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Really? It’s the only new app I can’t use personally. Most of the people I speak to on a regular basis on google talk are perpetually online because they have android phones and/or gmail open all the time. That means that for me to be able to see if they are online, away, busy, or on a mobile device is critical to knowing whether I should bug them, whether I should expect a response, or whether or not they are even awake. The mobile device indicator is even a fair hint at where people are when you know their routine – in fact that’s proven to be an extremely helpful indicator for me personally, and has saved a lot of “where are you” and “have you left yet” type messages, with no effort from the person on the other end or intrusion into their privacy.

Hangouts breaks all that, so as a result I’ve had to avoid the upgrade until they fix it, and I even had a friend call me the other night and ask how to uninstall hangouts and get back talk on his phone for the same reason.

Clear status indicators are one of the most basic facets of IM that have been a mainstay since AIM and ICQ. I don’t understand why they chose to do away with that.

1 day ago on Best New Apps: Google Hangouts 1 reply 8 recommends

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Portland does not have hard water issues – it’s actually one of the few places in the US that that doesn’t currently – it ranks amongst the very best water quality in the country (and world). That’s part of why residents are resistant to change and added treatment, regardless of what it is. It has a very low contaminant rate, minimal treatment, and is nearly pH neutral (barring problems with pipes in someone’s own building). People who haven’t experienced both don’t really understand the difference.

2 days ago on After heated battle, Portland residents reject bid to fluoridate city drinking water 1 recommend

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Agreed, low income population caries rates are an issue in the region, but the methodology behind the proposal and process were shady – and clearly financially driven, not socially.

People who don’t live in the area or travel don’t understand that Portland water really is nearly the cleanest and least treated water in the country. It’s a huge difference from tap water in other regions of the US, and unless you have good well water you would be hard pressed to find better. There’s value in that, as local bottling companies have known for some time. There is serious concern that the federal drive to cap our reservoirs will make the water worse rather than better as well.

The problem is that there are a lot of people out spouting nonsense, and that don’t understand that there is a real (evidence backed) problem with tooth decay in the region that needs to be addressed. It’s a shame that people don’t want to actually discuss the issue and come up with a solution instead of calling each other morons or pushing their own private agendas – on both sides.

2 days ago on After heated battle, Portland residents reject bid to fluoridate city drinking water 1 recommend

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It’s actually a better alternative because you don’t ingest it. The key drive for fluoridation is low income youth, so offering services like this in public schools and preschool would go a lot further than treating the water actually. Plus you could stop treatment if someone has complications.

2 days ago on After heated battle, Portland residents reject bid to fluoridate city drinking water 1 reply 1 recommend

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Let’s see, what’s that G stand for?

Graphics.

Yeah, it’s G…G.G.GIF. As many have learned over the eons, you can’t control the pronunciation of a language once it hits the public domain. We pick what works for us and roll with it. Even Linus gave up on that battle.

Sorry bub.

3 days ago on Inventor of the GIF uses awards ceremony to remind us how it's pronounced

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Not just the interface either, the xbox has made it consistently easier to buy content than the PSN store, not just on the console but on the website. You can get a proper feel for the content and addons available without even owning an xbox, and you find links to get DLC everywhere in game and online. The XBOX was much better at driving sales.

PS+ was Sony’s answer to that I think, and while it’s doing a great job, it’s a little late for that generation.

3 days ago on Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4: the next console war pits living room against cloud 2 recommends

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The what against the what? In the end it doesn’t matter. 90%+ of users will utilize both consoles the same way. Most of the competing solutions are software based and can be implemented by either vendor.

Also, importantly, it is way too early to expect anything serious out of the PS4’s cloud delivery system (effectively remote play scaled up). I would wait until we actually see the technology in use before we pass any sort of judgement, because frankly the chance of that taking off as a primary form of game delivery in this generation is slim to none. Sony has already repeatedly dropped most of their promises for remote play in the home (I can play a whopping two games via remote play on Vita, and both are 2D, basic games – unless you hack your console it’s worthless), I simply don’t see how we can trust then with a purchased, untested technology on a much larger scale.

Don’t forget that Microsoft actually has a lot of experience in this field and has top notch partners (Citrix, VMWare) for remote media that could turn around a similar DirectX based solution pretty quickly – seeing as they’ve actually been working on building it for years for other industries.

3 days ago on Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4: the next console war pits living room against cloud

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“This was about a refresh and getting people interested again.”

But how much value is there in that regard when they made it look exactly like google+. You are right that attention grabbing is key, but I don’t think they are grabbing the right kind of attention after the “wow, 1TB” factor wears off and more people realize it doesn’t matter. Average folks will stick to G+ and facebook, while the professionals who feel alienated move elsewhere.

Hopefully they are quick about adding some layout options before the gloss wears off.

3 days ago on Yahoo revitalizes Flickr with huge images, sharing, and a terabyte of free space (hands-on) 1 reply 2 recommends

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There’s no debating it needed improvement, but it could have done so without ruining the spirit of the gallery-style presentation. There’s a reason so many photographers chose Flickr over other sites. Now that’s gone.

Going in and out of lightbox mode was not a bad thing, at least not to people who actually have graphics experience. Photos present differently on white vs on black and it was good to have both. There is a reason most other sites use a neutral gray. All black is a bad thing, and it’s one of the first complaints coming from actual professionals about the new design.

Also, banner ads? I’ve had Pro for a few years but I don’t ever remember there being banner ads. Besides, if you haven’t seen the screen shots, people with free accounts will see banner ads intermingled inside photostreams on the new site. That’s much more obtrusive.

I don’t understand the cluttered info comment either. The info was pretty well spaced out. The current layout on an image page is more cluttered, because it’s the same info, same order, just with a bigger font, less spacing, pushed down on the page and split into columns depending on your browser width. Basically they just changed the CSS.

3 days ago on Yahoo revitalizes Flickr with huge images, sharing, and a terabyte of free space (hands-on) 1 recommend

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“G+ has other issues beyond the look and feel”

Certainly, and I agree – that was a major point though and the first complain I heard both about the site and the android app. The design is flashy but not professional.

“The photostream has always been about a timeline view though”

Not really on flickr. Most photographers I know had the large 5 photos on the front page of their photostream, which was a great way to highlight and focus their recent photos, especially since it included the titles and descriptions for each one. That’s a much better and more meaningful showpiece for than the current tightly packed set of small images.

4 days ago on Yahoo unveils the new Flickr with one terabyte of free space 1 reply

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I agree, though it goes both ways. Unlike facebook people paid for this service and made a living off of it. They have a right to complain – as long as they do so in a civilized manner.

4 days ago on Yahoo revitalizes Flickr with huge images, sharing, and a terabyte of free space (hands-on)

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Cheers, I don’t know why more people don’t understand this. I think part of is the difference between social photography and photographers who cherish individual photos. I hate that not only are my photos cluttered together now, but my portraits are tiny and my panoramics are gigantic. I don’t want to present my photos that way, but I have no choice in the matter now.

And it’s not just about whitespace. I loved reading the titles and descriptions photographers put on their photos, but now I can’t do that without mouseover, click, or scrolling. None of that detail is available now without added effort, and there is no point to it aside from showing off some HTML trickery – that everyone else has already done.

How often do photo galleries take all the photos and arrange them tightly together on a wall, after first reprinting all their portrait oriented photos at half size so they fit in neat little rows. Then hide the details on the backside. Nothing about this design change is about the photography. It cheapens the photograph in the interest of looking cool.

4 days ago on Yahoo revitalizes Flickr with huge images, sharing, and a terabyte of free space (hands-on) 1 reply 1 recommend

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The lack of the social interaction flickr had makes it harder to drive traffic to your work. The market is highly saturated with good photographers so the best way to get business is through connections. Flickr allowed a lot of people to be seen just enough to get business. Other sites favor the few, and a lot of times those few aren’t uniquely good, they just know how to play the system.

4 days ago on Yahoo unveils the new Flickr with one terabyte of free space

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It’s unfortunately that this is all the crap that takes up the forum instead of the crew of professionals who have legitimate critiques about the changes and how it compares not only to facebook and google+, but 500px, smugmug, etc. People actually generate revenue off the traffic they get on flickr, and many things about these changes don’t treat them well. If they could actually get their voices in instead of the idiots we might actually see some really positive changes to flickr in the next few months.

Unfortunately I doubt it, and flickr is just going to bleed off the remainder of their pro camp to other sites, social media, and self-hosting.

4 days ago on Yahoo unveils the new Flickr with one terabyte of free space

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Out of curiosity, are you a professional photographer, or just a pro flickr user? I’m a pro flickr user and I find it annoying (personal opinion) for the reason I described above, but when I said professional I was referring to my friends who are actual professional photographers and get much of their traffic through flickr. I’m pretty sure they aren’t going to like this google+ like view at all, considering they weren’t very impressed by it in google+. The old site was antiquated but it was customizable and allowed photographers to showcase the photos they want to, as well as say what they wanted to about their photos in a visible way. The new layout takes that away, unfairly weights toward wide ratio photos, and certainly doesn’t look like a professional portfolio either. I don’t see how that helps.

4 days ago on Yahoo unveils the new Flickr with one terabyte of free space 1 reply

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Only if you go to individual images, and even that hides the caption below the fold in favor of a pseudo light-box. Photostreams, Sets, and Groups have the problems I mentioned.

4 days ago on Yahoo unveils the new Flickr with one terabyte of free space

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Am I the only one who doesn’t like the new layout? It’s the same as G+ and comes with the same problems – You can no longer browse a photostream including titles and captions, which are sometimes important, and the dynamic layout often hides awesome photos because it no longer gives photos equal space – especially portraits.

For casual use it’s fine, but I think for some pros especially, it does a disservice to their portfolio. For me personally it looks ugly and unbalanced because I slip in panoramas periodically, and now they are gigantic while the rest of my photos, many of which are better, are tiny.

Perhaps it’s just that the disk space has everyone’s attention.

4 days ago on Yahoo unveils the new Flickr with one terabyte of free space 3 replies 1 recommend

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I’m guessing you used google translate to reply to my post as well as to read it, since your response is both irrelevant and nonsensical. I’m talking about presentation and public sharing, not storage.

4 days ago on Google+ update for Android includes improved photo experience and Snapseed integration