Social media sites like Facebook have become a central part of the lives of many families, letting them keep tabs on each other’s lives through pictures. But they’re not for everyone. My mom and dad, who live in the U.S., have no interest in joining Facebook. They are okay with email, and my dad will even video Skype if his wife, my stepmom (a computer scientist, as it happens), sorts it out for… → Read More
Olapic, a NYC-based startup which allows publishers and brands a way to collect photos from their fans for use on their own websites, has closed a $1 million seed round. Investors include Bonobos, Warby Parker, and Geeklist backer Great Oaks Venture Capital, as well as Brad Harrison Ventures, Columbia University’s Lang Fund, and several other angel investors.
The company has already worked with… → Read More
Photos save our memories, yet fumbling to upload them can cut those moments short. But Flock lets you snap and forget, and then later collects photos from you and friends you were with into privately shared albums. Flock for iOS combines brilliant social design with the underutilized photo location API to simplify sharing. Instead of clumsily selecting privacy settings, it suggests you share with… → Read More
PicPlum, the Y Combinator-backed photo-sharing and printing startup that debuted last summer, is rolling out a major upgrade today. The focus, for the most part, has been on an improved user experience, offering everything from minor tweaks like address autocompletion, to new product offerings like more print sizes. But as a regular PicPlum user, I’m more excited about what they’re working on… → Read More
Hipstamatic has made a successful business out of its popular (and paid) iPhone camera appand the many features it has incorporated to enhance that photo experience: four million active monthly users and 50 million photos snapped through it each month. Now the company behind it, Synthetic, is looking to build on that foundation and create more engagement among the existing Hipstamatic community… → Read More
The lowly photo slideshow is not dead yet, or at least that’s the hope of the team at Tel Aviv-based EasyHi, which is debuting its new product Slide.ly today, backed by $1 million in seed funding. The company aims to pick up where Slide.com (acquired by Google in 2010) left off. It’s building a slideshow creation tool for the new age, using sources like Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Pickplz, and… → Read More
1000Memories, the startup that’s helping consumers get their old-fashioned printed photos online, is bringing its ShoeBox mobile application to the Android platform today, while also rolling out a completely revamped version of its iOS app. Both apps allow you to scan your old photographs simply by snapping a photo of them using your smartphone’s camera. Once scanned, the photos can be organized… → Read More
If you’ve ever scoffed at Flickr, felt that photo sharing and storage websites hold your photos hostage, associated photos on the Web with platform lock-in, then you’ve already started to get a sense of why Jaisen Mathai left Yahoo last year to build OpenPhoto. Appalled by having to watch Yahoo let an awesome startup/service like Flickr go to seed, (“I was extremely frustrated by the lack of… → Read More
Sincerely, the startup behind a range of photo-printing and greeting card mobile apps, including Postagram, PopBooth, Sincerely Ink and Dotti, is today rolling out a major update to its Postagram product which will introduce post office tracking for its cards as well as scannable QR codes – which the company is cleverly not planning to refer to as “QR codes” (too geeky) in its communications… → Read More
500px, the photo sharing website that has become the new darling of the photo buff set, today rolled out a new $19.95/year ‘Plus’ membership plan, putting it more squarely in competition with Flickr.
Up until now, 500px’s premium offering has catered mostly to the “power user” and professional photographer set, with a $49.95/year “Awesome” plan offering unlimited uploads along with a… → Read More
The world of digital photography had a shot in the arm yesterday when Facebook picked up Instagram for $1 billion, and it’s perhaps a sign of how all players in that space now need to up their game. Today brings news of a development from Photobucket, the online photo site that scored a huge deal last year when Twitter announced that it would power its image service. Photobucket has signed a deal… → Read More
Remember Batch, the photo-sharing app that lets you share iPhone photos on Facebook, Twitter, and via email? Wait, before you roll your eyes - photo-sharing app? Sigh… – let me stick up for Batch: it’s one of the good ones. But today’s update makes Batch even better than before because it addresses one of the major pain points I had in using the app – something that I’ll admit led me to drop it… → Read More
Trey Ratcliff, the travel photographer known for popularizing HDR (high dynamic range) photo techniques online through his very popular Stuck In Customs blog and more recently his own apps and Google+ page, hosted a photowalk in his hometown of Austin, Texas this week during the South By Southwest Interactive conference. Watch him talk to TechCrunch TV about his one piece of advice for casual… → Read More
Popset, a new mobile app from the current Winter 2012 batch of Y Combinator startups, is a way for groups of friends to privately share photos. Oh what, you’ve heard that one before? Yes, it’s true – mobile photo-sharing is a crowded space. However, there hasn’t been a de facto leader established in the particular category Popset is after: sharing photos in private groups, easy photo album… → Read More
Photo startup Snapjoy launched a clever promotional scheme this afternoon to lure users over from Flickr. And it succeeded — perhaps too well.
The Y Combinator-backed company aims to be an online repository where users can store all their photos, while also sharing them on a limited basis. That already made Snapjoy a competitor, of sorts, to older photo sites like (Yahoo-owned) Flickr and… → Read More
Remember when Microsoft rolled out Photo Fuse, the crazy feature in its Windows Live Photos product that let you swap people’s heads around in in your photos order to get the perfect shot? Well, now there’s an app that does the same thing, and it’s not from Microsoft. It’s from an Israeli-based startup called Macadamia Apps, makers of the new app GroupShot. And it’s live now in the App Store. → Read More
Lightbox, the beautifully designed social photo app for Android backed by $1.2 million in seed funding from Index, Accel, SV Angel, 500 Startups, and others, is today launching a revamped web interface that’s like a lazy man’s Tumblr. As with the hot blogging startup Tumblr, the idea with Lightbox’s new photo journal feature is to provide a stream of updates others can follow, share, like and… → Read More
Does the world need another photo-sharing app? That is the question John Biggs and I debate in this episode of Fly or Die (watch the video above). We take a look at one of the latest photo apps to hit iTunes, Batch, which launched ten days ago and is currently one of the Top 50 photo apps for the iPhone (currently at No. 48). The mobile app is a new product from DailyBooth, whose CEO Brian… → Read More
Toronto-based photography community 500px, the Flickr alternative which recently raised $525,000 in Series A, is now available on the iPad in app format. The new app includes all the feeds you would find on the site, including the feeds for Popular, Editor’s Choice, Upcoming and Fresh photos, plus access to your own photos and those belonging to your friends, the ability to like, favorite and… → Read More
Earlier this month, Australian-based Mooter Media took in $15 million from San Francisco investment firm La Jolla Cove Investors, Inc. in order to launch a new social photography platform. The platform, called ImageSocial, will be built with technical development partner Hot Shot Media and, unlike traditional photo-sharing networks, will also include a gaming element.
Instead of just friending… → Read More
Several iPhone app developers have teamed up to launch PhotoAppLink, a new open source initiative that aims to simplify photo editing by tying multiple photo-editing apps together.
As you know, there are an incredible number of photo editing apps in iTunes today, and often, each especially excels in one particular area. For example, converting photos to black and white, cropping, compositing or… → Read More
So long, Twezr, it’s been fun. The mobile social contacts application Twezr is being shut down after having a fairly well-received launch back in November 2010. The app, for those unaware, was based on a great idea: it was a social address book. It aggregated all the activity from your phone’s contacts (e.g., phone calls, SMS’s, voicemails) alongside their social networking activity (e.g. → Read More
Good news for the few Disney Mobile subscribers out there. Looks like you’ll be getting some new features later this year. Some sound pretty useful actually, like a unique calendaring service that will allow parents to keep a web-based calendar that can push event alerts to family phones via SMS. Another service called Scout will also be debuting this year on Disney Mobile. Scout will use… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
San Francisco
