By Staff Writer –

I spent hours preparing a proposal, but the file size was too big. I hate when that happens! Thankfully, my friend invited me to Dropbox, so I could share a folder containing the proposal. I signed up and got 2 gb worth of free space, with the option to upgrade for a fee. The more people I invite, the more space Dropbox gives me.

After I uploaded my proposal, I thought about the safety of it. After all, if a hacker decides to hack into the cloud or untrustworthy employees get their hands on confidential information, then I’m screwed. You have to weigh the good with the bad. Dropbox will allow you to share large files with your friends and you can access your files from any computer by using an Internet browser. Basically, don’t upload any data that would destroy your life (something on par with the John Edward sex tapes).

Other services on a cloud include, Flickr, Box.net, Evernote, and Google Docs. Smartplanet points out that we are headed towards the clouds:

Since Willie Sutton robbers have gone where the money was. Today money is in the data. Your data. I know Mark Twain’s adage about putting all your eggs in one basket and watching that basket. It’s one reason many users are reluctant to make the switch.

But your eggs aren’t in one basket anyway. Much of your life is already on the Web, being cached and recached in 10,000 different places. I’m more popular online than I ever was in real life.

Another thing holding up the cloud is the poor state of U.S. broadband. The coming FCC broadband plan is unlikely to solve this, because the agency is unwilling to demand open access or wholesaling of phone and cable broadband links.

Dropbox has put me on cloud nine is a post from: TechStartups.com

I hate paper.

OK, not really. I enjoy writing and sketching in my notebook but even that’s not totally analog: I use a LiveScribe Pulse smartpen so I always have a digital copy.

Everything else, I drop into my trusty HP all-in-one printer/scanner/julienne fries maker, scan the documents I need to keep, then store them on my hard drive or in Evernote.

So, you can imagine my glee when the Doxie scanner made its presence known at this year’s CES (That is, after I got over the fact that it has little pink hearts all over it…)

Doxie scans your documents and images and uploads to your favorite cloud storage location including Google Docs, Evernote, Scribd, Backpack, Acrobat.com and Flickr. Doxie also offers their own PDF hosting service, which works with email, chat and Twitter.

Just as nice is that it works with my Mac (and with your Windows machine, too.). All you need is a bus-powered USB port and a mouse to push the “scan” button. (Which also has a little pink heart on it. What’s up with that?)

As much as I love the concept, I already have two scanners in my office. Adding a third for $129 may not sit well with my Money Manager.

But don’t let my personal red tape stop you – you can get yours in February.

[Doxie]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Doxie Uploads Scanned Documents and Photos Right To The Cloud is a post from: TechStartups.com

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Pegshot Lets You Share Videos and Photos Instantly is a post from: TechStartups.com

In Flickr’s App Garden it must be mating season as they are crushing hard on mobile apps today in their blog.

Mobile’s now arrived, I guess. And it is so hot that Flickr is okay with public displays of affection now.

That, my friends, is awesome.

Flickr sits on mountains of EXIF meta data from images and right now the most important set is the rise of mobile devices shuttering away and uploading to the photo service.

For years if you were shooting mobile images and wanted to get them on Flickr the easiest way was to send them as an email attachment. Rudementary, but a very effective way of getting it done with low overhead . . . like apps.

The mobile apps come in handy to access phone features and override them. For instance if you are on a Windows Mobile phone and send an image it will be capped at a certain file size – even if you have an unlimited data plan – and most apps allow you to send full size images.

Another nice feature of the mobile apps is that many come with an ability to do some post work on the photos. It might be blur reduction, lighting, exposure, b&w conversion, etc. That was never going to happen with Treo 650 back in the day.

What might help Flickr more in these PDA moments with mobile would be to organize a tour of the App Garden. Because right now it is like a monsoon of slightly curated applications that are desktop and mobile commingled together. Not that cross pollination should be a concern but being able to find a certain variety of app without having to sift all the species could help out on the uptake.

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Flickr PDA for Mobile is a post from: TechStartups.com

Like most people, my budget for stock images is pretty small. Unlike Kris, I don’t shoot my own stock photos, either. I just can’t be bothered to carry an SLR along with all my other gear.

So, I search the internets for Creative Commons-licensed photos, but with only moderate success. Flickr’s search tools provide the ability to limit your search to CC-licensed photos, but the results aren’t always great as you’re limited to user-tagging.

Google Image Search works pretty well but it doesn’t enable the ability to limit your search to CC-licensed images. Many times I’ll find the “perfect” image only to discover that it has a commercial license or worse, no license information at all.

Here comes sprixi to make your day (and mine) a lot easier.

Sprixi provides a simple, elegant search interface for finding CC-licensed images for use in your projects. Here is my search for “dogs”.

Here is the search results page. The photos are large enough to see some detail, but not too large that you have to frequently move to the next page. Also note that all the pictures are relatively accurate. That’s because sprixi search enables people to rate the quality of the search results.

Once you’ve found the image you want to use, click Use on the right and the search results slide to the left, revealing licensing terms, a download URL and even a link to the original image. Select the size you’d like to use and you’re ready to go.

Sprixi pulls images from flickr, OpenClipArt.org – and you. Everyone is encouraged to upload their images to sprixi.

The service is free to use and only requires registration if you want to upload your own photos directly to sprixi. [sprixi]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Find Quality Free Images with Sprixi is a post from: TechStartups.com

I LOVE playing with the Camerabag app. It’s my favorite app. It takes an ordinary picture and turns it into something magical looking. As it turns out, it’s a great way to kill time on the subway, at home, or anywhere.

This is a picture of an intersection in Williamsburg that has gone through the Camerabag filters. This picture is my favorite — I’m with the host of a National Geographic documentary that is slated to air in the spring.

The Framed app sounded cheesy, but I decided to download it anyway. It has its endearing qualities. I put myself on a taxi.

I also tried Photoshop app called PS Mobile. I used it to produce the photo shown in this blog post. I used the sketch feature by simply tapping my finger on the screen.

What I like about Gorillacam is that it lets you use the whole screen to take pictures. How many times have people hit the wrong button when you ask them to take a picture of you with your iPhone? I find myself saying to them: “No, no, no, no. Take the picture with the fake button, not the real one.” 

Some of the apps I mentioned are free. I just bought Artist’s Touch for $4.99. Clearly, I’m not a natural at this one. The app lets your fingers control the brush strokes. It will take some time to master this app to make it worth my money. I uploaded the shameful masterpiece to Twitter.

James Sims tweeted:

@boonspoon I’ve been using the iPhone app “Brushes” but haven’t mastered it. The New Yorker cover got me inspired http://bit.ly/8kOI5V

I want to try out Brushes now, but don’t want to spend another $4.99 on an app I probably won’t master.

And if you’re wondering where to store everything, try  Phanfare’s Photon to share all your fabulous photos and store them on the cloud. And of course there’s the Flickr app. The Tumblr app. And the Knocking Pic app. And I can keep going.

CameraFlash has come in handy. Sometimes the photos look really washed out. It works best when the photo wasn’t taken in complete darkness.

There’s no question about it. iPhone apps have definitely changed our lives. In any case, there’s probably “an app for that!”

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Top iPhone Photo Apps That Will Make Your Pictures Pretty is a post from: TechStartups.com

While it’s nice for a bride and groom to have portraits and perhaps professionally shot candids from their wedding, some of the best photos come from the guests.

After all, your professional photographer can’t be everywhere during the festivities and your friends and family are there to help you celebrate your big day – and capture the moments in pixels.

Startup Olapic wants to make sure that you and your guests share in all those candid moments.


Here’s how it works: in advance of the big day, simply visit olapic.com and create a free account, then upload the email addresses of your guests. Olapic will reach out to the guests on your behalf up until the wedding, reminding them to bring their cameras. After the event, the site will remind them to upload their photos for all the attendees to share.

The photos are always private – until you no longer want them to be. Newlyweds can then make their photos public on Olapic or selectively upload them to flickr, Picasa or Facebook. Couples can also download photos in bulk – a major time saver over downloading individual photos to your computer.

The first 100 photos are free. After that, Olapic charges $99 for the first year of unlimited storage, then $25 for each additional year. Couples also receive 100 high-quality reminder cards to send to guests.

The concept of the site, including all the thought put into privacy controls, storage, reminders, guest interaction – and pricing – is great. The one concern I have with this model is that it puts guests in an awkward position of having to take the time to upload photos.

When you consider that most digital cameras are capturing images at 5 megapixels and above and that everyone does not have a fiber optic connection to their home, that means the upload process for your budding wedding photographers is S-L-O-W and inconvenient.

It also changes the fun, casual nature of candid photography into a task that your guests become expected to complete througout the day of the wedding.

I’m interested to see the success of this startup. If it works, we’ll soon see competitors – and possibly the addition of video sharing.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Olapic Helps You Capture Your Wedding Day in Photos – From Your Guests is a post from: TechStartups.com

Now that we’ve gone all digital with our photos and our life, we want to be able to physically show off our online life to our friends when they come over. That’s what New York based start-up, Pixable, is banking on.

The online photo company is different than KodakGallery and Shutterfly because it lets you use Facebook connect to upload your friends’ information and pictures all at once, so you can decide which ones you want to print. With $350,000 in backing, Pixable is relatively new. After a soft launch in July, the company debuted in October. So far, 5,000 albums have already been created.

The Calendar Creator program will put those birthday reminders where they belong. And yes, “unfriend” is the word of the year for good reason. Good thing Pixable lets you pick and choose which friends make the cut into your calendar.

So wait, if you’re friends with me on Facebook, you can make calendar of Boonsri? Privacy, please! The company argues that it’s a web-wide privacy issue. If anyone is friends with you, they can print your photos as long as they have a printer!

Monetizing on photos seems to be a largely untapped market. Flickr just partnered with HP’s Snapfish to let people have creative power over their photos. The joint venture will let people make calendars, prints, and books. At the moment, you can only make stuff from your own Flickr account.

It’s all about capturing the moment online, and then turning them into something real. The same desire to preserve memories applies to the written word as it does to photos. Tweetbookz.com lets you turn your tweets into a book, hoping that it can turn your 140 characters into poetry. Good luck with that.

Pixable Lets You Make Personal Calendars From Facebook is a post from: TechStartups.com

When it arrived, I was quite pleased with how easy it was to connect to my home network over wifi (802.11g) and to my HDTV. Of course, it didn’t offer HD content at the time, but it had an HDMI connector and both companies (Roku and Netflix) promised HD capabilities over time.

Sure enough, as the Netflix streaming catalog expanded, HD playback capability arrived on the Roku box a number of months later. Since then, Roku has added access to Amazon’s Video on Demand and MLB.TV – both are premium content that require suitable account setup on both services.

Today, Roku has announced even more improvements and updates with the launch of The Roku Channel Store, a selection of internet video and audio content channels that can be played on your Roku, Roku SD and Roku HD-XR set top box.

The “store” moniker is a bit of a misnomer because as of right now, all of the new channels are free. They include: Pandora, Facebook Photos, Revision3, Mediafly, TWiT, blip.tv, flickr, FrameChannel, Motionbox and MobileTribe. A complete list of channels can be found here.

To me, the best tidbit of information in today’s announcement is the open accessibility for channel creators:

“To create a channel for the Roku Channel Store, a developer creates an application using Roku’s free software developer kit. This SDK is available free upon request by emailing partners@roku.com.“

Wait – did Boxee just get a competitor? Sort of.

Roku owners can’t add their own channels via RSS feeds, nor use bittorrent to download media files, nor does one have to pay for Boxee. However, considering that you still need suitable computer hardware to run Boxee, I’d call it about even. Actually, no – it’s not even since a Roku player with HD capability only costs $99 – far less than a suitable machine required for Boxee.

IPTV is finally starting to heat up. It’s about time. This is going to be fun.

Official Press Release:

Roku Launches Open Platform for Delivery of Content to the TV; Announces First 10 New Channels

Pandora, Facebook Photos, Revision3, Mediafly, TWiT, blip.tv, Flickr, FrameChannel, Motionbox and MobileTribe all now available on the Roku player

Saratoga, Calif. – November 23, 2009 – Roku, Inc., maker of the popular and award-winning family of Roku players, announced today the Roku Channel Store and the first 10 free channels for Roku customers to enjoy on their TVs. From internet radio to video podcasts, professional web content to photo sharing and personal videos, the Roku Channel Store provides an open platform for delivering quality content to the TV. New channels now available for customers to add today to their Roku experience via the Roku Channel Store include: Pandora, Facebook Photos, Revision3, Mediafly, TWiT, blip.tv, Flickr, FrameChannel, Motionbox and MobileTribe. For the complete list of channels, specific channel descriptions and features please go to http://www.roku.com/roku-channel-store.

These first 10 channels are just the beginning for Roku. Many other developers are working on Roku Channels now, and Roku expects additional developers to adopt the Roku platform over time. New channels will appear in the Roku Channel Store automatically as they become available.

The Roku Channel Store represents an opportunity for content owners and publishers to reach an already large and growing audience of Roku customers. By creating an open platform for delivery to the television over the Internet, Roku has leveled the playing field for content owners.
“The Roku Channel Store turns the Roku player into the world’s first open platform designed specifically for the TV,” Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku, Inc said. “Now content producers and distributors – from single person shops to billion dollar corporations – can deliver their content directly to consumers without having to go exclusively through cable operators, satellite networks or TV affiliates.”
To create a channel for the Roku Channel Store, a developer creates an application using Roku’s free software developer kit. This SDK is available free upon request by emailing partners@roku.com.

All Roku players, including the Roku SD, Roku HD and Roku HD-XR models, are compatible with the Roku Channel Store. The new channels are in addition to the existing Roku channels already available: Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Video On Demand and MLB.TV.

Pricing and availability

The Roku Channel Store will be delivered as an automatic and free upgrade to all existing Roku customers over the course of the next two weeks. New customers will automatically be upgraded when they first install their Roku player. To browse and use the Roku Channel Store, customers will be prompted to create a Roku account.

First introduced in May 2008, and updated regularly with free software updates, the Roku player family provides the easiest, most affordable and reliable way for hundreds of thousands of Roku customers to watch their favorite movies, TV shows and sporting events instantly on their TV. All three Roku players are available immediately at http://www.roku.com starting at $79.99 and include free shipping for a limited time.

About Roku, Inc.

Roku is a market leader in innovative applications for digital media, opening up a new world of entertainment to the TV. Through its work in both software and hardware, the company develops and sells consumer products that give customers the ability to take charge over their entertainment choices, combining high-value content and immediate access to that content at a low price. Its products include: The family of Roku players and the SoundBridge Internet radio line. Roku is privately held and based in Saratoga, Calif. For more information on the company and its products, visit: http://www.roku.com.

Press Contact:
Brian Jaquet Roku, Inc.
408.849.4117 (office)
415.235.4844 (cell)
brian@roku.com
Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.
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DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Roku Announces The Channel Store, Developer Access – and Boxee Competitor? is a post from: TechStartups.com

It’s time to drag Fotomoto back onto the stage after months of maturing and talk about selling photos online. More specifically, Fotomoto’s solution to facilitate the selling of digital photos as prints to anyone that wants to buy them.

A single line of Javascript code is the solution that Fotomoto offers to publisher as the solution to allow them to sell photos online. This single line of code has a powerful algorithm running behind it to sort out the images that are on the publishers site and determine which is a photo that should be for sale. That way the publisher’s site logo or other graphic headings don’t end up for sale.

Fotomoto adds a few text links below the salable photo that are connected to a shopping cart. This shopping cart opens in a modal box on the publisher’s site. Developers take note of how to create a cohesive user experience by allowing shoppers to stay onsite to complete the purchase process.

When a publisher is logged in to Fotomoto they have the ability to set pricing for photos based on the size and type of item being printed. There are other options that you would expect in a photo sharing site and others that you might not. Like the ability to track the sales of prints and a mini-CRM tool that allows the publisher to communicate with a buyer. This introduction of community into a sales platform is a welcome addition to the rather spartan offerings photo sites. Ahem, Flickr.

Fotomoto is solving a problem that professional photographers have had for a long time – how to effectively capitalize on a digital marketplace. With the advent of cheaper, better cameras there is finally a critical mass of photographers, both professional and amateur. And with a larger source of photos worthy of being printed, expect more sites like Fotomoto to popup or the long standing photo sharing sites to step up with their own plugins to allow anyone to sell photos online.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Sell Photos Online With Fotomoto is a post from: TechStartups.com

My brother mentioned a site to me that I had not heard of prior to today called Search3.

Very simply it allows you to initiate a single search and display results from the three major search engines: Google, Bing, and Yahoo! It also lets you swap out twitter and eBay to your search results if you would prefer.

The idea of combining search results from multiple providers isn’t really new to the web, but what I like about Search3 is that they do it very simply and elegantly.

You add your search term to the input box and your results are organized below the search into three columns with the results from the selected search providers.

The display provides a very clear representation of the different results that can be available across each search engine, which sometimes allows you to see items you may have never noticed if you’re very loyal to a single search provider.

The image search function is very nice as well. Search3 allows you to do a single search for images across Google, Bing, Yahoo! and flickr. I really like this type of display. It would be nice if I could adjust the display size of the thumbnails though to get more results visible on the page. Another nice feature would be specify other sites I’d like to search for images if desired.

Search3 is Putting Search Back Together is a post from: TechStartups.com