Flickr, Yahoo Inc’s online photo-sharing site has planned to offer this week, a set of mapping features that makes it easier to find photos based on their location. Flickr will uncover a way for web users to browse photos from tens of millions of geographically located photos loaded to its site, flickr.
A service called “Places”, finds the latest hot-spots on the global map for photo contributions.
A senior director of product management at Flickr told that it was a new way to browse to know what was happening the world over.
Flickr’s service “Places” also allows users to search more than 100,000 geographic places in order to find photos that can get attention. Most of the global cities, countries as well as regions have their own quality pages.
Flickr drives in about 40 million monthly visits and there are about 2 billion photos that are stored on the site over the past three and half years. Almost 2-3 million photos are uploaded daily, categorized by users according to location.
The global map view lets users to see photos by theme. By clicking a category tag lets them to select photos, also giving a glimpse of what other users find interesting.
Places pages for about 100,000 locations including some local information such as weather and location’s current time. The senior director of product management at Flickr said that the site was adding in about 5000 new location pages every week.
The feature is mainly focused to give more local appeal to users, also attract travelers who seek to go beyond photos of landmarks and to places they plan to visit.
Flickr presently offers places in 8 languages- English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, and Chinese.
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Americans think they help the earth when they recycle their electronic gadgets like computers, cell phones etc. But in reality, they contribute to the global trade in electronic trash that pollutes the environment overseas.
The latest figures show that in about 50-75 percent of the 300,000 tons of electronic trash collected for recycling in the U.S each year ends up overseas. Workers from various countries like China, Nigeria use hammers, and their hands to extract metals, and other recyclables exposing them. This endangers workers.
Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network said that it was being recycled in a horrific way. He said that they were preserving own environment while contaminating the rest of the world.
Recycling industry officials say that the gear most likely to be shipped abroad is collected at free recycling drives. Officials say that companies, cities and counties hire the cheapest firms and do not question on what is the outcome of the thrown away equipments.
The problem can get poorer. According to the Environment Protection Agency data almost 2 million tons of electronics discarded by Americans annually goes to landfills. Activists say that states are banning wastes from landfills, which could drive more waste into the recycling stream in the near future.
Many claim that they export items which are used for reuse in poor nations. Recently in Hong Kong customs officials were tipped off by environmentalists for the same reason. They found out containers which had old electronic equipments discarded by Americans.China has banned the import of electronic waste.
John Bekiaris, chief executive of San Francisco-based HMR USA Inc said that people were getting away with exporting electronic waste. People who wanted to dispose their electronics needed to do an inspection of the vendors they used.
Fortune Sky USA, a subsidiary of a Chinese company was shipping containers. Recently General Manager of Fortune Sky told his company thought that it was buying and shipping used computers, not old monitors and was trying to get its money back. Fortune Sky, exports used computers to China, Malaysia and other Asian countries.
The General Manager of Fortune Sky said that there was a huge market for secondhand computers. He continued saying that if the equipments could still be used, then it was good for everybody and it could not cause pollution.
Puckett of Basel Action Network said that reuse was a new excuse, which was a passport to export. Activists were complaining that exporters don’t check the items to make sure they work before sending it overseas. On the other end, at customs the goods don’t get checked.
In 2007, Hong Kong authorities returned in about 80 containers of electronic waste which included 20 from US. The authorities at Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department said it was impossible for them to check every container that was imported to Hong Kong.
In the US, exporting electronic waste isn’t illegal, but US does bar the export of monitors with cathode rays, but authorities in the US lack resources to check most containers.
Electronic makers should take back their products and recycle them. Such laws may help in making products that are easier to recycle and can contain few dangerous materials.
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Preparations are underway as Google plans to bid for wireless range in an auction to be held in U.S in January, but it needs a carrier partner who could help in building a network to use it, analysts said on Friday.
The spectrum called as 700 MHZ band is currently in use for TV broadcasts. It will be freed for other uses such as operating mobile telecommunications network, by 2009.The U.S Federal communications commission is planning to use that spectrum on Jan 24, and bidders must participate by Dec 3.
The company plans to finance the bid alone, without any partners according to the reports in The Wall street Journal.
Google said it would obligate US$4.6 billion to bid for a license, if the FCC set certain conditions. The conditions may include granting people the freedom to choose what network they want to use on phones they buy, and also granting freedom to service providers to connect with those networks.
Google does not intend to make money from operating the network, though: its goal is to get its applications into more and more mobile phone users. It has taken necessary steps, offering some versions of its web applications to iPhone, and to promote its Android it has launched the Open Handset Alliance.
Analysts say that it is too much for Google to build a wireless network alone. But analysts are cynical of Google doing it alone. Guess, the company should look for partners as it does have in the handset market.
Bill Ho, the senior analyst at current analysis said that a carrier partner was essential in building and running a network. He said that the core issue was the operation and maintenance of the new network.
Some analysts suggest that if Google could partner, it could choose Sprint, as the two have already agreed to partner on Wimax services.
Partnering with Google could be a great deal for an experienced operator not yet present in the U.S to enter the market, suggested Dawson, vice president at market analyst Ovum Ltd. “Anything other than search at the minute seems like a move in the wrong direction,” said Dawson.
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The Abu Dhabi goverment’s investment unit has planned to buy an 8.1 percent stake in world’s No. 2 microprocessor maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) for $622 million.
The Mubadala Development Co of UAE received 49 million issued shares on Thursday when the prices closed at $12.70 each, reports came in, on Friday. After compensating the United Arab Emirates investments firm for roughly $14 million in expense AMD received in about $608 million, reports said.
AMD held out a view saying it would use the proceeds for corporate purposes including investments in research and development, product innovations etc.
Mubadala will not receive any board representation as part of the non controlling, minority investment, the company said. AMD shares went up from 8 cents to $12 in the morning trade after rising to a high of $13.36 early in the session.
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It’s the fifth anniversary of Xbox live. But it really makes us hard to believe that its been half a decade after this powerful gaming console was launched, and about half a decade ago we were going out of control on Death match, Moto GP etc.
Microsoft’s online service has gone a long way in half a decade. Xbox 360 claims to be the best gaming console the world has ever witnessed. It gave a hard time for its rivals and publishers to take things seriously for consoles.
On the fifth birthday of this gaming console I would list out some things which I believe are the greatest achievements. This is all about Xbox, yes it is, and I hate taking my readers back to the age old Moto GP anymore.
1. Online gaming:
Xbox Live is a console that is class of its own. Its features like online play are of particular interest among gamers over the internet. Developer support has made sure that majority of titles, feature game modes, and leaderboards, but the experience of online play has always been a different feel.
2. Game Fixes:
Microsoft has done a good thing by providing Xbox game updates. If there’s a problem of a game break, it swiftly gets fixed; thereby making things easy and downloading updates won’t make you wait longer than a minute.
3. Downloadable content:
With the coming of Xbox live, downloadable content got more attention. Downloads aren’t free for all and not everything is worth it. But things like multiplayer maps, crackdown expansion packs have been greatly demonstrated of how developers could inject life into their games over Xbox Live.
4. Voice Chatting:
Getting Live broadband was a controversy in 2002, with most plugging on dial up. But one of the benefits from the network was that each Xbox Live gamer could have a voice chat. Games like Halo and rainbow six have great interactivity and you don’t have to stop playing and then type messages to your group members.
5. Xbox Live:
Of all I must not forget to tell you that Xbox Live Arcade has been no doubt Xbox 360’s greatest online achievement. Releases got quickly sloped up to one or two each week and the quality too has seen a rise. Games like Quake Arena, Sensible World of Soccer have seen themselves on top. Some could see a price drop, but with full Xbox games appearing on Marketplace we could see a slit down the line.
5. Marketplace:
Xbox live Marketplace updates are fast and you can compare it with others like PS3 or Wii. It has been a leader right from day one. New game demos, videos and others have been added every week. Soon we will have days when we could download full-on Xbox games. Five years ago we were going behind downloadable demos and now we have them for granted.
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Apple’s iphone looks like it won’t hit the Chinese markets soon because of technical reasons, reports came in on Wednesday, just after a day the shares in the U.S company went up with the hopes of a deal.
The chief executive of China Mobile Ltd said that his firm was involved in talks of a possible tie up after shares in Apple went up more than 10 percent on Tuesday. China Mobile stocks also saw a jump of 9 percent on Wednesday.
The iphones which are considered to be the hottest gadgets of the year after their roaring success in the U.S and European markets look to be mismatched with the Chinese telecommunication market mainly because of locked SIM cards- I mean to say that the device would not be able to associate with other operator’s network.
The executive said that the SIM cards were not locked, and mentioned that the Chinese business model did not demand revenue sharing with terminal producers and they don’t share revenue. He said that the firm welcomed their approach.
China Unicom, one of the country’s wireless carriers said it had no plans for now to bring the Apple iPhone to China but the idea was open.
“Right now we don’t have plans to introduce Apple’s iPhones in China,” The executive director of China Unicom told the reporters on Wednesday. He also said that they were always ready to discuss about a business opportunity if Apple had presented itself.
The director said that he was unable to judge whether Apple’s iPhone would gain eventually, said that it would need to support text messages in Chinese language to be accepted.
As long as there was a good product they were always ready to talk to find a common platform, the director said. One of the analysts held an opinion saying that it was hasty to start factoring in the launch of iPhone for China, not because of the price the device would demand, but because China mobile would resist setting off from age old practices. The analyst said that it was a niche product for niche users and would be for high-end users.
The analyst added that, unlike in US where Apple operates the iTunes song-download service, in China users might be deprived of content initially.
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Hello and Welcome to Techrepreneur.com, the new home for my thoughts. As you know, I was writing tech related posts at Wordfeed.net and recently closed because I was invited by my brother who runs Blogrepreneur.com, to write for his tech blog here. Since my niche is Technology, I can literally write anywhere and this was after all an invitation from my own brother, there was no way I could refuse.
So, this is my new home and you will find my thoughts continuing here. Subscribe to the RSS feed to stay updated of all activities here.
Good Day
Azeem
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