adobe

Photobucket picks FotoFlexer as built-in editing tool

Despite having a working relationship integrating Adobe's media editing technologies on videos, photo hosting giant Photobucket isn't waiting around for Adobe to release Photoshop Express, and instead has partnered with FotoFlexer to serves as its de facto editor. Starting tomorrow, users will be able to edit any photo right inside Photobucket using FotoFlexer's editing tools. Edited photos can replace or be stored alongside existing shots.

In many ways this is an answer to what Flickr has done with Picnik, a move that has cross pollinated both services with new users, and given a hefty boost to Picnik's traffic and premium service subscriptions (see more on this). FotoFlexer has a "professional" service of its own, although it's completely free, unlike competitor Picnik, which charges $25 a year for access to advanced editing tools that later trickle down to free users.

I got a chance to talk to Alex Welch, CEO and co-founder of Photobucket about picking FotoFlexer over building out an in-house editing tool. Welch said that editing was the No. 1 user requested feature on the service, and that choosing an outside company's technology was the better choice given the time frame they were looking at. He said building an in-house editing tool would have simply taken too long.

In regards to the company's relationship with Adobe, going forward Welch said they're sticking with FotoFlexer as the integrated editing tool and that the upcoming Photoshop Express looks to be more of a "finishing tool" than what users were looking for. Welch said FotoFlexer provides more of what "our demographics really want."

The functionality is scheduled to go live early tomorrow morning. In the meantime we have a couple of screenshots of the new functionality after the break.

… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 674: Pomme not Pom

EPISODE 674

Yahoo, Time Warner reportedly talk deal to thwart Microsoft http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9886157-7.html http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9886254-7.html

Gates to Google: 'Your business applications stink' http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9884752-16.html

Adobe bites its tongue after iPhone Flash jab http://www.news.com/8301-10787_3-9886265-60.html

Warning: Your iPod may get you mugged http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9885873-7.html http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/ 1282422/researchers_ipods_attract_violent_crime

Is Microsoft’s ‘Singularity’ the OS of the future? http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9886184-7.html

NIN’s music experiment sells big numbers http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/05/076221… Read more

Adobe bites its tongue after iPhone Flash jab

Was Steve Jobs trying to send an unofficial message to Adobe Systems? Something on the order of "get it in gear, guys, if you want to stay on my VIP list"?

As my colleague Tom Krazit reported Tuesday afternoon, Jobs used the Apple shareholders' meeting to publicly dismiss the the full-blown PC Flash version as "too slow to be useful" on the iPhone. He then went on to describe the mobile version--Flash Lite--as "not capable of being used with the Web."

That's an unusual--albeit refreshingly frank--way to talk in public about a business … Read more

Photo industry braces for another revolution

Think of it as digital photography 2.0.

In the last decade, photography has been transformed by one revolution, the near-total replacement of analog film cameras by digital image sensors. Now researchers and companies are starting to stretch their wings by taking advantage of what a computer can do with sensor data either within the camera or on a full-fledged PC.

Some elements of this new era, which researchers often call computational photography, are refinements of existing technology. For example, some cameras can wait to take the photo only when subjects are smiling and not blinking, in effect placing the … Read more

More on Picnik's new features, Flickr integration, and future competition

Picnik, one of my personal favorites for editing photos online launched a new array of advanced editing tools a few hours ago. You can read about some of them from our earlier post, or the official announcement over at the company's blog. The biggest news is that many of the ones that previously required a paid, premium membership are now available to free users.

I got a chance to talk to Picnik's CEO Jonathan Sposato about the update, as well as the past and future of the company. The big topic was the looming release of Adobe's … Read more

Adobe "working to increase [its] usage of open source"

Adobe has a massive, multi-billion dollar software business, roughly $0.00 of which has traditionally depended on open source. The company is on a tear, blowing out its last few quarters.

And yet, and yet, the company apparently sees a future in open source. Just ask Kevin Lynch, Adobe's chief technology officer, who suggested that Adobe will be doing more and more with open source:

We're really working to increase our usage of open-source technologies and to contribute to open-source. Because we developed AIR so openly, we were able to share it with developers and make sure we were developing the right things.

So it's not just to be cool. There's a compelling reason for Adobe to adopt more open source. And it has: SQLite, Flash Player (significant chunks of it), Flex, etc. etc. Adobe has been getting closer and closer to open source. Why?

Because Adobe recognizes the power and allure of the Internet, Lynch notes:… Read more

Security experts warn of potential malicious AIR code

On Monday, Adobe Systems rolled out its new Web 2.0 development tool, Adobe Integrated Runtime, or AIR. Following its release were some concerns from the security community.

AIR, formerly Adobe Apollo, is a runtime environment that allows developers use HTML, Flash, AJAX, Flex, and other Web 2.0 tools to create desktop applications. One such application built using Adobe AIR comes from Nickelodeon Online.

But some security experts are concerned about local file access by AIR applications. Recently, Firefox experienced a vulnerability that could have allowed remote attackers to access a targeted file system. To mitigate this, Adobe says … Read more

Underexposed blog: Links of the day

Megapixel race inanity continues: Sony's 13.6-megapixel W300 - Sigh. Good thing it comes with adjustable nose reduction, because I bet noise is a problem. "Sony bumps up its point-and-shoot cameras to a new height of resolution with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W300, the company's first 13.6-megapixel snapshot camera." Panasonic UK Offers 16GB Memory Card Free With L10 Purchase - Digital Camera Info - "Panasonic UK has announced customers purchasing its L10 DSLR through the end of April will receive a free 16GB SDHC memory card." Lens Test: Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF-S - PopPhotoFebruary 2008 … Read more

Tidbits from Adobe's Engage event

Now that Adobe's Engage event has run its course for yet another year, it's a good time to pull in the types of items that slipped through the cracks of our coverage.

We lost Wi-Fi for an hour or so during the conference, which was actually a blessing in disguise. I got to try out all the new AIR apps I had downloaded and got to see which ones managed to perform while away from their umbilical tether to the Internet. My pick for best performer? A two-way tie between BuzzWord and Shifd, the latter of which has … Read more