AllThingsD » photo

Noah Kalina, Wedding Photographer

Eric Johnson — Mon, 21 May 2012 06:59:45 +0000

I just took this photo. I’ll tell you about it later.

– Noah Kalina, referring to the iconic wedding photo he took of Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan

In Wake of Instagram Acquisition, Twitpic Launches iPhone App

Mike Isaac — Tue, 08 May 2012 01:46:52 +0000

Despite having been founded four years ago, Twitpic only launched its first free iPhone application on Monday, complete with basic photo editing tools and comments section. The app debuts as competition increasingly heats up in the mobile photo-sharing space, intensified by Facebook’s recent $1 billion acquisition of similar photo-sharing service Instagram.

High Five to AllThingsD.com -- Happy Birthday to Us

Kara Swisher — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 06:39:31 +0000

Five years ago, AllThingsD.com was launched with just a few staffers, a few stories and a whole lot of hope. Also, as it turned out, with a panoply of LOLcat photos.

The site had soft-launched a little earlier, but — officially — we opened our doors in the late evening of April 26, 2007. Walt Mossberg wrote about a Kodak printer; John Paczkowski wrote about, wait for it, Apple; and I opined on how then-Yahoo-CEO Terry Semel might save the troubled company.

The more things change …

Actually, despite the fact that we have grown hugely in both traffic and staff, and have logged almost 26,000 posts, little has changed in how ATD looks at its role in covering tech, using stringent standards of fairness, accuracy, ethics and reporting.

As I wrote back then: “That is what we will be trying to do most of the time here, attempting to figure out what is happening in the digital space and explaining it in a way that is clear and cogent.”

And, of course, have some fun doing it.

Thus, mission accomplished, and mission never accomplished, too.

Walt and I want to thank everyone, from our outstanding staff to our Dow Jones colleagues to the many companies we cover to — most of all — our readers.

There is a lot more to come going forward, and we hope to never disappoint and always delight.

And, as I also wrote back then at the dawn of AllThingsD:

“But enough looking back: On to the next thing.”

And to my amazing partner, Walt, you knew I could not resist:

Viral Video: Bubblicious, It's the Ultimate Silicon Valley Bubble

Kara Swisher — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:13:53 +0000

Here’s a video of an interview I did last week with CNN, on whether there was a bubble in valuations of start-ups in Silicon Valley.

Of course, the report was prompted by the mobile photo-sharing phenom Instagram’s recent sale to social networking giant Facebook for $1 billion.

My conclusion: It’s not a bubble exactly, but it is bubble-ish.

Enjoy:

L.A. Stories: Scarfing Up Big Media at Gobbler (Video)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:31:58 +0000

Another very interesting company I stumbled across in a funky building in Hollywood on my recent trip to Los Angeles is Gobbler, which bills itself as a “high-speed file transfer & backup for pro audio.”

In other words, a hopped-up version of Dropbox’s media-in-the-cloud efforts for cool music folks.

Armed with just over $3 million from angel investors like Sky Dayton, David Goldberg and others, the start-up is aiming to help media creators who need a lot more firepower, including backing up, transferring and organizing hefty music, video and photo files.

CEO Chris Kantrowitz knows whereof he speaks, as a designer of big music shows, including Coachella, the annual festival which takes place this weekend and next. He co-founded Gobbler with his sister, former Myspace exec Jamie Kantrowitz.

Here he is in a video interview with me talking about the future focus of the company, as well as where cloud storage is headed — Kantrowitz is one hep dude, so listen up:

[ See post to watch video ]

FaceTagram? InstaBook? Whatever You Call It, All Your Mobile Photo Are Belong to Facebook (for $1 Billion)!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:20:59 +0000

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.

Clicking on a Fortune: Facebook to Acquire Photo-Sharing Start-Up Instagram for $1 Billion

Kara Swisher — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:03:43 +0000

Facebook has just announced that it will acquire Instagram, the popular mobile photo-sharing service, for $1 billion in cash and shares.

The social networking giant posted on the acquisition, its biggest yet, on its site, as well as on CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Timeline on Facebook.

Photos are critically important for Facebook, which has been slow to innovate in the fast-growing mobile arena in the important consumer space. By contrast, Instagram has taken the arena by storm, with its delightful and elegant app and the motto, “Fast beautiful photo sharing.”

Consumers have responded (including me — it is the only non-communications app I use many times a day). The San Francisco-based company — with only 13 employees — had 30 million Apple iPhone users before it came to Google’s Android last week, where it got more than a million new users in just 12 hours.

Still, despite all the usage, Instagram had not articulated a plan for, you know, making money. Now, that will presumably be Facebook’s problem to solve.

The Facebook acquisition has been kept very quiet, with its CEO Kevin Systrom working on it in conjunction with new fundraising efforts that would have valued the company at $500 million. Liz Gannes reported on this effort last week, which was poised to close, in fact, before the Facebook deal was struck over the weekend.

Until now, Instagram has received Series A funding of $7 million led by Benchmark Capital just over a year ago, when it only had 1.75 million registered users.

Seed investors include Andreessen Horowitz — which did not follow on later — and Baseline Ventures. Also in the Benchmark round: Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, former Facebooker Adam D’Angelo and Chris Sacca.

In a blog post titled “Instagram + Facebook,” Systrom promised no change, except for the $1 billion mountain of cash:

“It’s important to be clear that Instagram is not going away. We’ll be working with Facebook to evolve Instagram and build the network … The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love.”

Zuckerberg also promised that Facebook would keep Instagram independent, and that such a large purchase would be rare for the company, which is set to go public soon.

“This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users,” he wrote. “We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all.”

Here is the full press release from Facebook:

Facebook to Acquire Instagram

MENLO PARK, CALIF. — April 9, 2012 — Facebook announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire Instagram, a fun, popular photo-sharing app for mobile devices.

The total consideration for San Francisco-based Instagram is approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, posted about the transaction on his Timeline:

I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.

For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.

This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.

We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.

L.A. Stories: HipSwap Tries to Take the Creepy out of Craigslist (Video)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:56:24 +0000

Last week, I visited Los Angeles to get a gander at some of the many digital companies that are doing some interesting things down south of Silicon Valley.

First stop: HipSwap, a community-based marketplace that is now in 14 U.S. cities after initial tests in Los Angeles and New York City.

Its goal is to de-creep the experience — because no matter how it’s done online, local buying and selling still has a lot of glitches. Using a visual approach (think Pinterest), with hipster social hooks (think Airbnb) and focusing on location (hmm, perhaps think Foursquare), complete with delivery in some cities, HipSwap is hoping to differentiate itself from big players in the space, such as Craigslist and eBay.

The app-heavy HipSwap allows anyone with stuff, including boutique merchants with quirky stuff to move, to quickly snap photos of items, price them and then — presumably — sell. Payment is made via PayPal or credit card, with HipSwap in between the buyer and seller, to ease the transaction’s typical awkwardness.

Because it is local, the items are varied, from trendy baby strollers to funky furniture to antique sewing machines. And, because it is in the L.A. area, HipSwap is also pushing celebrity fare, with a charitable “Shop My Closet” marketplace and video series, which recently included Kyle Richards from “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

The Santa Monica, Calif. start-up recently closed $1.1 million seed funding from a number of prominent investors, such as Founders Fund, Greycroft Partners, as well as former Microsoft exec — and early Pinterest angel — Hank Vigil and Mahalo President Jason Rapp.

Here’s a video interview I did with co-founder and CEO Rob Kramer about the interesting retail concept:

[ See post to watch video ]

Retrosift Scans Your Emails for Every (Cringeworthy) Photo You’ve Ever Sent

Lauren Goode — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:29:01 +0000

Some photos are better left buried. Retrosift is a good reminder of that.

The new online app sifts through all the photos you’ve ever sent via email — and if your habits were like mine before sharing through mobile apps became the norm, you attached a lot of photos to email — and organizes them in an album. Photos can be filtered by year or by the name of a person you exchanged photos with.

The app is pretty simple to use: You go to Retrosift.com, type in your email address and are asked to allow access to the app. Retrosift then begins sifting through your photos, and several minutes later presents them in a timeline. Fond memories and embarrassment ensue. If you’d like to save or share the pictures, you can send them to Dropbox or Facebook from the app. Retrosift works with Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL mail accounts.

And since giving third-party apps access to email is cringeworthy in itself to some people, users can then disallow access to the app once their photos have been dug up. (For example, in Gmail, you can go to Authorizing Applications & Sites under the My Account area in Gmail, and revoke access.)

Retrosift does come at a small cost: The company is charging a one-time fee of five dollars for three months of access to the photo timeline. It’s not an auto-subscription, so once the three months are up, you lose access to the Retrosift timeline. Of course, the photos are all still there in your email inbox; you’ll just have to dig to find them yourself, assuming you actually want to do that.

Retrosift was created by three former Yelp employees, Bryan Byrne, Rhett Garber and Neil Kumar, who came up with the idea when Byrne’s mother was trying to find an email containing a photo of one of her granddaughters, born three years earlier. Byrne says the trio doesn’t know yet how they plan to build out their company — or if that’s even related to the Retrosift app — and for now, they’re just looking to build a fun app.

“Rather than just talk about vaporware and bigger visions, we said, let’s just build a utility that’s good, and then focus on the big picture,” Bryne says.

Photo-sharing site Flickr also has a tool that allows people to upload images from their email accounts. Pixable is a mobile and Web app that sorts through your Facebook photos for you, presenting them on a Pinterest-like board and emailing you the top photos of the day from your Facebook network. And lots of other mobile apps now aim to search and sort through the many apps on your mobile phone, including PhotoCal, Photo-Sort and Sortshots. Other apps aim to zap your duplicate photo files.

Camera Awesome Lowers Photo Effects Pricing, Shares with Instagram

Lauren Goode — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:57:03 +0000

Camera Awesome, the photo app from SmugMug that boasts a whopping 297 photo effects and an impressive download rate of more than four million in four weeks, now works with popular photo-sharing app Instagram, allowing users to share their “awesomized” photos to Instagram’s mobile photo network. The company is now bundling all of Camera Awesome’s photo effects for a one-time purchase of $9.99, after previously charging 99 cents per bundle for 29 bundles of effects.

SmugMug's Camera Awesome App Sees Two Million Downloads in First Week

Lauren Goode — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:57:08 +0000

Camera Awesome, the new photography app from Mountain View-based SmugMug, is getting an awesome response, according to the company’s CEO and “Chief Geek,” Don MacAskill.

In its first four days on the App Store, Camera Awesome was downloaded more than one million times; it hit two million in less than a week.

More than 10 million photos have been taken with the app already. Currently, it’s ranked the No. 1 photography app in 55 countries. In the U.S., it’s currently ranked No. 2 on the free apps list in iTunes, behind Draw Something, which my colleague Peter Kafka wrote about last week (and which I’ve since become addicted to — I blame him).

For comparison’s sake: That’s faster than the initial download rate of mobile photo-sharing app Instagram, which crossed the two-million-download mark in two months, and comparable to the two-million-in-two-days feat of Angry Birds on Android.

“We’ve struck a chord with photographers around the world, from soccer dads to mom-tographers and high-end professionals, and we’re only getting started,” MacAskill said.

The popularity of mobile photo apps comes as smartphones capable of taking decent photos — and sharing them quickly — munch at the market for digital cameras. Late last year, a report from the NPD Group said that the percentage of photos taken with a smartphone grew 10 percent year over year to 27 percent in 2011, while its Retail Tracking Service found that the point-and-shoot camera market had dipped 17 percent year over year in terms of units shipped, and 18 percent in terms of revenue.

Camera Awesome became available in the App Store last Tuesday. Despite the app’s somewhat intimidating 297 presets, filters, textures and frames, my colleague Katie Boehret wrote in her review of the app that “it is by far one of the most full-powered camera apps I’ve used, marking an exciting advance for smartphone cameras.”

As Katie reports, Camera Awesome is free, but it is only available for iOS devices; an Android app is in the works.

A Photo App That Makes "Awesome" a Verb

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:03:42 +0000

Photography standards have taken a nose dive lately. The photos shared on social networks are often captured on smartphone cameras, which can take poor quality shots. Even photos captured at higher resolutions get downgraded when posted on social networks, including Facebook.

[ See post to watch video ]

Finally, there is an app that gives smartphone camera photos a major boost with powerful photo-capturing functions and editing: Camera Awesome. This is a free camera app made by SmugMug, the strikingly handsome photography site known best for its popularity among enthusiasts who want unlimited storage and don’t mind paying a monthly fee.

I got an exclusive first look at this app and have been testing it for the past several weeks using an iPhone 4 and an iPhone 4S. It was available free in Apple’s App Store starting Tuesday and works for anyone, regardless of whether or not they have SmugMug accounts, though those users get a few bonuses. In short, it is by far one of the most full-powered camera apps I’ve used, and it marks an exciting advance for smartphone cameras. Photos I captured with this app tricked friends into thinking they were taken with a high-quality camera.

Together, ‘Focus’ and ‘Expose’ on-screen icons let users make adjustments.

Of the photo apps out there, few come close to Camera Awesome. The app has 297 presets, filters, textures and frames, along with many other features like image stabilization and burst modes. The popular Instagram has far fewer photo effects, lacks things like image stabilization or burst modes, and doesn’t include video recording. Inventive Inc.’s Camera+ has some of Camera Awesome’s helpful shooting modes, but costs $1.99 and doesn’t have as many effects, or video mode.

Camera Awesome offers an ideal mix of beauty and brains. A playful “Awesomize” tool enhances with one touch, and hundreds of filters, frames and textures add artistic effects to shots. More serious photographers will appreciate composition overlays and focus and exposure settings. The app’s video-recording feature can capture footage from five seconds before “Record” is turned on, giving parents better odds of capturing kids’ once-in-a-lifetime moments. (The app and camera must both be on for this to work.)

The app also shares well with others. Besides emailing photos, it integrates one-touch sharing and optional automatic instant sharing with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, YouTube and SmugMug.

The ‘Awesomize’ tool at work

So what’s not to like? Camera Awesome is free, but it is only available for Apple’s iOS devices. (SmugMug CEO and Chief Geek Don MacAskill, says an Android app is in the works.) Though the app includes 36 free effects, including presets, filters, textures and frames, 261 effects must be bought as an in-app purchase for 99 cents per set of nine. These are thoughtfully grouped, like a set of nine Portrait effects for those who take a lot of shots of other people.

And since Camera Awesome is designed to take photos as fast as possible, it doesn’t freeze an image on the screen after it is captured. To confirm the shot I captured, I tapped a thumbnail of the image at the bottom of the screen.

Also, the “Awesomizing” process is somewhat sluggish—about five seconds or more in most cases. But here’s where some whimsy comes in: Funny messages, such as “Sautéing camel toes” and “Gathering unicorn tears,” will appear on screen while you wait for a photo to be edited. In my case, the quirky distractions worked; I didn’t mind waiting at all.

The Awesomize button works as a slider, so I could adjust exactly how much editing I wanted applied to a photo. This button is like Apple’s one-touch Enhance button, except it feels more robust. Four sub-sliders can be adjusted within Awesomize editing, including Sharpness, Temperature, Vibrance and Contrast. The effects that can be applied to each photo, from frames to colors to cropping, can make one’s head spin. One effect called Ectoplasm left a green residue on the subject in my photo that would’ve made any “Ghostbusters” fan proud.

If you really like one effect and you want it applied to all of your photos, a drop-down menu lets you choose it for automatic post processing, instantly applying, say, the color-saturated “More Cowbell” effect to each shot.

With a click, users can share photos with various social-networking sites.

Of the many editing options, one of the most useful is being able to set the capturing mode to quickly turn on a slow burst or fast burst for active shots, like at a basketball game. The digital timer let me take shots as few as five seconds later or as many as 60 seconds later. A tap-to-focus icon in the middle of the composition screen is paired with a second icon, which when moved, allows you to move the shot’s point of exposure.

People with SmugMug accounts, which cost $5 monthly or $40 annually, get some extra benefits. (People who use the app to sign up get half off their first year with SmugMug.) All photos they take using the app can be automatically cloud-archived in SmugMug at full resolution. This means a photo taken with the iPhone 4S, which captures eight megapixels, will be uploaded to SmugMug as eight megapixels. SmugMug account holders also can opt to post photos to several sharing sites at the same time with one click.

Email Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com

Facebook Gives Its Ads a Boost, Using Your Photos

Peter Kafka — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:58:10 +0000

Facebook is the world’s biggest photo-sharing service. And now, as the company prepares to go public, it’s looking to make a bit more money from all of that sharing, via a newly designed photo-viewer that gives ads much more prominence.

The photo-viewer started rolling out earlier this month, and appears to have been implemented widely in the last few days. Plenty of folks have noted that it’s similar to the format Google uses in Google+. I think the ad treatment is much more interesting.

Here’s the old format, via a Huffington Post screenshot:

And here’s the new one:

Those screenshots give you some idea of the new prominence the ads get, but it’s even more obvious in real life. Put it this way: I look at Facebook a lot, and I didn’t even realize that Facebook had been showing me ads when I clicked on photos. Now I can’t avoid them.

For now, that is. Entirely possible that I’ll develop the same “banner blindness” that I have for lots of other Web ads.

Also worth noting that these ads only seem to show up on photos that don’t have many comments on them. Photos that do have lots of comments display those comments instead. So if you’re looking at, say, pictures posted by Mark Zuckerberg, you won’t end up seeing ads next those images at all.

I asked Facebook reps for comment, and they offered a boilerplate response: “We’re constantly testing new designs and layouts on Facebook.”

So I’ll take the liberty of adding what they might say — if they had a beer or two and weren’t talking to a reporter: “See? This is one reason why you guys should trust us when we explain that we’re in the early stages of social advertising. If this format works, it means we’ll have opened up a huge slug of real estate we weren’t using. Boom! Instant revenue stream! And it’s also why you should just chill out about the fact that we don’t yet make any money from mobile. Of course we’re going to figure out how to put ads on your iPhone! We just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

Thanks, imaginary slightly tipsy Facebook rep! Look forward to chatting with you again soon.

Photobucket: Holidays Were All About Mobile Photos -- And Fido

Lauren Goode — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:13:07 +0000

This past holiday season, many consumers ditched their digital cameras in favor of smartphones, a new company-sponsored report from Photobucket says.

Data from the popular photo-sharing service shows the number of mobile photo app users who use the apps at least once a day doubled to 42 percent, up from 20 percent midyear in 2011.

Meanwhile, only 64 percent reported using digital cameras to capture the majority of their images throughout the season, down from 82 percent a year ago.

Anecdotally, this means more bad news for camera makers, as they become increasingly threatened by smartphones with decent image-taking capabilities.

The Photobucket report also points out that pets were, shall we say, very present in this year’s holiday cards. Some 41 percent of respondents used an image for their holiday cards; among pet owners, 58 percent included Fido/Rudolph in the photo.

The surge in smartphone use didn’t apply to just pictures: Capturing videos on mobile devices also saw a jump during the holidays. A full 80 percent of survey respondents took video using a mobile device at least once throughout the season, up from 59 percent in Photobucket’s summer sampling, while 50 percent of respondents used a mobile device to record video daily or multiple times a day.

While already-avid users of mobile photo apps increased their usage this past holiday season, a substantial 43 percent of respondents indicated they have yet to try a mobile app for taking photos.

Photobucket says it gathered responses from more than 2,200 survey participants, and culled data from Photobucket’s more than nine billion image uploads for the report.

(Photo courtesy of HollyLovesArt/Flickr)

Viral Image: The Biggest and Bluest Marble

Kara Swisher — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:33:19 +0000

I am at the funeral of my aunt today, giving the eulogy later, and it’s a sad occasion.

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)

"Goofy" CEO Andrew Mason on "60 Minutes" This Week

Kara Swisher — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:58:32 +0000

Of course, this infamous kooky cat-on-his-head photo from a Vanity Fair magazine shoot made it into an upcoming profile of Groupon CEO Andrew Mason. Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” has done a piece on the Chicago-based social buying phenom, set to air this Sunday.

And, naturally, Stahl trots out the “goofy” description of Mason.

In addition, said the preview caption for the CBS television news show: “Groupon’s Andrew Mason says he may not be as smart, mature or experienced as other CEOs, but being company founder is his edge.”

Dumber, juvenile and just-arrived — but I created this three-ring circus with my own two hands? Sounds good to me!

Here is a preview of the Stahl-Mason segment, as well as my own wacky interview with Mason from last year’s D: All Things Digital conference:

[ See post to watch video ]

(Photo credit: Martin Schoeller, exclusively for Vanity Fair)

Mattebox Photo App: More Than Just Filters

Lauren Goode — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:01:55 +0000

We get it, mobile photo snappers. We’ve seen your Kelvins and your Hefes and your Lomo-fis. We’ve seen your tilt-shifts and your tweets linking to your iPhone photos.

We know there are good reasons why Apple just named Instagram as its iPhone App of the Year.

But what if you’re just a regular camera user looking for a mobile app that mimics the DSLR experience? Then you may want to check out Mattebox, which just became available in the App Store.

The iOS app offers a wide variety of options for setting up your smartphone for smart photo-taking, as well as post-production features for professional-level imagery.

As you can see from some of the images here, the interface shows focal distance (in the upper right-hand corner), which tells users how far or close a subject is; shutter speed is at the bottom of the screen and one-tap white-balancing is at right. The lock on the left indicates that the focus and exposure are locked — so users can adjust their framing but maintain the same settings, if they’d like — and the app uses a slide-down button on the right to take the photo, which feels a little bit more intuitive then moving to the bottom of the phone to snap a shot.

After a user has taken a photo, there are five adjustment controls — white balance, exposure, contrast, saturation, and vignette — and a “crop” button within the app. And for filter freaks, there are a handful of those, too, including Faded 35mm, Contrast Lovers, Square and Soft and Red Filter. Plus, a user can save an unlimited number of favorite settings, combined with a filter.

The app’s creator, Chicago-based Ben Syverson (whose previous projects include the Lou Zoom app from rock guitarist Lou Reed), says he created Mattebox to serve as a one-stop app for all photo-shooting and filter needs. The independent software developer says he has about two dozen camera apps on his phone, but felt that none of them gave him the control and simplicity of a plastic camera.

I wouldn’t call Mattebox incredibly simple for most consumers, but for professional or “prosumer” photographers who are used to the settings of a DSLR, it does pack many of those features into a nicely designed app.

One drawback is that there are no explainers within the app for all of the functions, though Syverson points out that there are video tutorials on the Mattebox.net Web site. Another sticking point for some users might be the lack of social-sharing options, which may be worked into a later version.

Mattebox costs $4.99, pricey compared to the free photo apps that are available. But Syverson believes this is a small price to pay for a mobile-phone experience not unlike Lightroom or Aperture, and thinks serious photo-takers won’t care about the cost.

Syverson says his goal is to introduce cloud storage on the Mattebox.net site, to provide seamless sharing and storage options; he’s also planning a version of Mattebox for Mac desktops, and an Aperture plugin.

Jetpac Transports Friends' Photos to the iPad for a Truly Personal Travel Magazine (Video)

Drake Martinet — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:09:19 +0000

Facebook is full of clever little apps that deliver interesting but useless stats and graphs to the user.

After getting authorization, an app spins its wheels, hoovering up all the data it can and finally spitting out some pretty graph, friend-web, or stat sheet about which “Harry Potter” character a user is most like.

Not that I’d know anything about that.

But a new cadre of applications is rising above this fray and attempting to deliver a deeper set of services based on the data users so willingly fork over.

Jetpac, a new Web app from co-founders Pete Warden, Derek Dukes and Julian Green, is one such service.

What began life as a simple Facebook-connected Web application is quickly growing out of its Web-browser box and into something novel.

Jetpac’s initial user experience is simple: Connect a Facebook account and Jetpac will return a personalized visualization of where a user has traveled, where all of their friends have been and how much of the world they’ve collectively covered — all tidily bundled up in a vintage-travel-inspired Jetpac.com profile page.

To get the data, Jetpac crawls the captions of every image ever shared across a user’s entire Facebook friend group.

Warden said that translates to an average of 200,000 photos accessible to each Facebook profile, with slightly more than a quarter of those being geolocatable based on a word search of the captions.

“We realized that people do the work of telling us what photos are important and travel-oriented by choosing to take the time to name them,” Warden said.

“People don’t caption pictures from the local bar with the location, because their friends would know. They put the location in the caption when location is an important part of what they are sharing.”

But it’s a fine line between helpful serendipity and photo-stalking.

Warden knows better than most about the dangers of over-creepy geolocation. Back in April, he and a colleague uncovered the iPhone’s location-tracking “bug,” which made national tech news. Their discovery caused Apple, Warden’s former employer, to update its software and eliminate the location-storage issue.

But photo crawling is just the means to an end for Jetpac, which is aiming to launch its iPad app in late January.

The app, which is still in active development, is part photo viewer, part friend-powered travel magazine and part vacation-destination browser.

The app organizes all of the user’s friends’ photos into location-based albums, which can be searched and browsed based on various criteria.

The version I saw was unfinished, but the mixture of photos, friends and places that the app presented felt like a new kind of media experience — one where my friends were part of the story of a place. I was able to see who had only uploaded the requisite tourist shots, and who had spent more time in a given place.

As with many clever ideas, much stands in the way of a successful Jetpac takeoff.

Facebook users are accustomed to a certain kind of relationship with Facebook apps, and the thought of making one connection to the Jetpac Web service, then instantly getting a customized experience on the iPad, may be too foreign for some.

Cutting-edge media problems aside, the tech behind the app isn’t flawless, either. Identifying places by their name can be tricky.

Warden said: “We couldn’t figure out why we were seeing lots of pickup trucks in albums, and then we realized it was called the Chevy Tahoe.”

Apparently, Jetpac can have similar problems differentiating between people who’ve been to Chad and people who know a guy by that name.

Word-nerd jokes notwithstanding, the service’s eventual monetization strategy is also unclear — though it’s not hard to imagine how compelling a product like this could be for the travel industry.

But many start-ups in Silicon Valley don’t focus on making money from the earliest stages, and while Jetpac will eventually have to cross that bridge, the whole construct of a personalized media experience, based solely on the free content pulled from a user’s Facebook account, is a compelling idea — one that will likely be remixed and reissued by others before it finds the right niche.

I talked with Warden and Dukes in their San Francisco office, where they shared some of the big thoughts behind their fledgling app. Enjoy:

[ See post to watch video ]

Viral Video: Shrieking Monkeys Don't Make Good Gifts

Kara Swisher — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:22:45 +0000

This is a commercial, for sure, and it came from a PR pitch that begins with the words “shrieking monkeys.” But this video for a photo-books product made me laugh out loud.

And it was not only the shrieking monkey part. I also liked the nail-gun incident and the flaming robo-vac.

Enjoy:

Yahoo's Product Runway: Are You In or Out?

Kara Swisher — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:41:24 +0000

I am here at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, Calif., to check out “Product Runway,” which is the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s attempt to show that it can still innovate.

First and foremost is the launch of Livestand, a personalized news reader that is similar to Flipboard and a variety of other rivals, including — soon — Google.

It’s Yahoo’s attempt to present a business-as-usual feel — amidst a long and agonizing and very public strategic overview that might also include the sale of the company (or not!), in the wake of the recent firing of its last CEO, Carol Bartz.

It has caused a lot of trauma inside Yahoo, which can’t help with innovation.

But we press on!

In other words, despite the three-ring circus going on outside, Yahoo wants you to know it is still hard at work.

We begin:

10:35 am: As the strains of U2 die out, Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving takes the stage, which is actually set up in the company’s cafeteria. I can smell lunch being made nearby and I am hungry.

Apt — Yahoo certainly needs to show off a lot of cool stuff or its fate will be cooked.

No pressure, Blake!

“Personally, I am more bullish on Yahoo today,” he said. “What is Yahoo? Simple. It’s the premier digital media company. Period. Stop.”

Oh, if it were only that easy.

10:46 am: Irving pulls out his favorite slide, which looks like a chemistry test. It lists the various elements of the product strategy, with things like personalization, mobile, premium.

Now to Livestand, which is available on the Apple iTunes app store right now.

Don’t all rush at once!

Irving notes that Livestand is more than just an app — it is a platform.

In other words, Yahoo wants to help publishers publish online. Kind of a Facebook of content.

If Yahoo can pull it off, that is. (And, of course, unless Facebook decides to do the same.)

10:50 am: Livestand is an HTML5 “personalized living magazine.”

“This is the way Web pages are going to look,” declares Irving. Which is to say, heavy on photos, swoopy navigation, a television screen-like interface.

Irving uses the example of Surfer magazine, which is a good idea since waves always look pretty. Especially in a video-in-frame with Kelly Slater in Hawaii.

But, in essence, for anyone who has used Flipboard for years now, none of this is entirely different.

10:54 am: The look of what would be the Yahoo News page is actually much more interesting, since it is clearly a whole lot better than the Web page.

Irving also shows off a “living ad” — in this case, an unusually snuggly couple on a couch. It is cool, but creepy.

When launched, the ad has tap points. Irving — naughtily declaring about what is an ad, “I’ll tap that” — taps the lady’s butt, which would also have been my move. We learn about the jeans, of course.

10:58 am: Irving then shows off the ability to add feeds.

Next, something called “Cocktails.” First up, a developer tool called Yahoo Mojito and Yahoo Manhattan, which is a hosting service. The company will open-source both the technologies in 2012.

Irving brings up Mike Kerns, VP of Personalization & Social, who came to Yahoo when it bought the innovative sports fan site called Citizen Sports.

“We like to ship sh#t,” he notes. I like Mike Kerns immediately.

Kerns intros C.O.R.E. No, it is not a secret government organization that takes out fussy bloggers, who might be more critical than Yahoo execs would like.

In fact, it stands for “content optimization relevance engine.” Of course it does.

Simply put, C.O.R.E. is trying to link the right content or whatever to the right consumers and who likes what. Ladies like this, dudes like this. Apparently, “men of multiple ages” enjoy stories about golden chicken.

11:11 am: Kerns is moving on to social, especially its integration with Facebook. While much touted, sources tell me it has gone slower than expected in terms of use, but that it is improving.

Kerns talks about the idea of matching content to conversations to interests and, well, you know — the now exhausting world of modern media consumption.

The world in which you can no longer simply read an article and enjoy it — you must comment, share, discuss, parse, tweet.

Does anyone remember when you read something cool and just kept it to yourself?

Forget it, pal! It is a full-information society now and you better get on board and start poking your friends about every little thing.

(Personally, I plan on becoming a hermit in 3 … 2 … 1.)

11:18 am: Now Tim Parsey, who is Yahoo’s design head. He is hands down the most delightful exec the company has had in a while, mostly because he loves to smirk adorkably.

He shows off Yahoo’s first original design, which was a dull list. And then another really bad logo. But Parsey loves it! It’s kitschy!

Smirk attack!

Parsey moves into what has to happen now, which is to deliver a much more emotional experience and a much better designed one. He uses words like “humanism.”

Say what? He is right — Yahoo has for too long completely ignored design as an important part of the experience.

That’s why Flipboard was so quickly touted — it was pretty and fun. And it is why everyone is simply forced to love Apple products.

11:22 am: Parsey even has a code for it, called REM — for rational, emotional and meaningful.

He shows off a weather app. People take photos and they can be used in the app. Then Yahoo Mail for the iPad, whic is also handsome with photos and video. Livestand, also pretty.

“Great way to differentiate,” says Parsey. He calls it “one Yahoo!” Indeed.

11:35 am: I’ll admit it. After Parsey-fest, I zoned out for a sec when IntoNow dude, Adam Cahan, comes up.

Donut emergency!

Back to IntoNow, it’s the television indexing service that Yahoo bought in April.

Essentially, more ways to watch the media — in this case, video — and do 53 other things at the very same time. Memo to humanity: We will all be paying continuous partial attention for the rest of eternity.

Like I said: Hermitage!

11:41 am: Product dude Irving is back, making a point that, despite all the public mishegas, Yahoo has been busy at innovating.

A redo of email, better search, social “Facebar” with Facebook, Flickr for Google Android.

Irving is correct — Yahoo’s engineers have been hard at work and deserve kudos for doing so, even with attrition issues, stock declines and questions about the company’s very future being debated daily.

The problem is that too many of these improvements are mostly incremental and essentially table stakes for tech companies, most of whom have introed many more significant innovations in the same time frame as Yahoo has.

Google did Android, Google+ (as well as some notable failures). Microsoft did Kinect, Windows Phone, Windows 8. Amazon did Kindle Fire. Facebook did a range of major updates, as it has grown like a weed.

And there’s Apple. You might have heard of the iPhone and the iPad.

You get my point. Yahoo’s Product Runway today is well done, but what it really needs to be is just the beginning of a take-off.

11:48 am: Now Q&A time.

The first question is what took so long to get Livestand out, the second is why should people use Livestand since Flipboard and others have already been around for a dog’s age.

I ask about design — mostly because I want Parsey to use the word “delicious” a lot — and also about all the turmoil around the company and its impact on product creation. (I decide not to mention that Yahoo blew its acquisition of the bookmarking site, Delicious, and then sold it.)

Parsey delivers on the delicious scale, noting that Yahoo must have one design experience and yet has a lot of different interfaces. In other words, it cannot be Apple, but it can feel a lot more cohesive.

Irving talks a little bit around the obvious elephant in the room — the future of Yahoo — noting that the product staff was trying to focus and forget the storm going on outside.

“We have dreams about what this company can be,” says Irving.

You and me both, brother.

12:04 pm: More questions that are too detailed for my tastes, since they have delivered lunch and I can see it and I am ravenous.

As Parsey might say: It looks deliiiiiccccious.

Now, let’s hope Yahoo can do even more tasty stuff.

Cameras Act Like a Pro, but Are as Easy as Pie

Geoffrey A. Fowler — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:30:32 +0000

Digital cameras are a pain in the neck — literally.

Every time I lug around my camera, which tips the scale at three pounds with its zoom lens, I feel as if I am swinging a fragile barbell on a strap around my neck.

[ See post to watch video ]

For years, hobbyist digital photographers had two options: heavy SLR cameras that can capture creative effects, and pocket-sized point-and-shoots that take pedestrian photos. Now, camera makers are exploring a genre of cameras that seeks a happy medium between size and capability. Necks can relax now.

Nikon and Sony recently have introduced new models in this emerging category: the Nikon J1 and Sony NEX-5N. The devices offer many of the features of much larger cameras in a form that might slip into a purse or cargo pants pocket. Sony and Nikon make a range of small detachable lenses for these cameras so users can switch between zoom and wider-angle shots, just like those on full-sized SLR cameras. Even with the biggest lenses attached, they weigh only slightly more than a pound.

Coming in at about $700 each for packages that include a lens, these marvels of miniaturization cost $100 more than an entry-level digital SLR kit. But after testing them, I liked the Sony NEX-5N enough to contemplate making it my new walk-about camera. The Nikon J1 took some great photos, but offered less creative control.

An apple pie as seen in a photo taken by the Nikon J1.

The same pie as seen in a photo taken by the Sony NEX-5N, which has a simple way to make only the pie appear in focus, for example.

Both cameras dispense with the internal mirror and the old-fashioned viewfinder that SLRs use. Instead, they show you what you’re photographing via large LCD screens. (Sony sells a $350 viewfinder add-on if you like to squint.)

One reason these cameras take better photos than point-and-shoots is that they have much larger sensors, which record more light. Nikon created a whole new kind of midrange sensor for its new “1″ line, which are similar to what other camera makers call “micro four-thirds.” Sony managed to stuff a midsize SLR sensor into the small NEX-5N.

The image quality of both cameras was excellent. Though the Sony’s photos had a higher resolution, the Nikon’s had slightly richer tones. Both can take stunning, Blu-ray-quality video.

Larger sensors allow the cameras to tap the creative capabilities of lenses. They can take photos in low light without a flash or let users select which elements are in sharp focus and which are blurry (known as “depth of field”).

The differences between the two are in the controls. The Sony NEX-5N comes with a large touch screen to access settings and controls, including a main screen to select the focus point of the image. The intuitive interface offers a simple way to manipulate the depth of field — without having to know the science of aperture (involving the amount of light that reaches a sensor) and shutter speed, which is required on most digital SLRs.

I took a photo of an apple pie in sharp focus with the background blurry by moving a slider on the touch screen to “background defocus” and then clicking on the part of the pie I wanted in focus.

The Nikon J1 doesn’t have a touch screen, requiring users to control the camera through a series of hard buttons. Adjusting depth of field requires the user to understand aperture, and even if you do, the settings to adjust the specific focus point are buried inside several menus, and aren’t turned on by default.

Nikon’s philosophy is that users stepping up from a point-and-shoot would prefer to trust its software. One feature is called “smart photo selector,” which takes advantage of the camera’s ultra-fast focus and shutter speed to take a series of photos and then selects what it thinks are the best shot and four possible best-shot candidates, based on composition, facial recognition and motion. This feature is appealing if you don’t want to think about your photo settings, but want to know what other options might have looked like.

The Sony NEX-5N has a set-it-and-forget-it, “intelligent auto” shooting mode, and also a host of features that solve common photo frustrations. An “anti-motion blur” option keeps dinner-party photos from looking fuzzy or being filled with film noise by quickly taking six photos and merging them into one better photo.

Another mode merges several shots into what’s known as an HDR (high-dynamic range) photo that can merge the most interesting bits from the foreground and background when they are of different brightness levels. The NEX-5N even has a simple panorama option that automates taking very wide shots both for print and in 3-D (for compatible TVs).

The Nikon J1′s most interesting artistic option creates a “motion snapshot,” which blends a still image and about one second of movie footage into a slow-motion video accompanied by music. It is cute, but not useful enough to make the J1 a top choice.

Neither camera came with two features that should now be standard in such expensive gadgets: automatic tagging the GPS location where photos are taken, and the ability to wirelessly upload images.

While the Nikon J1, which features a clean retro-style design, won the most oohs and ahhs from friends, the Sony NEX-5N, whose larger sensor requires slightly larger and clunkier lenses, made it easier to figure out how to make photos more interesting.

Walt Mossberg and Mossberg’s Mailbox will return next week. Write to Geoffrey Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com.

Quick Snapshot

Nikon J1

• Price: $650, including10-30 mm lens

• Sensor: 13.2 mm x 8.8 mm

• Resolution: 10.1 megapixels

• Flash: Built-in

• Weight: 9.8 oz

Sony NEX-5N

• Price: $700, including18-55 mm lens

• Sensor: 23.5 mm x 15.6 mm

• Resolution: 16.1 megapixels

• Flash: Add-on comes with camera

• Weight: 9.5 oz

Lytro Light Field Camera Revealed

Drake Martinet — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:59:27 +0000

Today in San Francisco, digital camera and imaging start-up Lytro is unveiling a consumer digital camera that it claims will be the biggest technological jump since we started talking megapixels over 20 years ago.

In case you haven’t been following along, here’s a quick rundown of what’s expected today:

Lytro, founded by Ren Ng in 2006, is an outgrowth of his Stanford University PhD research into what is called “light field photography.”

Without getting too technical, a light field camera captures light all throughout the scene in front of the lens, as opposed to the cameras consumers are used to, which bring a particular thing into focus first.

The result is an image that can be focused after it is taken, and, Lytro claims, a camera that is faster from power-up to capture, and has exceptional performance in low light, even without a flash.

Lytro claims it has spent the last five years and nearly $50 million from several of Silicon Valley’s heaviest-weight VC firms working to pack all that technology into a camera small enough to compete with the myriad point-and-shoots currently available.

Join us as we see for the first time if Lytro has gotten the picture.

View the slideshow

Liveblog:

11:17 am: They’ve let us into the event. No action yet, just a bunch of tech reporters tweeting away.

11:32 am: We’re underway. CEO and founder of Lytro Ren Ng is coming up now.

11:33 am: Lytro grew out of Ng’s Stanford PhD work in light field imaging.

11:33 am: Ng starts with some stats on digital cameras.

He says that at the end of the day, both film and regular digital cameras record the same data — a flat image.

11:34 am: “The light field is all the light traveling in all directions at every point in space,” says Ng.

11:35 am: Still on the tech, Ng says his focus at Stanford was on miniaturizing the camera technology. At the time, the only light field cameras were huge arrays of cameras in labs.

11:37 am: We’re on the history of his research now — Ng says the first camera he built was a one-off medium format camera.

11:39 am: The important takeaway here is that this camera is as much about the computer science behind it as it is about the optics and the hardware.

11:41 am: Ng moves on to the features of this technology for the user.

11:42 am: 1. Shoot first, focus after. 2. Ability for third parties to interact with the picture after it is put online.

11:43 am: Ng shows what appears to be a screenshot of his Facebook page, with a Lytro interactive image embedded.

11:44 am: Ng says that all Lytro images can also be viewed in an “immersive 3-D.”

11:45 am: Now we get to see the camera. It’s called the “Lytro.”

11:45 am: 8x optical zoom, with an f 2.0 aperture.

11:47 am: It’s an 11 “megaray” camera — which means it captures 11 million rays of light, says Ng.

11:49 am: It’s a metal rectangular tube, maybe 4 inches long. The lens is at one end and the small touch screen at the other. It’s unlike any camera design I’ve ever seen.

11:50 am: Ng says another benefit of the camera is how fast it turns on.

11:51 am: The camera doesn’t need to focus before it shoots, so time from activation to capture seems pretty instant.

11:52 am: Now he’s going to take a picture of the room — we’re being posed, no joke.

11:52 am: They will come in 3 colors — redish, blueish and grayish.

11:53 am: Ng is plugging in the camera, showcasing the software that comes with it. The camera uses micro USB.

11:54 am: Liveblogging solo here, but there are a few pictures I’m putting up on twitter (@withdrake).

11:55 am: Software seems to be pretty snappy. All the pictures are square format.

11:56 am: Ng says you can refocus the image on the camera, in the computer software, or on the web, wherever you embed the image.

He says you can post to Facebook from inside the Lytro computer software.

11:58 am: Ng just posted something to Facebook from the software. Facebook friends can zoom and refocus the image right in Facebook.

11:59 am: The camera will come in 8GB and 16GB versions.

11:59 am: 8GB version can capture 350 light field images.

12:00 pm: Ng says that the camera will ship in early 2012.

12:01 pm: Now he’s dancing around price.

12:02 pm: It will be $399 for the 8GB version.

We’re wrapped up. Moving on to the demo station. … See gallery of pictures above.

Apple Helps Devices Get Their Heads in the Cloud

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 01:00:59 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple devices can be addictive: People buy one tiny iPod, fall in love, and end up with three or four other Apple products. Now if only they could see all their data on all those devices simultaneously.

Starting today, they can.

ICloud is designed to store and replicate documents, music, apps and 1,000 photos on PCs, the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It also syncs contacts, calendars and email so all your machines and devices have the same data and content. It will back up five gigabytes of data, but certain types aren’t counted against that total. The best part: It’s free.

Thanks to iCloud, the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch all have the same document with no work on the user’s part.

I’ve been testing iCloud’s sync ability between a MacBook Pro, iPhone 4S and iPad 3G. I also accessed and added content using iCloud.com. At first, I ran into a few hiccups with syncing photos, but an Apple spokesman explained that the company’s servers were occasionally down while they were being prepared for Wednesday’s iCloud launch. After that, iCloud worked without a hitch—well enough that I stopped thinking about which device held what since they were all updated with the same content.

Over the weekend, I imported 300 photos my parents took on a recent trip to Italy, forgetting that my computer was set up with iCloud. When I picked up my iPhone later, the Grand Canal in Venice and the Duomo in Florence were staring back at me in Photos. Same with my iPad.

On the downside, iCloud doesn’t automatically sync videos to other devices. In WiFi, it won’t sync edited photos if edits are made on a device after its camera app is closed. (This includes removing red eye, cropping and auto-enhancing images.) And document sharing on iCloud is focused on sharing with oneself, not with other people, unlike the document-sharing solutions from Google and Microsoft.

I found iCloud’s most useful feature to be Photo Stream, which automatically sends images captured by an iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch up to iCloud and replicates them on all other iCloud devices, one by one. Watching these photos pop onto the screen of my computer, iPad or iPhone was nothing short of delightful.

Photos are pushed via iCloud to the Mac and PC in their full resolution and sent to the iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone in a resolution that’s optimized for those displays.

Photo Stream sends images captured by mobile devices, such as the iPhone and iPad, up to iCloud and replicates them on all other iCloud devices.

By default, any images imported to a PC or Mac are automatically sent into Photo Stream, though this setting can be turned off. Devices need only be powered on and in WiFi to receive images from Photo Stream.

Each photo remains in Photo Stream for 30 days, and only the last 1,000 are saved there. Photos moved into albums on devices will be kept permanently, while Macs and Windows PCs have no photo limit because of their larger storage capacities.

A WiFi network is also required for Backup in iCloud, which backs up purchased music, TV shows, apps, books, device settings, app data, messages, ringtones and images in Photo Stream. Only documents and email count against a person’s five gigabytes of free iCloud storage.

Higher storage capacities are available for an annual fee: $20 for 10 gigabytes, $40 for 20 gigabytes or $100 for 50 gigabytes.

Not Just Photos

Documents can be synced to all devices through iCloud using iWork apps. These include Pages, Keynote and Numbers, and each costs $10 in the App Store. I tested this with ease, creating documents—like a flyer I made using a photo of a church that I took with my iPhone camera—that synced with my iPad and vice versa. Changes to documents appeared the same across all devices and at icloud.com almost instantly.

To get an iCloud account, you’ll need either a Mac that’s running OS X Lion, Apple’s latest operating system, or a mobile device with iOS 5.

Starting Wednesday, when users can install the newest software on one of these machines, they will be prompted to set up iCloud. Once you have this account, iCloud will work with a Windows PC running Vista or Windows 7; instructions explain how to set up and use iCloud on Macs or Windows PCs. ICloud is also accessible via Web browser at icloud.com.

If you have an account with Apple’s MobileMe email and storage service, the company will offer to integrate it with your iCloud account. (MobileMe will be discontinued after June.) If you don’t have a MobileMe account, on-screen prompts will walk you through setting up a free me.com email address from any iOS device or computer. I did this in seconds using my MacBook, and noticed that my Mail and Notes were immediately replicated on all devices through iCloud.

Match That Tune

ITunes Match, an important piece of iCloud, wasn’t available for testing yet. To make sure your music library has a high-quality recording of each song, iTunes Match will scan your library for anything not purchased from Apple and then give you access to the high-quality iTunes track in the cloud and on all other devices. Match will be available at the end of this month for $25 a year and will work with up to 25,000 tracks.

Another interesting feature that wasn’t available for testing was Find My Friends, a free app that works with iCloud and is Apple’s answer to Foursquare. It will let iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users find another user’s location—in list or map view—as long as they accept an invitation. Temporary location sharing will be possible with this app, enabling sharing with a specific number of people for a specific amount of time. This might come in handy during a family vacation or at a day-long music festival with friends.

RELATED POSTS:

The iPhone Finds Its Voice

Apple Helps Devices Get Their Heads in the Cloud

New Apple Software Adds Features to Older Phones

Full Apple Coverage »

Email Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

It's Called Google Propeller and It's Aimed at Flipboard (and Facebook, Too, Natch)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:25:10 +0000

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

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 Tablet With Office

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:00:52 +0000

I am looking for a tablet that can run Outlook and all Microsoft Office programs, and connect to Microsoft server-based business programs. Is there anything now or in the near future with this functionality?

Yes. While Windows 7 wasn’t designed primarily as a tablet operating system, it does support touch, and thus a number of companies sell tablets that run Windows 7, and therefore, presumably, the Windows software you mention. These companies include Acer, Asus, and ViewSonic. I haven’t tested any of these, because Microsoft’s true tablet operating system will be Windows 8, which is expected to be out next year.

I use Gmail. When I type the name of a correspondent, the email address shows up. However, if the correspondent has given me a new email address, the old one still shows up, which is totally confusing. How can I get rid of the old address?

One way to do it is to either enter the person’s correct address in your Gmail contacts list, or edit the old one if that’s in the contact list.

You can get to the contacts list by clicking on “Contacts” in the left sidebar of Gmail. More information about Google contacts is here.

My wife and I love the simple photography-editing application on my Mac. Are there any apps that offer good basic photo-editing features for the iPad?

There are many iPad apps that let you make simple edits to photos, though none that I know of with the editing power of a PC or Mac photo-editing program. One iPad app in this category that I have used and like is Adobe Photoshop Express. This app is free, though a package of extra features costs $5.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com