When Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion ... was it because of the GIFs? In our media-saturated Internet landscape, the 5-second animated GIF may be the most essential entertainment currency. If a picture can paint a thousand words, the animated GIF can tell 10,000 stories in 10 frames or less. (Isn't Vine (for Android or iOS) mostly just video-based animated GIFs?)

Newbies who want to dip their toes in the GIF-creation waters no longer need fancy image-editing software like Adobe Photoshop--a freeware app called GifCam lets anyone easily produce animated GIFs from on-screen activity, i.e. streaming videos, … Read more

Award-winning journalist Om Malik leveraged years of tech and business media experience -- senior editor at Forbes.com, senior writer at "Red Herring" and later "Business 2.0," and contributor to "The Wall Street Journal," "The Economist," and "MIT Technology Review" -- to found leading indie tech blog GigaOM, back in 2006.

Offering news and opinion on startups, social media, cloud computing, mobile gadgets, and of course, software, Malik's CNET Blog 100-recognized Web magazine has since spawned numerous conferences such as GigaOM Structure (cloud computing and Internet infrastructure), GigaOM … Read more

Today's cameras are capable of capturing some pretty amazing shots, whether you're using a DSLR, a point-and-shoot camera, or even your cell phone. The average resolution of a contemporary camera can range anywhere from six to 20 megapixels--three to four times the quality of cameras of less than three years ago. However this clarity comes at a cost. As images get clearer, file sizes get bigger. JPEGmini helps you retake control over the enormous photo collection you have laying around by reducing the amount of space these files take up on your hard drive.

Originally developed for the … Read more

For some audiophiles, Counting Crows and The Wallflowers will forever be associated with the mid-1990s--along with Netscape Navigator, Hotmail, and of course, Windows 95. But don't call their joint summer outing a nostalgia trip. Velvet-tongued Counting Crows vocalist Adam Duritz, hot off the heels of The Outlaw Roadshow (alongside a slew of new indie bands), prefers to view his comparatively intimate Wallflowers double bill as a much-needed respite.

Other than sharing a decade, the comradely combos have shared previous tours, a track (Duritz sang on The Wallflowers' "6th Avenue Heartache"), and even a producer (T-Bone Burnett, back … Read more

Last week, Apple announced that its App Store is approaching 50 billion app downloads. In celebration of the milestone, Apple is giving away a $10,000 App Store gift card to the lucky person who initiates the 50 billionth download.

As part of the celebration, Apple listed the top 25 apps -- both free and paid -- for iPhone and iPad. None of the apps listed is particularly surprising (especially to someone who studies the most-popular list every day), but one thing that did strike me is that a lot of the all-time best sellers still sit near the top … Read more

In a move that's bound to tick off a lot of (probably formerly) devoted users, Adobe's finally made the jump we've been expecting to an all-subscription model for the applications that used to be part of Creative Suite. Adobe's not just rebranding all of its professional applications with the Creative Cloud moniker (except Lightroom -- so far). Now it's created a supercell composed of Photoshop CC, Dreamweaver CC, InDesign CC, so on and so on, ad infinitum. You'll only be able to get individual copies of those packages by subscription, though that individual-product subscription … Read more

In a major shift for its business and its customers, Adobe Systems on Monday announced it no longer will sell its Creative Suite software as it moves instead to the $50-per-month Creative Cloud and other subscription plans.

"We have no current plans to release another perpetual release of the CS tools and suites. Creative Cloud is going to be our sole focus moving forward," said Scott Morris, senior director of product marketing for Creative Cloud.

When Adobe launched its Creative Cloud subscription last year, executives weren't sure how long it would offer it alongside the traditional perpetual-license … Read more

Whether you're a professional photographer or an amateur food journalist, chances are that you have more than a handful of photos spread across social network sites like Facebook and Google+ as well as smart devices like phones and tablets. With so many pictures in so many places, finding a specific photo can be a chore. NeroKwik offers a welcome solution to this problem. By consolidating all of your images to be accessible from any platform in one app, NeroKwik makes finding, rating, and sharing your photos much easier.

Here's how it works:

The latest iteration of Adobe's raw-editing and management software, Adobe Lightroom 5, enters a public beta today with a modest set of enhancements that will make some photographers very happy but will probably make a large number of others shrug and choose to skip it. The biggest news: support for proxy editing of disconnected images, a feature dubbed Smart Preview. Other highlights include an overdue distortion and perspective correction tool, Upright; reusable custom page layouts and page-numbering tweaks in the Book module; a radial filter; the expansion of the spot healing/clone tool into a full-blown healing brush; and … Read more