TechCrunch
Yahoo Sharpens Its Flickr iOS App With Enhanced Filters, More Camera Tools; Makes Pro Tools Free
Yahoo has just released a significant new update for its Flickr photo app for iOS, a further sign of how it wants to be not just where you go to store and view pictures, but where you create them as well. Today, to keep up with the Instagram-led field of mobile photography, it’s adding a number of new filter features and new camera tools. And, in its bid to bring in more hardcore photography enthusiasts, it’s also dropping the paywall on some of its pro features, bringing the app in line with Yahoo’s decision in May to drop Flickr Pro online.
It doesn’t look right now like the update is extending to Android; we’ll keep checking.
The new filter enhancements are a sign of how Yahoo wants to keep up with the times and the craze among mobile photography users to quickly enhance their creations with the touch of a single button. Here Yahoo is trying to go one step further. In addition to new filters, Yahoo is offering “live” filters so that you can use them as a lens while photographing. You can also create custom filters on the app. In addition to the camera tools that include grids, pinch to zoom, focus lock and a better ability to manage exposure points, this points to how Yahoo wants this also to replace the role played by apps like Camera+ and Snapseed for avid users.
It comes at the same time that Instagram is also adding more features for pro-users who want to add that extra level of effort to make their pictures perfect.
On the subject pro users, to bring more people on to the Flickr platform, Yahoo has been lowering the paywall for premium features online, and that’s now extending to the mobile site too. Today, photo enhancing features, cropping, sharpening, adjusting color and use levels, as well as vignettes are all among the features that become free.
The overall working of the app also now has animated transitions, Yahoo says, adding to the general slick nature.
All in all, considering that Flickr was such an early and big mover in the online photo space, it had a lot of catching up to do. This is already the seventh update to the app (some have been really more for bug fixes that major updates) since it was relaunched as a version 2 in December last year, as one of the flagships in CEO Marissa Mayer’s bid to sort out Yahoo’s dismal standing in mobile.
TiVo's Roamio Platform Gets Opera SDK Support, Bringing HTML5 Web Apps To TiVo DVRs
TiVo’s brand new Roamio platform is about to get a whole lot “appier” thanks to the introduction of Opera’s Devices SDK, and the addition of the Opera TV Store, a means through which developers can offer HTML5 web apps to TiVo device owners. The new partnership will also give developers an SDK to build TiVo-specific apps for an app store the over-the-top services provider plans to launch later this year.
TiVo’s Roamio platform launched just last week, via a new family of DVR hardware devices that improve considerably on the amount of content that can be recorded, and there’s a new feature coming that allows live and recorded content streaming, even out-of-home, thanks to an upcoming feature that’s going to be introduced via an update (hence the “roam” pun).
While most of the update was focused around the hardware — adding more tuners and more storage to improve the core DVR experience — TiVo also improved several of the onboard apps, making them faster and more responsive. According to TiVo VP of Product Marketing Jim Denney, some of that improvement comes from switching to the Opera Browser for those apps. The Netflix and YouTube apps in particular, both of which are built on Opera, are a lot faster to open and use.
Already, Roamio devices offer up access to some pre-installed apps including Netflix, Hulu Plus, Pandora, Spotify and more, and it consolidates content from all of the above in addition to cable services when you’re searching for shows. The introduction of the Opera TV store, which TiVo is aiming to deploy early next year, will bring a whole catalogue of new HTML5-based apps to the service, broadening the type of app-based content users have access to exponentially.
Opera’s TV Store is already available on millions of shipping devices, and the Opera Devices SDK made its way onto over 25 million connected TVs in 2012 alone. That means that TiVo customers will be getting access to a platform that’s already mature when the Opera Store goes live on its devices; there won’t be any waiting while a new store is set up and curate the way there would be if TiVo had started from scratch.
TiVo also contends that the partnership will help it more quickly introduce new and improved pre-loaded software to its set-top DVRs, since Opera has become a key partner for big brands and service providers that are making the switch to HTML5 in order to gain more presence on connected home entertainment platforms.
Access to Opera TV Store content is a big value-add that should help TiVo’s Roamio price tags look more attractive to users who might otherwise feel like a Roku or Apple TV device could fit their needs. And if TiVo and others suspect that Apple is preparing to make a fresh foray into the living room, as has been recently rumored by none other than our own contributor MG Siegler, building as full-featured an offering as possible definitely explains the push to build a software ecosystem.
Global Founders Capital Reveals First Three Investments, Including Lingoda, GirlMeetsDress And Videdressing
The Samwer brothers’ Global Founders Capital fund is announcing its first three investments today, a few short months after making its public debut. The initial round of investment isn’t earth-shattering, totalling just over $5 million, but it’s just the start fore the nearly $200 million fund from Oliver and Marc Samwer, as well as third partner Fabian Siegel, the founder and architect of global food ordering startup giant Delivery Hero.
Three companies are included in this round of initial funding, including language learning platform Lingoda (previously scooped by Deutsche Startups), and online fashion startups GirlMeetsDress and Videdressing.com. GFC‘s Siegel says that the fund’s partners see big opportunities in the online fashion space, hence the presence of two such companies on this list of investments.
“I can’t speak for [Rocket Internet's] specific strategy, but I think they’re covering very well the traditional, demand fulfillment ecommerce space for fashion,” he said in an interview. “But there are tons of other models adjacent to that. The secondary market, with Videdressing, where you start to resell and build an eBay is a good example of a natural, logical model adjacent to the ecommerce model. GirlMeetsDress, being on the other end, where you basically make high-end dresses available to those who are unable or unwilling to own them, basically with a shared ownership model, you have another different approach.”
Samwers Marc and Oliver are the famed duo behind Rocket Internet, the startup incubator responsible for launching a thousand clones of successful North American early stage companies. GFC is designed to give the Samwers a vehicle to invest in businesses that wouldn’t necessarily have a place at Rocket, with a particular focus on consumer-facing ecommerce companies. that offer complimentary models to what Rocket-incubated companies are creating.
GirlMeetsDress is a particularly strong example of a startup that’s replicating a model working well in the North American market, too. RentTheRunway offers essentially the same service to U.S. customers, and Siegel didn’t shy away from the fact that that startup’s success has had influence in GFC’s decision to back GirlMeetsDress and explore the fashion space, even though GirlMeetsDress technically debuted prior to its North American counterpart.
“Generally I believe if there’s a certain behavior that works in one market, then there’s a high likelihood that the same behavior will work in other market,” he said. “From my own experience with the last business I built I saw user behavior being very similar across multiple markets, from Asia right across to Europe, and there’s only a few markets where a model doesn’t work, and that’s the exception rather than the rule. I think RentTheRunWay is a great example of a company that has a model that scaled successfully, and the UK being very close to the US in fashion practices, I think GirlMeetsDress has a lot of potential.”
Asked whether future GFC investments will be thematically similar to these three, Siegel said that while they probably can do most to help consumer-facing companies as investors, we’ll probably see them go further afield and put money into B2B, big data and software-as-a-service companies, too. Consumer transactional remains the core focus however, and these first three investments are right up that alley.
No comments:
Post a Comment