Yahoo’s Flickr photo-sharing service is now offering one full terabyte for users, enough storage space to hold whole swathes of the world’s photos. The service is offering this benefit in addition to its full resolution photo storage service.
While the average user will probably not touch the outer limits of this storage space in a lifetime, this alone is probably enough to draw dedicated photographers to the service and, more important, bring lapsed users back to the Yahoo fold.
This move is important. Given the odd nature of most photo sharing services, you are either limited to a few dozen gigabytes or, in the case of Instagram and other mobile services, an unstated upper limit that is not part of the marketing collateral. While I don’t doubt that Google or Facebook could make the terabyte claim in the near future, being first to market with this particular feature is an important milestone.
This move is quite clearly a play by Yahoo to make its wares relevant. The long-beleaguered Flickr has at once enthralled and frustrated pro users with claims of abandonment by the web giant.
As Marissa Mayer noted in her presentation, this is about “bringing lifetimes of beauty into Flickr.” It’s also about convincing casual photographers to trust Flickr as a universal shoebox for their old snaps – a lucrative and surprisingly important thing to be.
Dude, you got a Linux-powered Dell! In all the years I’ve reviewed laptops I’ve never been as pleasantly surprised by an Ultrabook as I was with the Dell XPS 13 Developers Edition. This ultrathin, ultralight SSD laptop originally came in Windows flavor but, much to my surprise, I far prefer the Ubuntu edition of this device. It is solidly built, acceptably priced given the solid state drive, and surprisingly powerful.
Rewind
I’ve been using some form of POSIX-compliant operating system for over a decade but I must admit that I have been remiss in my Ubuntu installations. Whereas I was once a KDE kid with some Gnome leanings, my distro knowledge stopped at about Mandrake and picked up again as Ubuntu began its rise to glory. That said, I was curious to see what Linux looks like these days. In short, it looks great.
The laptop itself is well-made. An aluminum top and pane of Gorilla Glass protects the 13-inch screen and it weighs a little less than 3 pounds. The entire package is self-contained, solid, and quite portable.
The laptop, codenamed Sputnik, is a concerted effort by Dell to make sure everything on the device works well. It includes a number of Dell-specific packages – you can see a list here – but it supports most updates to the OS and attendant software and seamlessly upgraded to the latest version, 13.04, on top of the stock 12.04 Dell provides.
If you haven’t used Linux on a desktop you’ll be surprised at how uneventful it is. Everything “just works,” from the camera to the disk encryption to the update downloads, and there is little of the traditional futzing around with scripts and drivers when attempting to add hardware or fix broken peripherals. As a non-power-user who once wrote a script to re-initialize my audio chip every time I woke my computer from sleep, it was a pleasure to see the XPS 13 boot up without issue and worked quite seamlessly with most devices I tried with it. Arguably, with only two USB ports (one 3.0, one 2.0) and a DisplayPort jack, you’re not going to be adding much to the mix.
The GeekBench score for this particular model hovered at around 5,500, which is solid performance. The MacBook Air, for example, gets about 6,600 on a good day and the Core i7 hits about 7,000 although it can top out at about 10,000 depending on the machine. 5,500, while not ideal, is still solid. The laptop lasted for 7 hours of standard use, about par for the course for a laptop of this size.
Using the laptop was a dream. I was able to set up my environment quite quickly and seamlessly and after a few hours I quickly picked up a workflow that allowed me to write, edit photos, and post from the field. The lack of an SD card was quite disheartening, to be sure, but an external dongle helped me make short work of that issue. I used GIMP to crop and resize photos, Vim to edit my posts and writing, and connected to web-based versions of my favorite cloud services if I needed access to files or social media.
The best part about the XPS 13 Developers Edition, however, is Dell’s own support offerings. It’s clear that releasing an Ubuntu into the wild without good support would be suicide for the product. To that end, the company is offering one year of “ProSupport” that includes round-the-clock North American tech support and next-day on-site servicing. While Dell Hell is still a fresh memory in my mind, at least, this offering is more in line with corporate support than end-user Windows management.
Who is it for?
Designers
No. Unless you’re a GIMP master, this probably isn’t the laptop for you. To be fair it’s surprisingly thin and light but it has no SD card slot, making it a hard sell for the designers among you. Working solely on the web? Sure, you could feasibly get away with doing a little CSS or HTML on this thing, but you’re probably better served with a laptop running more photo-editing applications.
Writers will also be a little put off by the lack of native support for some of their tools. However, if you’re a markdown/plain text editor kind of person, this laptop connected with a revision control system could be a winner. It obviously depends on your workflow and, although I was able to pick it up fairly quickly, Ubuntu might not be the place to look for absolute ease-of-use.
Founders
Yes. To paraphrase Justin Timberlake, a laptop isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? An Ubuntu laptop. While you may annoy most of your co-workers with your insistence on running LibreOffice, this laptop is more than enough to run a few spreadsheets on and, in addition, build a business with. Seamless connectivity to most cloud services is a large benefit and thanks to Dell’s CloudLauncher app you can quickly and easily spin up nodes with a few keystrokes. Best of all, you’re not going to be another me-too entrepreneur with a MacBook Air and a dream (and you don’t have to use Windows 8), which is a great feeling
Programmers
Yes. This is a more-than-capable programmer’s machine and all of the care Dell put into this laptop really helps it shine as a developer’s device. For example, Dell has added Profile Tool, a method for “cloning” a workspace between laptops. This allows you to manage dependencies, preferred system tools, and tool chains. An Ars reviewer notes that these Profiles could become a way to “share” setups between programmers as well as a method to see how programming “superstars” have set up their machines. In short, Dell wants to make it clear that they care about developers with this device.
Bottom Line
It doesn’t get much cooler than the XPS 13 – and that’s high praise coming from an unreformed Apple addict. While I’m not sure this would become my everyday carry laptop, I could definitely see it replacing a similarly outfitted Windows machine and, if I ever felt the need to go full Doctorow when it comes to encryption, open software, and paranoia, this is the device I’d choose.
Laptops are the new desktops. While you can buy a solid tower PC for about $500, this price represents how little manufacturers care about the desktop world. Barring a few huge gaming rigs, laptops are where it’s at.
We have been arguably remiss in avoiding formal laptop reviews and so we’re trying to remedy that with a series we’re calling Laptop Week. This week we will focus on some of the best laptops available today alongside a few gems that popped up over the past year or so. We will run the gamut from Chromebooks to Windows 8 and take a few detours on the way.
You can read all of our Laptop Week coverage here and feel free to contact me if you’d like to see us look at anything in particular on the market or in the laptops we’re testing. Look for a few Laptop Week posts per day, starting with an amazing Ubuntu laptop that I think could easily replace a MacBook Air for those in the right frame of mind.
We’ve created a quick and easy rating method for each laptop we address and take into consideration the needs of designers, entrepreneurs, and programmers. Because you mostly don’t care about speeds and feeds, these will be high-level assessments of each laptop from a practical perspective.
Welcome to Laptop Week. We hope you enjoy your stay.
We asked Pearce a few questions about his goals for the project and about the future of 3D printing.
John Biggs: Why Printers For Peace?
Joshua Pearce: I think it is clear that low-cost open-source 3D printing has enormous potential to do real good for the world – particularly for the poor as it radically reduces the cost of high-value products like scientific tools and consumer goods. This threatens a lot of entrenched interests because the average Joe can fabricate extremely complex products at home for pennies, which is disruptive to say the least. I have noticed a clear bias in 3D printing news coverage – any advances on the low-end of the spectrum are generally ignored or vilified. The media frenzy about 3D printed guns is actually having terrifying consequences – and I don’t mean the guns. A California senator has already proposed registration, background checks, and licensing for 3D printers!
Michigan Tech and Type A Machines sponsored the contest to get the more positive truth about 3D printers into the conversation. There are over 90,000 open-source 3D printable designs available and only one low-quality gun. We do not want to lose the baby with the bathwater. Our aim is to raise awareness of the power of 3D printing to change the world for the better.
JB: What do you think will happen now that the 3D printed gun is out of the bag? It was inevitable, obviously, but what does it mean?
JP: The 3D printed gun is a red herring. Anyone who wants a gun can make a much better one using more traditional tools found in any machine shop and many garages — or just buy one. I am, however, very concerned that the debate about 3D printed guns will be used to squash the incredible technological development we are seeing in the open-source 3D printing community.
JB: What’s the coolest Printers for Peace project you’ve seen so far?
JP: The contest just opened, but there are some really cool designs already developed that I think would make good starting points for derivatives. I really like some of the small-scale 3D printed windmill designs – and there is a graduate student working on what looks to be a printable recyclebot. I would love to see a reliable 3D printed treadle pump as this is one of the most successful appropriate technologies for lifting rural farmers out of poverty in the developing world.
JB: What’s next? 3D printed bazookas? 3D printed heart stents? Where do you see this headed, in either direction?
JP: I think it is clear that existing manufacturers will continue to move from using high-end 3D printing for rapid prototyping into actual manufacturing creating entirely new classes of jobs (e.g. automobile parts, human body parts, etc.). This is exciting, but not nearly as exciting as what is happening on the low-end of the spectrum. As open-source 3D printable designs continue to grow exponentially the value of owning a 3D printer is climbing as their quality improves and actual costs continue to decline. Thus, low-cost open-source 3D printers will become ubiquitous household items, which people use to make a wide array of consumer goods, replacement parts, and highly customized products. Following shortly after I hope to see recyclebots become similarly widespread – with people recycling their waste plastic inhome to make their own products. The implications for improving human well-being are staggering.
Now that Defense Distributed is on the defensive, it’s time to think a bit harder about what 3D printing really means. To that end, Michigan Tech is sponsoring a Printers For Peace contest that is encouraging designers and engineers to make amazing stuff using a 3D printer that can change the world for the better. “Unfortunately, the only thing many people know about 3D printing is that it can be used to make guns,” writes Dr. Joshua Pearce, founder of the project.
“This is an open-ended contest, but if you’d like some ideas, ask yourself what Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, or Gandhi would make if they’d had access to 3D printing.”
The deadline for the contest is September 1st and they’ll announce winners on the 4th. They are looking for designers to build things that will help, not harm, people.
low-cost medical devices tools to help pull people out of poverty designs that can reduce racial conflict objects to improve energy efficiency or renewable energy sources to reduce wars over oil tools that would reduce military conflict and spending while making us all safer and more secure things that boost sustainable economic development (e.g. designs for appropriate technology in the developing world to reduce scarcity)
The winner of best project will win a Type A Machines Series 1 3D Printer and the runner-up gets a simpler RepRap Prusa Mendel 3D printing kit.
With all the press attention on 3D printing is the gateway to firearms anarchy, it’s refreshing to see someone take a different path. By backing 3D printing engineers into a corner, DefDist and the government are simply using fear to achieve competing goals. The results will be both needlessly draconian legislation and a variant of the Streisand Effect that will spread these arguably faulty plans far and wide. When the government outlawed DVD decryption code you could buy a T-shirt with the code printed on it. The same will happen in this case, although this code, when run, could take off fingers and give legislators more ammunition for a full crackdown on home 3D printing.
Let us know if you enter and good luck. We need more weapons against poverty and fewer weapons against each other.
Vevo, popularny serwis muzycznych teledysków, ogłosił oficjalną dostępność w Polsce. Usługa, wcześniej niedostępna w tym regionie geograficznym, będzie zawierać video-clipy najpopularniejszych polskich gwiazd jak Brodka, Pezet, a może i nawet David Hasselhoff.
Usługa jest dostępna na Vevo.com i pojawi się również na urządzeniach mobilnych oraz konsoli Xbox Live.
Vevo jest spółką joint venture pomiędzy Sony Music i Universal Music Group, powołaną do istnienia w 2009 roku. Obecnie zawiera tysiące teledysków, występów koncertowych i wywiadów.
Aby przygotować się do tego nawału treści wideo muzyki, proponujemy zjeść solidny posiłek z marynowanych śledzi, pogonić go wódeczką i umieścić na swojej szyji przystojny szalik Wisły-Kraków.
A tak przy okazji, będę w Krakowie na Bitspiration w czerwcu tego roku, jeśli chcesz porozmawiać o Żubrówce, disco polo lub weselnych hulankach.
Vevo, popularny serwis muzycznych teledysków, ogłosił oficjalną dostępność w Polsce. Usługa, wcześniej niedostępna w tym regionie geograficznym, będzie zawierać video-clipy najpopularniejszych polskich gwiazd jak Brodka, Pezet, a może i nawet David Hasselhoff.
Usługa jest dostępna na Vevo.com i pojawi się również na urządzeniach mobilnych oraz konsoli Xbox Live.
Vevo jest spółką joint venture pomiędzy Sony Music i Universal Music Group, powołaną do istnienia w 2009 roku. Obecnie zawiera tysiące teledysków, występów koncertowych i wywiadów.
Aby przygotować się do tego nawału treści wideo muzyki, proponujemy zjeść solidny posiłek z marynowanych śledzi, pogonić go wódeczką i umieścić na swojej szyji przystojny szalik Wisły-Kraków.
A tak przy okazji, będę w Krakowie na Bitspiration w czerwcu tego roku, jeśli chcesz porozmawiać o Żubrówce, disco polo lub weselnych hulankach.
I remember waking up 6am, going downstairs, and firing up my Atari 800XL. The disk labeled Karateka inserted, the drive would grunt a few dozen times and the screen would flash. Suddenly, with barely any warning, the opening titles would appear and then the music would start – six notes to signal a game that was menacing in its simplicity. The story was simply told. Characters stood in darkened rooms. The Shogun aimed a finger at a door and the princess was forced into bondage. You were the Karateka, the hero, your pixelated motion was as fluid as any humans. I marveled at the realism. The whiffed punches sounded like a fist smacking a ham hock. The fight music, the little fanfare of victory, was all I needed for those few hours before school. Karateka was a marvel in an era of cheap gaming. In a world populated by Pac Men, Karateka foretold the future.
Karateka begat Prince of Persia and the creator of both, Jordan Mechner, went on to become one of the greats in the gaming industry. Luckily, he and his clan of programmers haven’t been resting on their laurels. They have just re-released Karateka in its original glory on iOS or Android, allowing us oldsters a brief moment of nostalgia and ensuring the younger generation understands the magic of a game that sparks the imagination.
They’ve also created an updated version of the game but I suspect most of us will want to experience the pixelated splendor of Mechner’s virtual world instead of the modern, cartoony style so popular with mobile gaming recently. Pro tip: watch out for the freaking eagle.
It’s rare to see a company that is so established yet as cutting-edge as Shapeways. The company, founded in 2007 as a spin-off of Royal Philips Electronics, began as a one-off 3D printing service that offered basic plastic items for sale online. Over the years, however, the company has branched off into some amazing materials – steel, ceramic, and even sandstone – and they’ve already been able to support full color printing in 3D.
Now the company is opening a series of facilities in the US and they invited us to their first print shop in Long Island City, New York. In this massive, warehouse-like space, the company has set up a number of acrylic printers as well as a small customer service team. They plan on expanding further, adding more machines to an already impressive array. The goal is to offer 3D print shops close to major US metropolitan areas to reduce wait-times and to spread out the manufacturing process among different factories. The company will have 30 to 50 printers in the LIC location once it is complete.
I spoke with co-founder Peter Weijmarshausen about the Shapeways process, the printers, and what it takes to become a 3D-printing powerhouse in a nascent market. It’s great to see such a cool company expand and it’s even more fun to get to tour the facilities even before the machines, printers, and staff becomes fully operational. Enjoy the tour and tune in next time for another TechCrunch Makers!
TechCrunch Makers is a video series featuring people who make cool stuff. If you’d like to be featured, email us!.
It’s rare to see a company that is so established yet as cutting-edge as Shapeways. The company, founded in 2007 as a spin-off of Royal Philips Electronics, began as a one-off 3D printing service that offered basic plastic items for sale online. Over the years, however, the company has branched off into some amazing materials – steel, ceramic, and even sandstone – and they’ve already been able to support full color printing in 3D.
Now the company is opening a series of facilities in the US and they invited us to their first print shop in Long Island City, New York. In this massive, warehouse-like space, the company has set up a number of acrylic printers as well as a small customer service team. They plan on expanding further, adding more machines to an already impressive array. The goal is to offer 3D print shops close to major US metropolitan areas to reduce wait-times and to spread out the manufacturing process among different factories. The company will have 30 to 50 printers in the LIC location once it is complete.
I spoke with co-founder Peter Weijmarshausen about the Shapeways process, the printers, and what it takes to become a 3D-printing powerhouse in a nascent market. It’s great to see such a cool company expand and it’s even more fun to get to tour the facilities even before the machines, printers, and staff becomes fully operational. Enjoy the tour and tune in next time for another TechCrunch Makers!
TechCrunch Makers is a video series featuring people who make cool stuff. If you’d like to be featured, email us!.
Foursquare for Windows Phone gains Lumia-exclusive AR feature
Burstly Debuts Its Testing-To-Revenue Restructure, Opens SkyRocket Monetization To All
Sprint Ups Its Offer For Outstanding Clearwire Shares To Around $2.5B
Production F-35B performs first vertical takeoff, won’t do it often (video)
Swipely Raises $12M To Plug Marketing Tools Into Retail Payment Systems
3 Mindbending Ways Apple Dodged $13.8B In Taxes
