Internet

Flickr have announce a new feature that will make it easier and faster for you to upload your photos and share them with the people.

New features:
“Easily preview and arrange your photos
We’re utilizing some advanced HTML 5 browser technology to bring you a completely new uploading experience on Flickr. You can now add photos by dragging them into the browser. We also show preview thumbnails, where supported, so you can use the intuitive drag and drop interface to manage and reorder photos before they hit your photostream. You can also easily zoom, rotate or sort your photos by title.

Share the story behind your photo
We’ve made it even easier for you to add titles, descriptions and tags, and you can organize your photos into sets like Death Valley 2012 or Beards of my Life. You can now also tag your friends in photos and change licensing, content type and other advanced options right from the uploadr page before publishing to your photostream. So go ahead and tell everyone about your photos!

Faster is better
You may also notice a huge improvement to our upload speeds – between 20-30% faster on average, and up to 50-60% faster for some of our international users.

File sizes: now more bigger!
You asked for it, and we’ve delivered. We increased the file size limits for our Pro users up to 50MB and for our free users up to 30MB. That’s huge! Now you can easily save high-resolution images to Flickr and see your photos in pixel-perfect detail.”

Read more: http://blog.flickr.net/en/2012/04/25/say-hello-to-the-new-flickr-uploadr/

Google Maps now offers tours of global landmarks with the introduction of photo tours, a feature of Google Maps that guides you through a 3D photo scene.

Photo tours are available for more than 15,000 popular sites around the world, from famous landmarks such as St. Mark’s Basilica in Italy to scenic treasures like Half Dome in Yosemite. They can be initiated from Google Maps in two ways. First, when you search for a place, such as Trevi Fountain, the results in the left panel will indicate if there is a photo tour available: click either the thumbnail image or the link to start the tour. Alternatively, if you’re browsing the map and click on the label for a particular landmark, the info window that appears will indicate if a photo tour is available.

Please note that using photo tours requires Google Maps with WebGL

More info: http://google-latlong.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/visit-global-landmarks-with-photo-tours.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/SbSV+(Google+LatLong)

Google has announced Google Drive, a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff. Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond, reports the Google Official Blog.

With Google Drive, you can:
Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.
Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just… there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.
Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.
You can get started with 5GB of storage for free—that’s enough to store the high-res photos of your trip to the Mt. Everest, scanned copies of your grandparents’ love letters or a career’s worth of business proposals, and still have space for the novel you’re working on. You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.

Read more: http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/introducing-google-drive-yes-really.html

Syncdocs is a new app that turns Google Docs into a free online storage drive. This Google drive is can be accessed using any PC or mobile.

Syncdocs takes full advantage of Google’s reliable, fast online storage – keeping PC folders synchronized with Google Docs and with other users.

Using Syncdocs, Google Docs appears as the G-Drive on the local PC. Files and folders across multiple PCs and mobile devices stay in sync automatically. Anything saved to these folders is automatically mirrored online and shared with all linked PCs and users.

In addition to providing file sync and online backup, Google documents are available right from the user’s Windows desktop. This means that Microsoft Office is no longer necessary to open or create Word, PowerPoint or Excel files on the PC. Moving to cloud computing used to mean abandoning the desktop, but now with Syncdocs, users can work simultaneously in both cloud and desktop environments.

For easy collaborative work, Syncdocs also supports merging of changes from various users. It can even merge changes between desktop and cloud users. If multiple users make edits to a document concurrently, these changes are merged. For example, a user can edit a Google Doc offline using Microsoft Word, and then merge these changes back into Google Docs.

“Syncdocs gives you the freedom to access your data where you want it,” said Donald Recsei, Syncdocs’ product manager. “With Google Docs and Syncdocs, it’s really easy to collaborate between desktop Microsoft Office users, and mobile staff on tablets and phones.”

Users can fine-tune their synchronization to Google Drive with many advanced features like:
– full control over which files and folders at synchronized
– versioning and revision history
– mirroring of Google access permissions locally
– real-time collaboration between Google Docs and Microsoft Word users
– concurrent sync of multiple Google accounts
– offline access
– easy file sharing integration into Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and Google +
– scheduled backup

Because all Google data is backed up locally, all files are available even when offline. Any changes made when offline are synced again when the network is available. Syncdocs can also integrate with other cloud storage providers, like Dropbox to sync Dropbox to Google Docs.

The full version of Syncdocs is free, users are only charged when syncing a large number of files. A free download of the latest version of Syncdocs is available at syncdocs.com

Gmail Meter is a Google Apps script developed by Romain Vialard, it can show you stats on volume, daily traffic, traffic pattern, email categories, time before first response, word count and thread lengths.

To set this up on one’s account requires setting up a Google docs spreadsheet and then installing the script on it and requesting a report.

Know Your Gmail Stats using Gmail Meter at: http://gmailblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/know-your-gmail-stats-using-gmail-meter.html

Tutorial: Creating Gmail Inbox Statistics Report at: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/articles/gmail-stats

Four years ago, Read it Later was created to allow users to save their web content to view later on their own schedule. One year ago, Read It Later had 2.5 million users; now it has 4.5 million. This growth made it the number one paid news app for Android and Kindle Fire and a top app for iPhone and iPad. Today, the company announced a new version of their flagship app — now free across all devices — and a new name, Pocket.

Pocket is for when people discover an interesting article, video or web page, but don’t have time to view it. Once saved to Pocket, the list of content is visible on any device — phone, tablet or computer. It can be viewed while waiting in line, on the couch or during commutes or travel — even offline. Pocket is available today for free in the App Store atgetpocket.com/ios, on Google Play (formerly the Android Marketplace) atgetpocket.com/android, and for Kindle Fire at getpocket.com/kindlefire.

“Nearly five items every second are saved to Pocket from the web and popular news apps, including videos, articles, recipes and more,” said Nate Weiner, founder of Read it Later and creator of Pocket. “Pocket is the perfect name for our latest version as it expresses how simple it is to take any content users discover with them, no matter where they go.”

Pocket is different than “bookmarking,” apps, which organize links for long term storage. Instead, Pocket lets users save the content they discover on the web or inside any of over 300 leading apps–including Flipboard, Twitter, Pulse, and Zite–with a single tap and view it on any device.

Since its launch in 2007, over 200 million items have been saved, giving the company deep insight into how and when consumers save and view their web content. Key findings include:

• 33 percent of saved items come from 3rd party apps including Twitter, Zite, Flipboard and Pulse.

• 50 percent of items saved via Pocket are viewed on mobile screens (up from 34 percent in January).

• Web consumption peaks in the early morning and declines through the day, as consumers dig through their inboxes and find what they want to view later. iPad use peaks at night, as users view saved content in the pre-bedtime hours. Mobile consumption maps to commuting times, as users increasingly view content in transit.

• 40 percent of items saved are not articles; popular content include videos, images, things to buy, travel tips and recipes.

• YouTube is the apps’ most popular source of content, as users increasingly are saving videos for later viewing.

The new Pocket update is focused on making the most important parts of the user experience as easy and simple as possible. It enhances all the features users already loved in Read it Later in a beautiful new interface.

• A Cleaner, Simpler UI. The new user interface of Pocket displays all of a user’s content in a beautiful, easy-to-view layout adapted to take full advantage of high definition displays.

• Video & Image Filters. Most people save sites with videos and images, in addition to articles and text. Pocket automatically filters all content so users can quickly switch between articles, videos and images with just a tap.

• Enhanced Viewing Experience. Articles, videos and anything saved is displayed in a clean and simplified view with fewer toolbars and a redesigned full-screen mode.

• Easier to Organize. New bulk editing, favoriting and tagging modes make organizing and browsing saved items easier. Users can find content by keywords, publications or create their own custom tags.

• Favorites. Users can star favorite content so it is always available when they want to find it.

• Pocket is Free on All Major Mobile Platforms. Pocket is now available, for free, on all major mobile platforms including Android phones and tablets, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Amazon Kindle Fire.

About Read it Later

Based in San Francisco, Read it Later was founded in 2007 by Nate Weiner to help users save what they find online and view it on any device at any time. The service currently has over 4.5 million registered users and is integrated into over 300 apps including Flipboard, Twitter and Zite. In April 2012 the Read it Later app became known as Pocket and focused on the most important parts of the content-shifting experience, making it easier and simpler than ever. Pocket is available for major devices and platforms including iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Kindle Fire, all Android-based tablets and smartphones, Google Chrome, and Firefox.

Canonical released for beta testing a new cloud proxy, providing APIs for OpenStack that are also common to Amazon’s EC2 and AWS public cloud services. The proxy, called “Any Web Service Over Me” (AWSOME), simplifies the deployment of hybrid cloud workloads across AWS and OpenStack clouds.

The OpenStack community has made innovation in IAAS APIs a core strength of the project, and long term users of OpenStack will want to embrace the native APIs in order to make the most of OpenStack’s functionality.

AWSOME translates IAAS requests from the AWS protocol to OpenStack’s native protocols, reinforcing the commitment in the OpenStack community to robust OpenStack protocols while enabling users of AWS to access OpenStack clouds without significant porting efforts. “I applaud all efforts to improve AWS compatibility for OpenStack” said Vish Ishaya, Lead Architect of OpenStack Nova, for Rackspace. “AWSOME adds to the momentum of the OpenStack APIs, enabling OpenStack to focus on innovation”.

Canonical leads and provides commercial support for Ubuntu, the reference platform OS for OpenStack deployments. As a result, Canonical today supports multiple public and private cloud deployments of OpenStack on Ubuntu. AWSOME grew from the requirements of Canonical customers deploying OpenStack clouds, and Canonical’s own needs as a substantial user of both Amazon and OpenStack clouds. Canonical’s solution covers the typical needs of those deploying OpenStack who have already invested in AWS-based tools.

“OpenStack is the leading open source cloud infrastructure, and Canonical is delighted to contribute a tool that accelerates the evaluation, testing and deployment of OpenStack amongst organisations that already use AWS.” said Dave Walker, Ubuntu Server Infrastructure Lead at Canonical. “The challenge set by members of the OpenStack community was to simplify the requirement on OpenStack components to provide both legacy APIs and innovative pure-OpenStack APIs, without introducing new APIs altogether. This work meets that challenge and we’re appreciative of the support from leading members of the OpenStack community in shaping it that way,” added Martin Packman, a member of the AWSOME development team at Canonical.

Randy Bias, co-founder and CTO of Cloudscaling, a leading provider of Ubuntu-based, OpenStack-powered cloud infrastructure solutions, commented; “support for Amazon Web Services compatibility is a critical component of the OpenStack ecosystem and hence important for our customers. This contribution from Canonical provides a compelling option for AWS API support and makes clear the priority that the OpenStack community places on Amazon compatibility.”

AWSOME is an installation option for Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS. It is an open-source project led by Canonical with compliance, support and assurance available to Canonical customers. AWSOME is developed at https://launchpad.net/awsome. For more details, please visit: www.ubuntu.com/cloud/awsome.

BT Retail has turned up the speed dial in the broadband battle by announcing a range of speed increases for its customers for no extra cost. Customers signing up to BT Infinity 2 from tomorrow (April 12) will benefit from downstream speeds that are roughly double those on offer today – up to 76Mbps rather than up to 38Mbps. The newly revamped service will also offer the UK’s fastest upstream speeds of up to 19Mbps.

BT Retail is also set to give its BT Infinity 1 product a boost by increasing its upstream speed fivefold from up to 1.9Mbps to up to 9.5Mbps. With a downstream speed of up to 38Mbps, this service will compare very well with the 30Mbps service offered by Virgin Media given the upstream speeds will be considerably faster than those offered by the latter.

Delivery of the new increased speeds by BT Retail will help to achieve the government’s stated ambition for the UK to have the best super-fast broadband network in Europe by 2015. The high upstream speeds will also be of great benefit to customers who wish to upload photos, video, graphics or other rich content.

From April 12 customers new to BT and existing BT customers switching to BT Infinity from other packages will automatically benefit from these higher speed packages. Current BT Infinity customers will be able to switch to the faster products by starting a new contract, at no extra cost.

John Petter, managing director, BT Consumer, said: “Super-fast broadband is helping people enjoy the internet far more than ever before. However, many providers have forgotten about the importance of fast upload speeds. BT believes that fast upstream speeds are vital given how people now use the internet and so we are distancing ourselves from the competition by providing the UK’s fastest upload speed. ”

BT Infinity is currently available to more than seven million premises across the UK. That figure will rise to ten million in 2012 and then to around two thirds of all UK premises by the end of 2014. BT Group is currently bidding for BDUK funds which could extend the availability of fibre broadband to more than 90 per cent of UK homes and businesses.

BT Infinity 2 downstream speeds roughly double to up to 76Mbps
BT Infinity 2 offers UK’s fastest upstream speeds of up to 19Mbps 1
BT Infinity 1 upstream speeds to be up to five times faster than before

Google has announced a major update to Google+, which will rollout gradually to users.

Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President writing on Googles official blog said:

“More than 170 million people have upgraded to Google+, enjoying new ways to share in Search, Gmail, YouTube and lots of other places. It’s still early days, and there’s plenty left to do, but we’re more excited than ever to build a seamless social experience, all across Google.

A critical piece of this social layer is a design that grows alongside our aspirations. So today we’re introducing a more functional and flexible version of Google+. We think you’ll find it easier to use and nicer to look at, but most importantly, it accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google.”

Read more: http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/toward-simpler-more-beautiful-google.html

Belfast’s City Council has been guaranteed £6m of the UK government’s £100m Urban Broadband Fund, but could receive up to £13.7m if the Government approves its plans.

In November last year, the government first unveiled its plans for connnected cities. They saw ten cities in the UK, including Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and Glasgow, are eligible to compete for high-speed broadband funding, according to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport compete for part of the £100m Urban Broadband Fund (UBF) from the government to build out high-speed broadband and Wi-Fi networks.

More at TechWeek Europe

If you use Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, you can now upload files by dragging them from your desktop onto the Dropbox website.

After Dropbox detects the upload, it’ll work its magic to get your stuff wherever you need it. This is just a small step toward giving you a simpler (and more fun!)

Dropbox is a Web-based file hosting service operated by Dropbox, Inc. that uses networked storage to enable users to store and share files and folders with others across the Internet using file synchronization. It was founded in 2007 by MIT graduates Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi as a Y Combinator startup

dropbox.com.

Instagram for Android is now avaiblre as a public download on the Google Play store.

Instagram for Android

You can download the app at: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instagram.android.

Instagram was launched in October 2010 by co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Instagram is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Simply snap a photo, then choose a filter to transform the look and feel. Pictures are shared on Instagram, and can be easily uploaded to other social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.