vignette

Instagram for Android is more than a photo enhancer

More than just a free photo-enhancement app for Android, Instagram connects its users to a photo-based social network that's more than 30 million users strong. With this powerful social functionality, the app makes it incredibly easy to not just polish and share photos, but also to keep tabs on friends through the built-in Instagram photo stream.

Start by signing up for Instagram with an e-mail address, username, and password. From there, you can link your account to your Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and Tumblr accounts. But don't worry, whenever you snap a picture, Instagram will still ask you which … Read more

PhotoDirector offers a simple workflow

CyberLink PhotoDirector is an all-in-one photography workflow program that lets you manage, retouch, enhance, share, and print your digital photos. With its intuitive workflow and nondestructive editing environment, it appears to be a great choice for beginners and intermediate users. Plus, with the possibilities furnished by the robust DirectorZone.com community, it might even work for more-advanced users as well.

One change you'll notice from the last version is that the PhotoDirector interface is now split into five main viewing panels as opposed to three: Library, Adjustment, Edit, Slideshow, and Print.

The Library presents all of your digital photos … Read more

Photogene for iOS gets a complete overhaul

There are tons of photo-editing apps in the iTunes App Store, but a recent update to an old favorite might be one of the best yet. It's called Photogene 2 and it offers so many tools that it's almost like it does the job of multiple apps.

Photogene 2 (99 cents until November 17) is the successor of a favorite photo-editing app of ours on iOS, and this completely rebuilt version is definitely worth checking out. To start off, a redesigned interface offers intuitive controls for exploring Photogene2's many editing options.… Read more

CyberLink PhotoDirector 2011 simplifies your workflow

CyberLink PhotoDirector 2011 is an all-in-one photography program that lets you manage, retouch, enhance, and share your digital photos. With its intuitive workflow and nondestructive editing environment, we think it's a great choice for beginners and intermediate users. Plus, with the possibilities furnished by the robust DirectorZone.com community, it might even work for more-advanced users as well.

PhotoDirector is split up into three main viewing panels: Library, for managing and sifting through your photos; Adjustment, for retouching and enhancing; and Slideshow for turning your stills into moving masterpieces.

The Library presents all of your digital photos in an … Read more

Lightbox, a two-headed photo beast

Lightbox for Android is a camera replacement and social photo browser app that automatically syncs all of your pictures to your Lightbox.com account. If you like, you can even choose to make any of your photos publicly viewable on your Lightbox.com photo wall as well.

When you first download and install Lightbox, you'll notice that two new icons pop up in your app drawer: Camera by Lightbox and Lightbox Photos. Don't freak out, though. These are just two different entry points to the same app--one brings you straight through to the photo browser, while the other … Read more

Vignette is more than just retro filters

Vignette is a versatile camera replacement app that's equipped with nine different shooting modes, and a huge menu of effects and frame styles to modify your photos. Because it offers options both before and after snapping, Vignette gives you a virtually unlimited number of photographic possibilities.

Before shooting, Vignette lets you choose from nine different shooting modes: Normal, Blind, Fast shot, Steady shot, Self timer, Time lapse, Strip, Grid, and Double. The Strip and Grid modes are especially fun, as they mimic the 4-in-1 prints of novelty Photobooths. And Time lapse is a unique interval shooting mode that, frankly, … Read more

A vignette about Vignette's reinvention

NEW YORK--There was a time when many thought Vignette, a maker of expensive content management software, could have been one of the next great software companies.

In June 2000, the Austin, Texas company had a stock market capitalization topping $9 billion (and this was a few months after the market peaked), was the subject of a lengthy BusinessWeek feature, and had more than 1,300 employees. Then, of course, the bottom came out of the dot-com business, and Vignette all but disappeared from the spotlight.

Turns out Vignette is still very much in business, and was one of many software … Read more

Vignette on sale and OpenText may be buying

A person close to Vignette and OpenText management told me two interesting tidbits today:

Vignette has been going through a round of layoffs recently, packaging itself up for sale, and OpenText just retained Goldman Sachs to help it with some M&A work.

Will we be seeing "OpenVignette" soon? I suspect the answer is "Yes." OpenText needs strength outside its core records management business, and Vignette needs someone to shepherd it back to health (Its last quarter was less-than-stellar). With a roughly $300 million market capitalization, Vignette is dirt cheap.

The problem isn't the … Read more

Proprietary software is a...services business

Interwoven, a leading web content management vendor, just announced really good financial results. Vignette, another competitor, did not.

In both cases, however, I was fascinated to see how little of their revenue stemmed from license sales. License sales are supposed to be the lifeblood of the proprietary software model: Write the software once, monetize forever. Yet in Interwoven's case, license revenue accounted for only 37 percent of the company's revenue. For Vignette, it was even worse: 21.6 percent.

Compare this to a recent IDC survey of open-source vendors, which found that 63 percent of open-source vendor revenue stems from software, not services. In Alfresco's case, an open-source competitor to Vignette and Interwoven (and my employer), the percentage of software revenue is much higher. Much higher.

This would imply that open-source vendors spend much more time writing great software, thereby creating room for a healthy ecosystem of value-added resellers and system integrators to grow up around them. Proprietary vendors may increasingly be competing with their partners in an attempt to goose revenue upward as license revenue deflates (as Oracle's recent earnings suggest may be in full swing).… Read more