Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

It looks like BlackBerry users will now have one more reason to use and enjoy Flickr. RIM and Flickr have partnered up to offer a new upload tool in the form of a native upload app.

Overall, it seems a simple but effective program. Users can grab it from the BlackBerry mobile startpage, assuming they are running OS 4.2, have at least 65k of free memory and a camera. The upload app allows users to upload images, add any tags before sending them off and even adjust the size of the image. Users who have a built-in GPS can also take advantage of that functionality and geotag their images.

Read [BlackBerry]

The recently released Photoshop Express, which is a free web-based photo editor has just added support for Flickr. With the newly added support users can now take images from their Flickr account, edit them in Photoshop Express and place the hopefully nicer images back into their Flickr photo stream for everyone to enjoy. If you are new to Photoshop Express, you can check out the recent review from our own Debbie Cook.

Via [Lifehacker]

Popular social networking site Facebook has introduced a new feature that will allow it’s users to share content from other sites via their Mini-Feed, which sends it to the News Feeds of their friends. Users can import stories, albums, and other content from such sites as Flickr, Yelp, Picasa, and del.icio.us. This latest feature is yet another way for users to share information with each other easily and quickly. All they have to do is click the “Import” link at the top of their Mini-Feed. The site promises it will be adding even more sites, including Digg, in the near future.

Read [Facebook Blog]

Flickr has added video to the ever-popular photo sharing site, albeit with some initial limitations. The videos that are uploaded can be a maximum of 90 seconds and must be 150MB in size or smaller. Videos are also limited to be uploaded only by Pro users, but can be viewed by anyone, as long as the video is marked public, they can also be uploaded and marked as private.

Overall Flickr is taking an approach that leaves little difference between the existing photos and new videos, in fact they were noted as being called “long photos.” Which makes sense because the videos are side by side with your photos and while the videos do have their limitations, once you get used to them they seem to be a really nice addition. 

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Flickr figured it’s about time we found out who among our friends also keep online photo albums. If you’d like an easy way to search for people you know on Flickr’s user base, you can do so now with a convenient, and aptly titled Find Your Friends Feature. All you have to do is access the Find Your Friends page while logged in, and Flickr will access your address book for you and automagically bring you a list of users with email addresses matching those in your address book. This isn’t new, but still a great feature especially for those who have at least a few hundred people in email address books.

Read [Flickr Blog]

Rumors are spreading around that Flickr Video may soon be seeing the light of day. And no, they are not talking about a couple of months but in a matter of weeks, April to be a bit exact. Both News.com’s Dan Farber and TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington have reasons and sources to believe that Yahoo’s widely used and most popular web service is actually extending its clout to offer an online video service ala YouTube.

If indeed Flickr Video is coming soon, then it better have something better to offer than what YouTube does. YouTube have become an epitome of what user-generated video content is all about. It has gone a long way since it was launched by a couple of cool programmers sometime in 2005 or was it 2006?

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Swedish company Polar Rose has announced that it will launch an industry first visual search engine for web based image searches.  With its successful $5.1 million Series A funding from Nordic Venture Partners last month, Polar Rose could make image searching a lot easier and more accurate through facial recognition and 3D imaging.  Polar will launch a beta version of its software in February next year.

They are also currently working on a plugin for Firefox and IE users. It will show a small photo symbol when the browser is opened - and when clicked, will use the Polar Rose service to look for matching photos in its database and tag them Flickr style.

The technology behind Polar Rose creates a virtual 3D image of a person, factoring out lighting and other conditions that can affect recognition. That 3D image is then used to try to guess when a person appears in a photo. The plugin, for example, will provide a link to try to find other images on the Internet of the person being tagged. At first, this data will be very thin. But if and when users adopt the Polar Rose plugin, the search feature could become a useful tool for finding additional pictures of people.

Read [Polar Rose] Via [Tech Crunch]

Wondering what the wallpaper options will be when you load Vista onto your PC early next year? A blogger called Brajeshwar has posted what seems to be the full set of wallpapers available on Microsoft’s next gen OS. As expected, the theme for the set of wallpaper is nature, relaxing landscapes, easy background colors, sharp macro images, and “vistas.”

Check out the entire set on Flickr.

Read [Brajeshwar] Via [Download Squad]

Soundflavor DJ was created to help people build instant playlists, rediscover songs they’d forgotten they had and find new music. It’s based on Soundflavor’s Music Recommendation Engine that the company started building more than five years ago. They’ve analyzed half a million songs (and growing) for hundreds of characteristics to make the best music recommendations based on what someone is listening to. This isn’t just another music application. It was built in collaboration with Adaptive Path (the guys behind Blogger, Flickr, Bittorrent, etc) and based on more than six years of research. Basically, with digital music taking off, people have thousands of songs on their computers and no great way to listen to all of them (iTunes registry data shows people tend to only listen to about 20% of their collection!).

It’s a great way to build quick playlists to match a mood, activity or event – without any effort using not only internet recommendations but your own library as well. Now that I have been using it for a week I am finding myself going to Pandora when I am away from my computer to access my personalized stations but loading up Soundflavr when I am home. I can image that someone who has only a few hundred songs wouldn’t find much use for Soundflavor, but with 7,000 songs on my PC (and a whole CD book waiting to be ripped) it has really opened up my library.

Soundflavor DJ is a free download available PC only right now, but a Mac version is on the way soon.

Read [Soundflavor]

The new Nokia N80 Internet Edition offers wireless LAN (WLAN), WLAN wizard, web browser, support for internet calls, a 3.0 megapixel camera, and quadband GSM WCDMA, and a host of other internet services not found on other Nokia devices.

Use the integrated Yahoo! Search for finding whatever you need and use the Mini Map function to manage the pages you find.  Browse through thousands of items at Amazon.com, or scroll though a book with Amazon’s MobiPocket Reader. You can also snap a photo and send it directly from your device to your Flickr...you get the point.

The Nokia N80 Internet Edition comes loaded with Nokia’s new Download! client, which allows you to see what new applications are available, as well as keeping other applications current.  The web browser with Mini Map makes browsing the internet the same way that PC web browsers display web pages. VoIP is integrated into the Nokia user interface, and the handset allows for compatible third party internet call applications. The Nokia N80 Internet Edition comes in two colors, patina bronze and pearl black, and is expected to be available from mid-September 2006.