Hasta La Gadget!

Yahoo‘s new CEO, Marissa Mayer, is in the process of cleaning house and turning the company around. Obviously, this involves giving employees and other chiefs some bad news, but in turn it allows the company to bring in some fresh faces to hopefully bring Yahoo out of a rut. One of the new folks is a former National Geographic photographer who will now be in charge of Flickr.

Adam Cahan has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Emerging Products and Technology. This means he’ll be in charge of Yahoo’s mobile efforts, as well as Flickr. In an internal memo sent out on October 25, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer notes that Cahan will report directly to Mayer and will be responsible for building a team that will focus on creating and improving various products.

“To aid our efforts, I’m promoting Adam Cahan to lead this effort as Senior Vice President of Emerging Products and Technology. Adam will be a member of e-staff and report directly to me. He will oversee our mobile efforts, enabled screens (CTV+IntoNow), and Flickr. Adam will be responsible for building a world-class team focused on creating innovative products and experiences that inspire and delight our users worldwide.”

Cahan was previously the founder and CEO of IntoNow, a flourishing startup company that Yahoo acquired last year for somewhere between $20 to $30 million. Cahan is also quite familiar with the world of photography. Before entering the corporate world, Cahan was a National Geographic wildlife photographer who has contributed his work to multiple Emmy award-winning documentaries about Africa.

Marissa Mayer came to Yahoo with an iron fist, and she seems to be stone-cold serious about her plans to turn the company around. It’s nice that Flickr will be in the hands of an actual photographer who may have some insight on how to improve the service. It may not improve drastically, but it’ll be nice to know that the head behind Flickr will do what’s actually best for the service and its users.

[via San Jose Business Journal]

Yahoo hires former National Geographic photographer to take over Flickr is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

When Seagate launched its PC/Mac Backup Plus offering that could safeguard not only your folders but your Facebook or Twitter content, too, it seemed like a nice idea. But conspicuously missing from the Mac side of that equation was a USB 3.0 port to hustle transfers along at a much less pedestrian 5 Gbps — likely because until recently, no Macs directly supported it. Now, Seagate has launched a USB 3.0 version of the device for those shiny new Macbook Pro Retina and Air models that pack it, while offering the option to upgrade to Thunderbolt or FireWire 800 “as the need presents itself.” Prices go from $110 for the 500GB model up to $180 for the 3TB version — check the PR after the break to see the entire range.

Continue reading Seagate Backup Plus brings USB 3.0 speed, sociability to new Macbooks

Filed under: Storage

Seagate Backup Plus brings USB 3.0 speed, sociability to new Macbooks originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Oct 2012 02:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I know. For most people it’s Facebook. Go out, get drunk, snap pics, upload, tag friends, Like. Repeat. Everybody does this. But I don’t want this. Flickr was a solution once upon a time but Flickr is, um, not what it used to be. How about Picasa? Something else? More »

Entomologist Shaun Winterton has discovered a new species of Malaysian Lacewing from the comfort of his computer. Idly browsing Flickr, he came across Guek “Kurt” Hock Ping’s snap of an insect taken while hiking in the Malaysian jungle, which bore an unfamiliar black-and-blue pattern along its wings. When his colleagues couldn’t identify the markings, he realized he was staring at a new species and hurriedly emailed the photographer — who, a year later, had captured one of the elusive creatures. Sent to Simon Brooks at the Natural History Museum, the suspicion was confirmed. The armchair explorer named it Semachrysa jade after his daughter and promptly used Google Docs to co-author the paper with Guek and Brooks on opposite ends of the world. If your mom complains that you’re spending too much time on your computer, you can tell her you’re searching for strange life-forms and old civilizations with a straight face.

[Image Credit: Guek “Kurt” Hock Ping, Flickr]

Armchair Darwinians discover new insect species on Flickr originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Verge, NPR, io9  |  OrionMystery, Zookeys, Flickr  | Email this | Comments

Yahoo’s new CEO, ex-Googler Marissa Mayer, faces no shortages of challenges turning the struggling behemoth around, but there are some key places that require some frantic surgery. With Yahoo‘s share price still slumping, Mayer’s first day on the job will be spent triaging the numerous weak points and figuring out how she can bring first stability and then a turnaround to the ravaged firm. But which exactly are those main areas that need attention?

Flickr

Yahoo has arguably been sitting on a goldmine of user engagement, but – beyond the frustrating forced-switch to using Yahoo credentials to log in – has made little use of photo sharing site Flickrf. That’s much to the chagrin of those with galleries on the site, who had been hoping for investment and more after Yahoo spent somewhere in the region of $35m for it.

Problem is, from being the automatic choice for photo sharing, Flickr now faces a raft of rivals that each make it far easier to create personal and public galleries online. Auto-upload features as we’ve seen in iOS with Camera Roll, and as have been introduced with Google+ and Facebook apps for mobile, have caught wind with the rise in smartphone photography; Flickr’s own usage stats show the most popular cameras are those on the iPhone 4 and 4S.

Mayer’s challenge here is to increase Flickr’s footprint in mobile without frustrating the other sizable group in the user stats: those with DSLRs from Canon, Nikon and others.

The Portal

Take a look at Yahoo’s homepage. It’s hardly the paragon of pared-back simplicity that Google.com has become known for; or, indeed, the graphically beautiful Bing.com homepage with its daily-changing photos. Instead, Yahoo has gone down the “throw as many links at them as possible” route, presumably hoping that if users see plenty of options they’ll presume Yahoo is still relevant.

Mayer is known for her skills in promoting consistency and harmony between services; the exec built a reputation on streamlining UI and bringing services together so that there was no jarring disconnect, however small, when switching between Google properties. Google’s own Larry Page described her as “a tireless champion of our users”, and many others have pointed to her focus on the user experience.

That’s just what Yahoo requires: something that stops it from looking like another tired aggregator, reliant on overwhelming users in order to keep them, and instead gives it a unique identity.

The Cull

That tendency to overwhelm is Mayer’s third key challenge. Google has been good at paring back services and products that have reached the end of their usefulness – even if there’s a fair number of people still actually using them – whereas Yahoo seems reluctant to let anything go. That reticence, presumably down to a fear of chasing away what users they have left, has left the company with a swollen portfolio with little in the way of direction.

“A cull is needed”

A cull is needed, and a decisive one. That’s where Mayer may face the biggest challenge: turning services like Flickr and the Yahoo homepage around demand enthusing staff and communicating your new ideas, while shutting services down can often mean job losses or at the least the fear of patchy job security. With Yahoo’s share price dwindling, few at the company can be feeling especially confident about the future.

Still, if Yahoo wants to move forward, it has to cut some ties with the past. Mayer’s credentials are good, and by all accounts she’s a natural geek which should carry some weight at a company which has suffered from too much clueless management and not enough innovation. The clock is ticking.

Yahoo’s Three Big Challenges is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.