Flickr and Getty Images buy your photos

Getty Images, the world’s largest distributor of still imagery, has teamed up with Flickr, the photo-sharing website, to allow keen photographers around the world the chance to make some money out of their regular, everyday snaps.

Over the past 12 months, Getty has had 30 art directors scouring Flickr’s archive of three billion images to find the ones that will “sell” and have commercial appeal.

So far, the team has identified 100,000 images it would like to add to the “Getty Flickr” collection, which can be accessed by consumers and customers alike via www.gettyimages.com/flickr. There is also a supportive Facebook application called “PictureMe”. This allows Facebook users to attach photos from the collection to their status updates to help them visually express their mood.

The collection contains only 20,000 images at the moment, as the team is still waiting to hear back from the photographers responsible for the other 80,000 cherry-picked photos, or for rights clearance. Flickr users can “opt in” to have their photos considered by the Getty art directors by clicking on a designated tab once logged into their accounts.

The rest is up to Getty, which will then email the Flickr users who have a minimum of five photos which interest them. If they consent, a contract follows and the photographer has to set about ensuring each that any photo that includes a person or piece of property has the appropriate permission from all concerned parties. Once all the formal processes are completed, Getty can go about selling the images.

Five tips to get your pictures noticed

  • Keep your approach original and fresh.
  • Think about whether you will be able to contact any people in your photo again in case you need to obtain their permission. Possibly take down their contact details at the time, just in case.
  • Regionality is always attractive – especially in areas such as the Far East, where the economy is booming. Photos of your travels which show off an area’s culture are very useful to us – this is something which we hope to build upon in the future.
  • Humour always sells and is something to bear in mind.
  • Don’t get into stale patterns. Keep snapping only what matters to you and not what you might think will sell.

Source : Telegraph

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Coming Soon: Facebook Usernames

From the beginning of Facebook, people have used their real names to share and connect with the people they know. This authenticity helps to create a trusted environment because you know the identity of the people and things on Facebook.

The one place, though, where your identity wasn't reflected was in the Web address for your profile or the Facebook Pages you administer. The URL was just a randomly assigned number like "id=592952074." That soon will change.

We're planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you. When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or Pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you. We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.

Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names. Your username will have the same privacy setting as your profile name in Search, and you can always edit your search privacy settings here.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you'll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You'll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

Source : blog.facebook.com

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Artisteer – The Automated Web Designer

Artisteer - Automated Web Designer With Artisteer YOU immediately become a Web design expert, editing and slicing graphics, coding XHTML and CSS, and creating Web Design Templates, joomla templates, drupal themes and wordpress themes - all in minutes, without Photoshop or Dreamweaver, and no technical skills.

Artisteer is the first and only Web design automation product that instantly creates fantastic looking, unique website templates and blog themes.

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Top 10 reasons to use Artisteer

  1. 1. Generate cool Web design ideas.
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  6. 6. Choose and use many included design elements, from backgrounds to photo objects and buttons.
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  10. 10. If you don't have the time, hire your kids to create great looking web design for you.

Trial Version : Download

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MonoDevelop 2.0 Rivals Microsoft Visual Studio

The Mono Project's MonoDevelop is a full IDE for developing C# programs under the Mono runtime. If you’ve worked with Microsoft Visual Studio, you will see many similarities in MonoDevelop and will feel quite comfortable in the Mono environment. If you’re new to MonoDevelop and haven’t worked in Visual Studio, you’ll find that the learning curve is not very steep.

The Mono Project recently released Version 2.0 of MonoDevelop, a full IDE for developing C# programs under the Mono runtime.

The short story is that if you’ve worked with Microsoft Visual Studio, you will see many similarities in MonoDevelop and will feel quite comfortable in the Mono environment. If you’re new to MonoDevelop and haven’t worked in Visual Studio, you’ll find that the learning curve is not very steep.

One important change in Version 2.0 is the use of the MSBuild file format. Since Mono is an open-source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET runtime, it makes sense to support as many .NET tools and formats as possible.

As somebody who has been faced with porting from Visual Studio to Linux and other operating systems, I can say that one of the biggest frustrations is the build process. With Visual Studio’s proprietary build file formats (which are similar to make files, but not at all compatible with the standard make utilities), the support for MSBuild file formats is a welcome addition to MonoDevelop.

Another new feature is the way in which solutions are handled. Previously, MonoDevelop used nested solutions, but now, to be more compatible with Visual Studio’s solution system, MonoDevelop allows you to organize projects as folders within a solution.

In addition to many other improvements—such as per-project policies and opening multiple solutions simultaneously (something you can’t do in Visual Studio)—MonoDevelop now includes a powerful assembly browser. This tool is particularly useful for its ability to let you inspect the contents of an assembly, right down to the IL, including types and member definitions.

Originally, Mono did not support ASP.NET, but it wasn’t long before support was added. Now, as the support has become stronger and more complete, MonoDevelop has been enhanced to offer full support for ASP.NET. For example, the Web projects (which are handled differently than non-Web projects within Visual Studio) are compatible with Visual Studio 2008, including Visual Web Developer. Again, this will make porting much easier.

Of course, MonoDevelop is for Linux, and, as such, it caters to the needs of the typical Linux developer. For example, the editor in MonoDevelop has almost full vi support, including most of the common vi commands.

Although many of us who work primarily in Visual Studio are perfectly comfortable with the Visual Studio editor, I personally know many Linux and Unix developers who are much more at-home with the vi editor. (And I, for one, can attest that once you learn vi, you never forget it.) So even though vi often gets a bad rap as being archaic, it’s fast and efficient when you know what you’re doing. This is a welcome addition to MonoDevelop.

Next, and this is a biggie, MonoDevelop now has full GUI support for debugging, both with MDB (Mono Debugger) and the standard GDB support. You can set breakpoints within the IDE, and step through your code, inspect and evaluate expressions, and more.

In short, MonoDevelop Version 2.0 is a fine tool that is on par with Visual Studio and offers many features beyond those that I’ve listed here. These include  a split-view code editor; incremental search bar (something many of us love once we start using it); and code folding. You can see the whole list of improvements at http://monodevelop.com/Download/MonoDevelop_2.0_Released.

Finally, you’ll want to be aware of one shortcoming: Right now, MonoDevelop is available only on Linux and Mac OS X, not Windows. However, this is temporary; a team within the Mono project is actively working on porting it to Windows. You’ll want to keep an eye on the main page at monodevelop.com for more information.

Source : eweek.com

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E3: Final Fantasy XIV Online Announced for the PlayStation 3 and PC

Final Fantasy XIV Online games are among the most profitable genres of videogames on the market as they can squeeze profit from their loyal fans by using a big number of ways, from subscription fees to unique content or items.

That is why when Square Enix revealed a few years ago Final Fantasy XI Online, the first MMO take on a Final Fantasy game from the company, it became extremely popular. Recently, the Japanese company, in order to heal Sony's wounds after revealing that Final Fantasy XIII would be coming to both its PS3 and its archrival the Xbox 360, revealed Final Fantasy XIV Online.

But even though it will be console exclusive for the PlayStation 3, the online game will also appear on the PC, in order to bank in on the massive number of MMO players using that platform for their online gaming needs.

Set in the magical realm of Eorzea, Final Fantasy XIV promises to take players on a truly spectacular journey, some adventures and quests in order to transform them into heroes. Sadly, no concrete information about gameplay, story or other such things has been offered but the game has already been pegged for a worldwide release in 2010, and it will come with language support for Japanese, English, French and German players, guaranteeing a large fan base.

Out of the staff that is working on the game we find the producer of Final Fantasy XI Hiromichi Tanaka, as well as the director of the same title, Nobuaki Komoto. The art of the game will be handled by Final Fantasy XII Art director Akihiko Yoshida.

Overall, Final Fantasy XIV seems to be a very interesting take on the online JRPG genre, one which, if we take into account the large popularity that its MMO predecessor FF XI has been enjoying, will go on to be a best seller.

As quoted from : softpedia.com

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Yahoo 360 ° Blog Closed!

Yahoo 360 Closed After almost two years without giving any support, Yahoo finally close the social blog-centric . Web Yahoo 360 Degrees will be closed on 13 July 2009. During more than four years, the site was never actually finished out of beta.

In an email to its members, Yahoo convey, "We will officially close Yahoo 360 ° on 13 July 2009, to focus our efforts to create a new profile on Yahoo where you can connect with all people. Therefore, the information necessary to move your Yahoo 360 ° to profile before the new date. After 12 July 2009, the content in your Yahoo 360 ° is no longer accessible. "

Yahoo 360 ° was launched in March 2005. This site does not have to be big in the United States in October 2007 and Yahoo has decided to stop providing support in the process of development.

However, in other countries, especially Vietnam, Yahoo 360 ° is a  most popular portal site for blogging. For this reason, the user's Yahoo 360 ° Vietnam can be migrated from Yahoo 360 to Yahoo 360 plus, a product specifically made for the Vietnamese market which was published since a year ago.

In August Yahoo Mash also close, one of the web site's own social network that also failed to develop.

Yahoo suggest to the user 360 to move the blog soon, or save the profile and download the contacts to the computer. As a form of responsibility Yahoo 360 provides features that their user can migrate to other blog sites.

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Microsoft's New Search Engine Puts Porn in Motion

Your kids may get a bang out of Bing — and that's not a good thing, Internet safety experts warned on Monday.

Bing, Microsoft's new search engine (www.bing.com), went live in the U.S. this weekend, aiming to challenge and possibly unseat industry titan Google.

But bloggers and Internet safety experts quickly discovered that one of Bing's "features" is that it takes only a few clicks for anyone — of any age — to view explicit pornographic videos without even leaving the search engine.

In its bid to beat Google, Microsoft has unveiled a slate of convenient features for Bing, including an "autoplay" tool that lets users preview videos simply by hovering a mouse over them.

That asset may become a liability, because users can get a taste of porn videos on Bing instead of having to go to a smutty Web site — an innovation other search engines have yet to offer.

Technology blogger Loic Le Meur noticed the issue early Monday after testing video search on Bing.

What he found was a cornucopia of pornography that he said transformed the search engine into its very own pornographic Web site.

"You are now on a porn site without leaving Bing. Amazing," Le Meur wrote on his blog.

Bing, like other major search engines, lets users set filtering preferences at one of three levels — strict, moderate or simply off.

Online safety advocates argue that search engines need to do much more to cut off underage access to pornography — because the filters can be circumvented easily with just one click.

Quoted from Foxnews.

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