sensors (pronounced “see moss”). So … what does CMOS mean, you ask?

CMOS stands for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, and over the past few years this type of sensor has been emerging in digital cameras. Another type of sensor you might see in cameras is CCD, or charged-couple device.  

One simple way of distinguishing the two is to look at CCD as analog and CMOS as digital. With both, light hits the sensor and the light is converted to electrons. With a CCD sensor, that process is transferred to another part of the camera. But with CMOS, the process happens in the sensor itself. Some camera makers say CMOS sensors allow for speedier functions in other parts of the camera. But each has strengths and weaknesses in different applications.

It’s not just the sensor that determines the overall quality of photos. Aspiring photogs will also want to consider the lens and the camera’s processing power. One camera maker I spoke to used a car analogy to explain this: You can have a great transmission but it’s not going to do much for you if you’ve got a weak engine.  

Megapixels

Do megapixels matter? The way some camera (and smartphone) makers talk about megapixels, one might assume that an eight-megapixel compact camera is better than a five-megapixel, a 16-megapixel compact camera is better than the eight-megapixel, and so on. But that’s not necessarily the case.

 A new camera that boasts more megapixels may equate to higher-resolution images, but if everything else about the camera — lens, sensor, processor — isn’t as advanced, the addition of more pixels into the same sensor space can actually add noise, or graininess, to photos.  

A few professional photographers I consulted agreed that more is not always better when it comes to megapixels. They also said that megapixels really only matter if you plan to print out big, poster-sized images, or if you plan to do a lot of cropping later on.

For many consumers, anywhere from five megapixels to 10 megapixels is plenty.  

Optical Zoom Versus Digital Zoom

One of the most obvious features that compact cameras can lord over smartphones is optical zoom. Smartphones use digital zoom, which digitally magnifies the image on your phone’s screen, resulting in grainy photos. Compact cameras usually use an optical zoom lens that will mechanically zoom to capture a clear, sharp image, even if the subject is a good distance away.  

Camera makers like Nikon, Canon and Samsung have been introducing more “super-zoom” compact cameras, meaning they zoom extra-long distances, ranging from 18x up to 30x. I like to call these neighbor-stalker zooms.  Why? Most experts I spoke with say that a 10x optical zoom is plenty for casual photography. If you’re going to take photos of your kid from way across the soccer field, or you fancy yourself a bird photographer, then you might want a little more zoom.

Lenses

  Lenses are probably worthy of an entire column, but for the sake of space, I’ll boil it down to two key things.  When you look at a compact camera with a lot of bells and whistles, you might see different sets of numbers on or around the front of the lens.

One might say something like 6.4 – 25.6 mm or 25 – 100 mm, and the other might say F 1.8 – 4.9.   The first set of numbers refers to the focal length, or, the camera’s ability to capture subjects, both near and far, in an image. In other words, it tells you how much of the subject you’ll see. The example above is a pretty standard range.

  The other set of numbers is the starting aperture, also referred to as the “f-stop.” This indicates how much light is allowed to pass through the lens. This can get even more complicated when you start to look at f-stop as a ratio to focal length. To make it simple: With f-stop, a lower number means brighter pictures. A lens with a higher f-stop means the image will be darker. Many standard point-and-shoots have a starting f-stop of 3.1. But some more advanced cameras might boast a starting point of 2.4 or 1.8. 

Manual Controls

 With advanced compact cameras, even amateurs who love auto mode might find themselves becoming control freaks. These souped-up cameras offer everything from white balance to shutter speed to ISO control settings.  

One feature that has been creeping its way into more consumer cameras is the ability to shoot “raw” photo files — something that pro photographers demand with their cameras, but consumers have had less use for. Raw file options mean that in addition to capturing a standard JPEG image with a scene setting attached — say, “portrait,” or “nighttime” — the camera will capture an unprocessed, uncompressed image at the same time. Be aware: Raw photos are much bigger than JPEGs.

It’s a brave new world in digital photography. For many people, I’m willing to bet that a smartphone camera is still the only camera they need. But for those who want to make the leap to a camera they can grow into, or for DSLR owners looking for a smaller device, there are plenty of good compacts out there with advanced features. A little research — and a little patience — is key.

Photo App 500px Gets the Boot for Showing Booty

Lauren Goode — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 23:47:32 +0000

Photo-sharing app 500px, a favorite of the professional and “prosumer” photo-snapping crowd, has been removed from Apple’s App Store for nude photos that were in apparent violation of the company’s no-pornography policy. Apple said in a statement that it had received “customer complaints about possible child pornography” and that it has asked 500px to put safeguards in place to prevent these images from displaying. The Verge has reported that 500px says it is working on a fix. An employee of Toronto-based 500px has taken to Twitter to emphasize that the company’s app is still available on Android mobile devices.

Face-tagram Revisited: Twitter Reportedly Offered $525M to Buy Instagram Prior to Facebook Sale

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 02:12:40 +0000

How much could Instagram have really sold for? That’s the burning question after a report in the New York Times questioned whether there was a fair bidding process for the popular photo-sharing app when Facebook purchased it for $1 billion. Nick Bilton reported today that Instagram executives received a $525 million buyout offer from Twitter, despite Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom’s statement that the company “never received any offers” before Facebook’s. The Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation in August without taking any action.

Flickr Jumps Into Mobile Photo Fray With New Insta-Hip Filters

Lauren Goode — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 17:50:48 +0000

The tech world has gone bonkers over photo filters. Now add Flickr to the mix.

The Yahoo-owned photo service, as part of renewed efforts toward mobile, has just updated its app for iPhone and iPod touch to include 15 new insta-hip filters, as well as an enlarged view of photos on the mobile screen.

The Flickr app update comes just as Instagram has cut off integration with Twitter, so that photos taken with and shared through Instagram can’t be viewed in Twitter feeds. At the same time, Twitter has started working with Aviary — the photo-editing start-up Flickr also works with — to power its own filters for photos shared directly through the microblogging site. Twitter just rolled out eight photo filters for iPhone and Android yesterday.

Said Flickr, quite pointedly, in a blog post, “We’ve worked with our partners to ensure that your photos look gorgeous no matter where they are viewed, on or off Flickr.” Photos taken with the app can be shared with Facebook, Twitter and Tumbler, as well as via email.

The Flickr iPhone app is free; currently, there isn’t an optimized iPad app, though there is an Android version of the app.

Mobile App Kapture Wants to Pay You to Take Photos of Yourself (With Brands, of Course)

Lauren Goode — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:21:12 +0000

A newly-launched mobile app wants to pay you for taking all those smartphone photos of yourself — with a few caveats.

The app, called Kapture, promises instant rewards in exchange for users taking photos of themselves along with a particular item in a store or a food dish in a restaurant.

After snapping the picture, the “kapturer” then has to share that picture with either Facebook or Twitter.

The rewards can range from a free juice to 15 percent off an item in a store to 10 percent off your total restaurant bill.

Kapture has been in beta mode for about a year now, but officially launches today on iPhone. It’s currently offering rewards in a few hundred locations in New York City.

There are some rules about the contents of the photos. Kapture founder and president Michael Szewczyk says the user has to take the photo in the designated restaurant or retail location. And a user can only capture one picture per brand, called a “moment,” every 24 hours, so you can’t pop into a store more than once.

In the age of smartphone-happy consumers and incessant photo-sharing, it’s an interesting idea — one that has been attempted before.

Last year, Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn launched a site called RNKD, with a very similar goal in mind: Get users to share photos of their favorite brands in exchange for rewards from those companies. Instead of requiring users to take photos in stores, they could share pictures of stuff in their closets.

But earlier this year, after minimal success, Swinmurn quietly shut down the site and turned his attention toward his newest project, a video “stitching” app called Threadlife.

In an interview, Swinmurn said there were challenges in getting the business to grow. Brands didn’t want to jump onboard until there was proof of a user base, and it was hard to incentivize users without the rewards. He also says he should have taken more of a mobile-first approach.

And the pictures themselves proved challenging. “The primary purpose of RNKD initially was to connect brands with loyal customers, and the pictures were really just a kind of verification,” Swinmurn said. “But it turns out the pictures weren’t nearly as pretty as an e-commerce site, or people just wouldn’t want to upload their stuff.”

Kapture has a leg up on the business side — Szewczyk says the merchant base is 300 and growing, and includes places like the Strand Bookstore, Vince Camuto, and Anthony Bourdain’s restaurant Les Halles.

But picture quality could prove something of a challenge, as it did with RNKD. And most brands don’t want profanity or other negative elements associated with their products.

Szewczyk says it’s not “anything goes” with Kapture photos: Pics will go through a vetting process, and repeat offenders will be flagged.

Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me: Yahoo's Latest New Homepage Redesign Tries Dramatic Interactive Tile Look

Kara Swisher — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 13:01:33 +0000

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:

With This Gadget, iPhone Is for the Birds

Lauren Goode — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 20:16:57 +0000

We at AllThingsD are often bombarded with email pitches for new and innovative or “disruptive” technologies. But when we get one that says technology is for the birds, we can’t help but take a second look.

This particular pitch crows about Bird Photo Booth, a Kickstarter-funded contraption that lets bird-watchers remotely view, photograph, video and even talk — yes, talk, via FaceTime — to backyard birds. Users can then share their findings to social networks (which one must assume includes tweeting). It works with iPhone, iPod Touch and GoPro cameras, and has a suggested price of $149.

This initially brought to mind images of blue jays wearing GoPro cameras, or parrots squawking “Siri want a cracker?” into iPhones. But the device is actually a kind of bird feeder that houses your iPhone or GoPro, so you’re getting, uh, a bird’s-eye view of the birds at the feeder.

Okay, here comes the cold water: Since it’s a Kickstarter project, this bird feeder isn’t shipping yet. When you “buy” one, you’re simply contributing to future production of the product — assuming creator Bryson Lovett hits his fundraising goal of $35,000 in the next 27 days.

And while the Bird Photo Booth is said to be weatherproof, it’s not waterproof — so you probably wouldn’t want to forget about your iPhone and leave it outside in extreme weather conditions.

Interested bird-watchers can check out the full FAQ list here, which also includes helpful tips on making hummingbird nectar and how to attract different birds. (And if this thing could help me attract anything other than the New York City pigeons that occasionally bonk into my windows, I might actually take my tongue out of my cheek.)

After Declaring It the Future of Yahoo, CEO Mayer Appoints IntoNow's Cahan to Mobile Kingpin (Internal Memo, Natch!)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:03:06 +0000

Adam Cahan

A very important management shift at Yahoo got a bit lost in last week’s news of CEO Marissa Mayer’s first acquisition, a small mobile start-up called Stamped.

That would be the appointment of former IntoNow founder and CEO Adam Cahan to oversee all of Yahoo’s mobile efforts, as well as its Flickr photo sharing service.

According to an internal memo that Mayer sent out last week to employees, Cahan has been given the title of SVP of Emerging Products and Technology, with a spot on the exec staff, reporting directly to her.

Said the memo (in its entirety below):

“[Cahan] will oversee our mobile efforts, enabled screens (CTV+IntoNow), and Flickr. Adam will be responsible for building a world-class team focused on creating innovative products and experiences that inspire and delight our users worldwide.”

Mayer’s promotion of the slick exec, who has been described by almost everyone I spoke to at Yahoo as smoothly political, is an interesting internal choice by Mayer. He only got to Yahoo recently, after IntoNow was bought by Yahoo for more than $20 million in the spring of last year.

IntoNow was a spinoff from the video advertising company Auditude, which was sold to Adobe for a reported $100 million.

The television indexing start-up had launched in early 2011 as an Apple iPhone app that recognized what was playing on the screen by analyzing the audio from satellite feeds and matching it to listings. The start-up had hoped to eventually license its technology as offer-measurement services for TV advertising and viewership.

As Liz Gannes noted in a post on AllThingsD:

“It’s similar to the Shazam mobile app that many people know and love, which IDs an ambient song by recording it and quickly matching it to an archive. IntoNow users can “check in” to a particular episode once it’s been recognized, like one would check into a restaurant on Foursquare. The goal is to enable conversations around the watercooler and on social networks by helping users connect around what they’re watching and discover new things to watch.”

Cool, although IntoNow’s technology was far more compelling than its consumer promise.

Now, Cahan will be charged with doing both of Yahoo in mobile — which is most likely to be accomplished via a series of small mobile acquisitions, presumably to be stitched together into a cohesive and successful whole.

At least that’s the idea.

Cahan is an experienced exec, having worked at a number of places before founding IntoNow, including MTV Networks, NBC, McKinsey, National Geographic Television and — wait for it — Google, in business operations.

(Being an ex-Googler, which Mayer is, seems to have its advantages at Yahoo these days, with Cahan as the latest example.)

He is most definitely a key hire, because Mayer spent a lot of time stressing how mobile was Yahoo’s No. 1 priority on its recent earnings call with investors.

“Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company,” she said, noting a “focused, coherent” mobile strategy was the top initiative.

Mayer had to say that, of course, even if being a mobile giant is now mostly just wishful thinking at Yahoo, since most of the many efforts the company has made in the arena have been duds. Yahoo has also lost a lot of mobile engineering talent over the years, remaining largely a desktop offering, even as the area has increasingly become where consumers are getting their information.

A blog post by Cahan at Yahoo was widely quoted when the tiny Stamped — which is an online recommendations app — was bought for under $10 million last week by Yahoo.

In it, he noted:

“Most people are always within arm’s reach of their mobile phones. For many of us, it’s the first thing we look at in the morning and the last thing we check at night. Mobile is at the center of how we connect with people, consume information, and pass the time, and we’re focused on making Yahoo! the most inspiring and entertaining way to do just that.”

We’ll see if Yahoo can be a significant mobile player, as Mayer has promised Wall Street. But Cahan has certainly been busy since he got the job, sources said, beginning with the rejiggering of Yahoo’s mobile teams, as well as visiting the Flickr office this week.

Until it all sorts itself out, please enjoy this Oct. 25 internal memo on Cahan and the Stamped acquisition:

YAHOO! PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION — DO NOT FORWARD

Hi All –

As we discussed in our strategy all-hands earlier this month, innovation and talent are essential to delivering against our vision to inspire and delight our users as a part of their daily lives. Many of the areas that require special attention are emerging technologies and Yahoo! products where we’ve not yet reinvented, re-imagined and rebuilt in order to keep pace with changes in user behaviors and platform shifts.

To aid our efforts, I’m promoting Adam Cahan to lead this effort as Senior Vice President of Emerging Products and Technology. Adam will be a member of e-staff and report directly to me. He will oversee our mobile efforts, enabled screens (CTV+IntoNow), and Flickr. Adam will be responsible for building a world-class team focused on creating innovative products and experiences that inspire and delight our users worldwide.

And he’s already making great progress! Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve acquired a very talented mobile team, based in New York City.

Robby, Kevin, Bart, Paul and the entire team at Stamped are a natural fit for Yahoo!. Their experience building fun, useful, personalized mobile products aligns well with our vision to create the best everyday mobile experience for our users. The team will be a great asset for us as we expand Yahoo!’s mobile efforts and create another key center for mobile innovation in New York.

I’m excited that we’ve been able to move quickly and execute well in order to bring on such a talented team. Please join me in congratulating Adam in his promotion and welcoming Anthony, Bart, Geoff, Kevin, Landon, Michael, Paul, Robby and Travis to Yahoo!

Thanks,

Marissa

Keeping Up With Sandy on Twitter

Kara Swisher — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 13:05:18 +0000

Weather is now one of social media’s most popular topics and a big storm certainly ups the ante for user interest.

So, if you are tracking Hurricane Sandy as it moves up the East Coast today and reaches U.S. landfall, here are some good Twitter accounts to monitor:

@weatherchannel: The Weather Channel’s updates about, you guessed it, weather.

@twc_hurricane: The Weather Channel’s all-hurricane tweets.

@wunderground: Another 24/7 weather site. Besides Sandy, did you also know there was a tsunami warning in Hawaii yesterday? (Eeek.)

@NHC_Atlantic: The National Weather Service’s National Hurricane Center’s updates, focusing on the East Coast.

@breakingstorm: Real-time severe weather updates.

@NASA: Lovely satellite photos and animations of not-so-lovely storm (like the one above).

@fema: News from the Federal Emergency Management Agency

SmugMug's Camera Awesome App Will Now "Awesomize" iPad Photos

Lauren Goode — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:00:36 +0000

Camera Awesome, the smartphone photo app from SmugMug that offers nearly 300 filters and effects for photos, is now available for the iPad. The free iPad app includes 36 filters to start; additional features, textures and frames can be purchased for 99 cents per pack of nine, or $10 for all 297 features. SmugMug CEO Don McAskill says he decided to design an app for the iPad when some of Camera Awesome’s seven million iPhone users requested an app that would work on the tablet’s larger screen, which he believes consumers are increasingly using to capture images.

A Hangout for All Your Social-Network Photos

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:12:50 +0000

Nowadays, people are storing a lot of personal photos on a variety of social networks. They capture photos with their smartphone cameras, instantly share them with Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and never see them again.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tried two methods for gathering photos from all sorts of social networks. I used ThisLife, a service that pulls in photos and videos from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, Shutterfly, SmugMug and Picasa, as well as from a computer’s hard drive or an iPhone or iPad (via an iOS app). One thousand photos or one hour of video are free; more storage costs $80 or $150 a year. I also tested Seagate’s one-terabyte, $110 Backup Plus Portable Drive, which backs up photos and videos from Facebook and Flickr, as well as its primary function of backing up other computer files.

I was amazed by the trove of photos I didn’t even know I had stored on many sites around the Web, and I spent hours flipping through them.

But is the photo quality on some social networks worth saving? Facebook, for example, resizes and compresses images. ThisLife recognizes this issue and uses image enhancement on each photo to improve things like balance, light and contrast. If it imports from a place where photos were saved in their original size, ThisLife preserves that photo size; it stores video at 1080p HD quality. Seagate simply copies the images from Facebook and Flickr to your computer or Backup Drive. Still, having all of my photos in one place outweighed any image quality concerns.

ThisLife stores photos and videos from social networks in one place.

ThisLife, which uses cloud storage from Amazon Web Services, takes a holistic approach, merging photos from various places, and also offers a timeline of favorite shots, facial recognition for labeling people and gets rid of duplicate photos. ThisLife saves photos posted by its users as well as photos from other people in which the user was tagged, or identified by name.

I connected my ThisLife account to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly and SmugMug, and installed its app on my iPad and iPhone to pull in photos from both devices. I used the ThisLife Desktop Uploader with my MacBook, clicking one button to move more than 7,000 photos from iPhoto into the service, a process that took a couple of days.

The overall interface of ThisLife is elegant, laying thousands of images out in a browse-friendly library that is organized left to right by time. I quickly scrolled through photos from a trip to New Orleans in 2006 (originally posted in Shutterfly) all the way up to my most recent Facebook photos, shared last week. The date of each photo appeared in the center of the screen as I scrolled, so I jumped to dates I knew had memorable photos, like my 30th birthday and a 2010 New Year’s Eve vacation.

I dragged photos onto one another to organize each moment into stacks of images. And I deleted photos I didn’t want. By tapping a heart icon on a photo, I added it to a timeline of favorite photos. The iPad and iPhone apps were a cinch to use on-the-go.

When I found an image I liked, I hit a Share button to send it to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or to friends’ email addresses. It isn’t obvious enough that you can type in a person’s email. The site first encourages you to share it with friends on their Facebook walls. Later this week, ThisLife plans to introduce a better interface that makes it easier to download images and to tell where they came from. Also this week, it will let people privately share photos with a group of users who can be labeled as viewers or contributors.

Seagate’s Backup Plus Portable Drive backs up photos and videos from Facebook and Flickr.

People nervous about privacy or who want to stop using a social network (like Facebook) altogether without losing all of their posted photos will like Seagate’s Backup Plus. And its ability to fully back up a computer will offer some peace of mind.

Seagate’s social-media backup works on six different drives for Windows or Mac computers; I used the Backup Plus Portable Drive for Mac. This drive is relatively lightweight and portable, measuring about the size of a mini Moleskine notebook. I plugged it into my MacBook using an included USB cord and followed directions to install the Seagate Dashboard software. Once opened, this software prompted me to sign into my Facebook and/or Flickr accounts, and immediately began downloading photos from the sites. In 27 minutes, I backed up copies of roughly 1,100 Facebook photos. A small Auto Save check box will prompt the service to copy new photos from these two sites once an hour.

Since people may not always want a hard drive plugged into their computer for this backup, Seagate creates a folder called My Online Documents on the computer and stores new photos there. The next time a person plugs in the Backup Plus Drive and performs a system backup, the images are transferred to the portable drive. I glanced through photos in a subfolder of My Online Documents, called Facebook, where album names from Facebook were used to group images together.

Right now, Seagate saves only your own shared photos. The company says that by late October, you will be able to save photos in which you were tagged.

If you’re looking for a way to save all the photos you have floating around the Web, ThisLife groups them in a beautiful interface, while Seagate’s Backup Plus is a practical, no-frills option for offline storage.

Write to Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

What Will Marissa Do?: Mayer Set to Reveal Her Strategy to Troops This Week in an "Act of Radical Transparency" (Internal Memo!)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 00:49:06 +0000

On Friday, I began a series about the various and sundry things new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was up to at the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

First up was a look at how she is zeroing in on improving its troubled search efforts and advertising platforms, two business arenas that will get more focus this week when Mayer unveils her plans to the employees of Yahoo at an all-hands meeting.

According to an internal memo Mayer sent out Friday, the confab is scheduled for Tuesday. It comes after two days of meetings with Yahoo’s board of directors last week, in which Mayer outlined the plans for she has come up with to turnaround the company.

[Special note to readers: I would, as usual, embed the entire memo below, but Yahoo's top execs -- most especially, newly installed general counsel Ron "Leaks Are 'Uncool'" Bell -- have worked themselves into quite a lather over the issue of late. Apparently, according to numerous sources, the company is using all kinds of leak-catching tech tools -- free smartphones aren't as free as you might think, if you catch my drift, Yahoos, and I would also advise turning up the music loud when whispering in the Sunnyvale HQ offices -- so I will only quote internal emails only in part going forward to thwart such silliness.]

Pressing on!

In the memo, titled “Board slides, strategy and goals,” Mayer talked about the meetings. There will be two this Tuesday, one in the morning and one later in the day, in order to accommodate Yahoo staffers internationally.

“In an act of radical transparency that will be a tradition moving forward,” Mayer promised that she will go over the slides — which are usually not shared widely — of her “strategy and vision” that she presented at the board meeting on Friday.

“We want to offer you transparency into what happens at the board level as well as guidance as to where the company is going,” Mayer noted.

Kudos to that! (And send all that transparency my way, please!)

Mayer also said in the memo that she will have another all-hands meeting on October 1, where she will begin “rolling out a new system and process for goals for the company,” including annual goals that will be tracked and graded — first on a company level, then to departments, teams and, finally, individuals.

That’s a good idea, of course, because tracking such things has not been a focus of Yahoo for a while now. Not surprisingly, it is very much a practice at Google, from whence Mayer came and where she has been liberally borrowing a wide variety of management concepts.

But she has a few of her own tricks up her sleeve too, according to many sources, in terms of the strategy.

As I previously wrote, Mayer is planning on doubling down on search, as well as advertising platforms. Expect more money spent in both places, as well as a redo of Yahoo’s long-rocky search partnership with Microsoft.

Also up for a refresh is both email and also the critically important Yahoo home page. Both are being redesigned substantially to focus on consumer experience. People who have seen the mock-ups describe them both as more social and as more of a dashboard approach for users than the traditional catch-all portal.

It’s all based around learning technology that Yahoo has been working on called CORE, or Content Optimization and Relevance Engine. There will be lots of linking out and an attempt to make Yahoo more of a platform for others to develop on top of.

It’s a little Facebook-like, said several sources, but more focused on content and other products that differentiate Yahoo. Mayer has decided to back 10 key arenas, such as its powerful Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports sites, as well as its Flickr photo offering.

Still, no redesign is set in stone yet, so we’ll see what Mayer has decided on.

It’s also not clear what the e-commerce focus will be, but it is also an area that Mayer has a lot of experience in. Also a big question: What the heck is Yahoo’s non-existent mobile strategy going to be?

In addition, Mayer has already ordered the removal of some ads from both Yahoo’s email service and also its home page, cutting them back to improve the consumer experience. That’s a dicey move since Yahoo makes a big chunk of change from those ads, especially on the home page.

No matter. “Everything she is doing is about the consumer experience,” said a source. “Nothing else matters to her, even if it might matter to the bottom line.”

So far, Wall Street has been wary of Mayer until they see a strategy — the stock has been sitting in the $15 range since she arrived. That said, the high-profile exec does have more leeway from investors, and — perhaps most importantly — from the board.

In fact, at her now weekly Friday meeting for employees, a big group of the directors appeared onstage in a show of support.

A purple show, apparently — all were wearing lavender Yahoo t-shirts with “BoD” stamped on them.

Awwwwww! It’s like a mostly all-boy band! One, by the way, that might get more members soon. Sources told me that director Dan Loeb has been on the hunt to add at least one more person to the group, focusing on landing a Silicon Valley star.

When he was waging his proxy battle on Yahoo he tried to recruit both SurveyMonkey and former Yahoo David Goldberg and also well-known entrepreneur Max Levchin of PayPal and Slide.

While Goldberg joining the Yahoo board is not happening — he just joined the board of the Washington Post — getting Levchin to sign on seems more likely, especially with the focus on attracting innovative talent to the company.

Levchin is definitely that, as are many others Loeb has apparently been trying to buttonhole of late.

The iPhone Takes to the Big Screen

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 01:04:03 +0000

The world’s most popular smartphone becomes significantly faster, thinner and lighter this week, while gaining a larger, 4-inch screen — all without giving up battery life, comfort in the hand and high-quality construction.

[ See post to watch video ]

That’s my quick take on Apple’s new iPhone 5, the sixth generation of the iconic device, which goes on sale on Friday. I’ve been testing the new iPhone for nearly a week and I like it a lot and can recommend it, despite a few negatives, such as a new maps app that has one big plus, but other big minuses. On balance, I still consider the iPhone the best smartphone on the market, especially with its staggering 700,000 third-party apps and a wealth of available content.

The price is the same — $199 for a 16-gigabyte base model, with higher-memory models at $299 and $399, all requiring a two-year contract.

Bigger Screen

In increasing the iPhone’s screen size, Apple took a different approach than competitors. It kept the same side-to-side width, yet added height to grow the screen from its previous 3.5-inch size. For those who prefer the gargantuan screens on some other phones, like the 4.8-inch display on Samsung’s Galaxy S III, the iPhone 5’s screen likely won’t suffice. These competing big screens are typically both taller and wider.

iPhone 5

However, I found the new iPhone screen much easier to hold and manipulate than its larger rivals and preferred it. In my view, Apple’s approach makes the phone far more comfortable to use, especially one-handed. It’s easier to carry in a pocket or purse and more natural-looking when held up to your face for a call.

And the moment you turn it on, you notice that the new, larger, screen can display more content—six rows of icons instead of five; and more contacts, emails and calendar entries without scrolling.

Despite the larger size, Apple managed to retain the same number of pixels per inch on the iPhone 5 as on earlier models, so the new model keeps the “Retina display” effect, which allows for sharp details. The screen continues to look great.

There’s a temporary downside: Many apps will fail to fill the whole of the larger screen until they are revised. But they still work as intended.

Design

While this new model isn’t a radical redesign, it offers a much bigger change than the current iPhone 4S did when it was launched last year. The minute you pick the iPhone 5 up you notice it’s much lighter—20 percent lighter, in fact. It’s so much lighter that you wonder if it’s a demonstration mock-up, not the real thing.

Yet unlike many competitors, this isn’t a plastic, insubstantial-feeling device. Although Apple claims it’s the world’s thinnest smartphone—18 percent thinner than the prior model—the iPhone 5 retains Apple’s trademark, solid-feeling, metal construction, with an aluminum back this time, instead of a glass back. Like many Apple products, it’s gorgeous.

There’s one design change that’s already rankling people, however: To accommodate the thinner design, Apple has adopted a new, thinner connector on the phone for plugging in the charger cable and connecting to accessories, like speaker docks. A new cable is included, but owners of the new phone will have to buy $29 adapters to keep using existing accessories.

The iPhone 5 also boasts a large array of new software features — though nearly all are available for older iPhones as well, via a free upgrade to the operating system, called iOS 6.

Speed, Battery and Camera

Perhaps the single biggest functional improvement in this iPhone — something you can’t get by upgrading the software on an older model — is speed. Apple has finally connected the iPhone to the fastest cellular data network, called LTE, and data downloads and uploads just fly, even when you aren’t on Wi-Fi. Also, the processor now has twice the previous speed.

Apple is hardly the first smartphone maker to include LTE. In fact, it’s one of the last. But including it in the popular iPhone is a big deal, especially since, unlike on some early LTE models, the blazing cellular technology doesn’t decimate the battery life on this phone.

Using an iPhone 5 on the Verizon LTE network in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., I averaged almost 26 megabits per second for downloads and almost 13 megabits per second for uploads. Download speeds peaked at 42 megabits per second. These speeds are more than 10 times the typical speeds I got on an iPhone 4S running Verizon’s slower 3G network and are faster than most Americans’ home Internet services. While LTE affects only data, voice calls I made on the iPhone 5 were clear, better than in the past. I had no dropped calls.

The iPhone 5’s battery lasted between 9 and 12 hours every day, in mixed use. For most people, the phone would last the day without recharging.

Apple shrunk the size of the rear camera, but kept the 8-megapixel resolution and added a cool, easy panorama feature and the ability to take still photos while making a video. Photos and videos I took looked great and were improved when in low light.

Maps and Software

Google vs. Apple

Compare screen shots of Google’s maps app and Apple’s own maps app.

iPhone 5 White House map (Apple Maps)

iPhone 4S White House map (Google Maps)

iPhone 5 navigation (Apple Maps)

iPhone 4S navigation (Google Maps)

The biggest drawback I found is the new Maps app. Apple has replaced Google Maps with a new maps app of its own. This app has one huge advantage over the iPhone version of Google Maps — it now offers free, voice-prompted, turn-by-turn navigation. Google had made this available on its Android phones, but not the iPhone. Apple’s navigation worked very well, with clear directions displayed as large green highway signs.

But the app is in other ways a step backward from the familiar Google app. For instance, while Apple’s maps feature a 3-D “Flyover” view of some central cities, they lack Google’s very useful ground-level photographic street views. And they also lack public-transit routing. Apple will instead link you to third-party transit apps. Also, while I found Apple’s maps accurate, they tend to default to a more zoomed-in view than Google’s, making them look emptier until you zoom out.

Siri, Apple’s voice-controlled intelligent assistant, can still be unreliable (it’s still a beta) but I had success with some of its new features, such as looking up movies and sports scores. It now allows you to dictate and post Facebook status messages and book restaurant reservations via the separate OpenTable app.

Speaking of Facebook, Apple has added sharing to that service as a built-in feature that works with many apps on the phone.

There’s also a nice new feature that lets you respond to a call you can’t take with either a canned text message (such as “I’ll call you later”) or a reminder to call back.

Apple’s FaceTime video-calling service now works over cellular connections as well as Wi-Fi. I was able to make several crystal-clear video calls over LTE, one from a parked car.

And Apple is introducing a new photo-sharing service, which lets you set up a stream of selected pictures and invite specific friends to subscribe to it. Any new pictures you add to these shared Photo Streams pop up on subscribers’ phones and they can comment on them.

Siri on the iPhone 5 can look up movies and sports information, above, as well as make restaurant reservations via the separate OpenTable app.

Some rival phones boast some features Apple chose to omit. These include a wireless function called NFC, for paying for goods wirelessly, and face recognition for logging into your phone. But I regard such features as either little-used or unperfected. For instance, NFC isn’t available in most stores and, in my tests, facial recognition on phones has failed to work time and again. For some, these features matter a lot, but I’d bet most users won’t care about them, at least in their current state.

Carrier Plans

Carrier plans for the new iPhone are too complex to detail here. In general, if you’re a current iPhone user, you won’t be able to upgrade at the $199 price unless you’ve had your current phone for a minimum period. And unlimited-data plans generally aren’t available to new users, though Verizon will sell you one if you are an existing customer with unlimited data and pay an unsubsidized price of $649 for the phone. AT&T will allow existing users with unlimited plans to keep them, even at the subsidized phone price, if they’ve had their current iPhones for a certain length of time, generally around 20 months. Sprint is the exception: It offers unlimited data to all iPhone buyers, existing and new.

Upgrading

If you own an iPhone 4S and especially if your carrier won’t let you upgrade yet at the $199 price, you may be content with just upgrading to the new software, which gives you a lot. But you’ll be stuck with the smaller screen, bulkier size and pokier cellular speed. If you own an older model iPhone, or are switching from another phone, however, the iPhone 5 is an excellent choice.

Bottom Line

Apple has taken an already great product and made it better, overall. Consumers who prefer huge screens or certain marginal features have plenty of other choices, but the iPhone 5 is an excellent choice.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Not Ready for iPhone 5? Upgrade Offers Some New Tricks.

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 01:03:45 +0000

The good news for plenty of current iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users pondering buying the new iPhone 5 is that they’ll get many of the 200 new features in Apple’s free update for mobile software, iOS 6, available on Wednesday.

[ See post to watch video ]

I’ve compiled a handful of the most significant features you’ll get with the iOS software update, which I tested on the iPhone 5 and the newest iPad. Some older devices won’t be able to use all of these features and one feature will work only on the iPhone 5: taking a still photo while recording a video. Here are some highlights of the new features. There are many more features too numerous to mention.

Do Not Disturb

Finally, the iPhone can let its owners sleep at night — with options. Until now, the iPhone’s silencing switch turned off all sounds with no alternatives. This meant that people who wanted to turn off alert sounds for Facebook notifications and incoming emails while they slept had to give up receiving phone calls in the middle of the night from, say, a relative having an emergency.

The Do Not Disturb feature (turned on in Settings and adjusted in Settings, Notifications) turns off all sounds but can make exceptions. If you want to be notified whenever one of your favorite contacts calls you, the phone will ring. Another optional feature of Do Not Disturb lets calls ring through if a person calls twice in a row within three minutes. Do Not Disturb can be set to work on a daily schedule, like from 11 pm to 7 am, so you don’t have to remember to turn it on. People who are trying to maintain separate work and personal lives may even set this to work after they leave the office, only allowing calls from certain groups (like family and close friends) to ring between 6 pm and 8 am.

If your phone’s silent switch is on, the phone won’t make noise no matter how Do Not Disturb is set.

The Panorama feature in Camera works on the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and newest iPod touch.

Panorama

In iOS 6, Apple (as it often does) took a feature that’s already available in many smartphones and made it a lot simpler to use: capturing panoramic photos. In Camera, select Options at the top center of the screen and choose Panorama. A small on-screen diagram will appear to guide you as you click the shutter button once and pan the phone from left to right, following an on-screen arrow along a center line. Panorama works on the iPhone 4S and 5, as well as the newest iPod touch.

Better Sharing

IOS 6 has improved sharing in two significant ways: It’s now integrated with Facebook and enables sharing directly from the places where people think about sharing. You can share to Facebook using various tools such as the Notification Center screen (pull this down from the top of the screen and select Tap to Post in Facebook); using Siri (tap and hold the Home button before saying, “Post to Facebook”); or by clicking a share button (a square with an arrow) on nearly any screen — including photos.

Until now, iOS forced people to open Facebook, select Photo in the app and then choose an image to share. Now, people can tap the share button while looking at a specific photo and send that photo out to Facebook.

Likewise, you can now add photos or videos to emails as you’re composing them — not by starting with photos. This is something people naturally do on their desktops as they add photos or videos to emails. Do this by tapping anywhere on the screen in the body of the email to see the Select, Select All, Paste options appear. Then tap on the right arrow and select Insert Photo or Video.

Siri now works on the newest versions of the iPad and iPod touch, and can do more things, like launch apps.

App Store

While Apple’s App Store now holds 700,000 apps, the revamped App Store app for iOS doesn’t look overcrowded thanks to a more organized layout. Search results appear in card format, one per screen. By swiping one app to the left, another appears. Developer information, reviews from other users and screen shots of the app appear in a helpful, methodical format. While the old App Store forced people to scroll down a lot, this App Store makes better use of the horizontal plane. It does a better job of displaying Genius, a feature that suggests apps you might like according to those you’ve purchased.

Maps

Apple is now shipping its own Maps app, replacing Google’s Maps app on devices receiving the update. This app takes some getting used to, and its maps appear a bit more zoomed in, overall.

But its turn-by-turn directions (available on the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPad 2 or later) will be a big help for people who want a hands-free option for driving: Just plug in your destination address, pick a route and tap start to hear navigation instructions announced out loud as you drive. The text of the directions still appears on the device’s lock screen, in case you put it down and it locks and you need to quickly glance at the next step.

Siri

Apple’s voice assistant, Siri, has been updated to do more and now works on the latest-model iPad and iPod touch as well as the iPhone 4S and 5. Siri can now open apps and do more with them; I composed a Facebook message and never touched any keys. But it still has its inaccuracies: In a quiet office, I said, “Launch Google Plus,” which Siri interpreted as “Lunch Google Plus,” and then said, “I found 15 lunch restaurants, 11 are fairly close to you.” This is a failed experience that happens all too often.

Freedom from Wi-Fi

Now, the FaceTime video chats you make on iOS can be conducted over cellular, not just Wi-Fi. This works on the iPhone 4S and 5, as well as the newest iPad, so long as it has cellular data capability.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

VF's "New Establishment" List: Apple's Cook and Ive Knock Facebook's Zuckerberg Off No. 1, While Yahoo's Mayer Debuts at No. 7

Kara Swisher — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 11:03:35 +0000

Vanity Fair magazine published its annual “The New Establishment” list, out now in its October issue, and Silicon Valley disruptors dominate again over media mavens.

In fact, the top 10 selections of the 50 overall are all from tech, with Apple CEO Tim Cook and head product design guru Jonathan Ive in the No. 1 slot, up from No. 4 last year.

In 2011, that first slot was held by Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who this year was moved to No. 4, which is certainly not as bad a drop as the stock of his social networking site of late.

In the other slots: No. 2 is Google’s twin search engine founders, Sergey Brin and CEO Larry Page; No. 3 is Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos; No. 5 is Twitter and Square impresario Jack Dorsey; No. 6 is venture capital’s Batman and Robin, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz; No. 7, on the list for the first time, is former Googler and new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer; No. 8 is Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann, also new; No. 9 is SpaceX and Tesla Motors kingpin Elon Musk; and No. 10 are LinkedIn’s dynamic duo, Chairman Reid Hoffman and CEO Jeff Weiner.

Singer extraordinaire Adele clocks in at No. 11, the first media appearance on the list.

The rest of the list is chock full of the usual tech suspects, including my All Things Digital partner Walt Mossberg and me at No. 34. (There is also a very nice portrait photo of me with a group of much more accomplished tech women, photographed at Buck’s in Woodside — in which I appear to be oddly staring at something besides the camera lens, while all the rest behave.)

You can peruse the whole list here.

(Full disclosure: Readers who look closely at the list will notice that ATD senior editor Peter Kafka is listed as a contributor, as he was last year. This is true! Also true: Peter wrote biographical entries for several people on the list, and had some input on its composition, although not about us. In addition, I have been asked to write some freelance articles for Vanity Fair going forward, but have not started as yet.)

After #Eastwooding Exits, Dems Take Their Seat at the Social Table

Kara Swisher — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 23:13:05 +0000

Last week’s Republican Convention provided perhaps the most entertaining — albeit, not on purpose — political social meme on the Web, with Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood’s odd performance with an empty chair.

That quickly set off an instant flood of pictures posted on Twitter of people chastising their chairs — dubbed, of course, #Eastwooding.

And also the very funny Twitter account @invisibleobama, who had a nice Labor Day tip for us all:

On this Labor Day, take a moment to remember that today is the last day it’s appropriate to wear invisible seersucker anything.

— Invisible Obama (@InvisibleObama) September 3, 2012

Even President Barack Obama’s tweet-staff got into it by posting the photo below, with the caption: “This seat’s taken.”

This seat’s taken. OFA.BO/c2gbfi, twitter.com/BarackObama/st…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 31, 2012

Now that we are done making fun of inanimate objects, it will be interesting to see what pops up online this coming week at the Democratic Convention, which officially starts tomorrow in Charlotte, N.C.

Obviously, there are Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr links from the main convention homepage, but there is also a share page in which users are being asked to fill-in-the-tweet: “I nominate Barack Obama Because …”

No surprise, the tweets are uniformly upbeat — and likely vetted — which is what you get with socially engineered social media.

Which is why what happens without the manipulations of the message-makers and political pros — that unexpected moment of reality just made for the medium — will be much more interesting to see as the week goes on.

Boxes and a Bar: OnLive Employees Pack Up After Cloud Gaming Company Obfuscates About Fate (Photos)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 21:24:18 +0000

According to multiple reports I have received, some employees of OnLive have been walking out of their Palo Alto, Calif. offices over the last few hours laden with boxes.

And some, no surprise, are headed to a nearby bar — The Patio — presumably to drown their sorrows.

The departures from the online cloud-gaming service came after a meeting this morning in which its top execs told staff that it would be letting almost the entire staff go, but without a lot of explanation of what that meant.

While founder and CEO Steve Perlman runs a number of other digital efforts — via his own Rearden Labs — at its Silicon Valley HQ, sources said only fraction of staffers will be left to keep the servers running until a resolution for the assets is found. Kotaku reported that OnLive would be filing an “alternative to bankruptcy called an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors, or ABC, in the state of California.”

It is not clear who actually owns the pricey technology and patents for OnLive, which has raised $56 million in funding from investors such as Maverick Capital, Time Warner and HTC. HTC, the Taiwanese telecom giant, invested $40 million of the total in early 2011.

That’s a lot of dough, so it is not clear what has happened or if Perlman is poised to sell off the entity.

Sony recently bought one of OnLive’s rivals in the space — Gaikai — for $380 million to turbocharge its cloud-gaming service efforts.

One thing is entirely clear: While egregiously denying it was doing so, the gaming and virtual desktop software start-up is effectively shutting down OnLive as it has been previously run.

Earlier today, an OnLive spokesperson denied the obvious situation.

“We don’t respond to rumors, but the service is not shutting down,” OnLive said, while also bizarrely flacking their games.

Last week, I heard a rumor of just this thing happening and asked a spokesperson last Friday via email: “I hear via very good sources it is closing down or cutting back.”

This was the disingenuous response: “The latest rumors have been around acquisitions — this is a new one! Not the case, but officially we never comment on rumors.”

No need for comment, as you can see from the photo above and also here that was just sent to me.

OnLive launched in 2010 as a Web portal for streaming games, which it demoed here, from the D: All Things Digital conference in 2010.

As Lauren Goode wrote earlier: “In addition to its cloud-based gaming platform, which runs on PCs, tablets and now Google TV products, OnLive also offers [Microsoft] Office-based, virtual desktop software for [Apple] iPads and [Google] Android tablets, which got the Palo-Alto-based start up in some hot water with Microsoft earlier this year.”

Mashable first reported on the possible layoffs earlier. Let’s upgrade that to actual.