Flickr, a popular online photo-sharing site owned by Yahoo Inc., is teaming up with Getty Images to offer shutterbugs a chance to turn their hobby into a moneymaking endeavor.
Under a partnership announced this week, Getty’s editors will peruse Flickr to find pictures that may appeal to newspapers, magazines, book publishers, advertising agencies and other businesses.
Getty will then contact photographers who posted shots with sales potential to see if they’re interested in licensing the pictures. Any ensuing sales will be split between Getty and the participating photographers.
The arrangement marks the latest example of how the Web is creating opportunities for people outside the traditional media industry to get paid for their photographic, writing or reporting skills. The phenomenon is sometimes known as “citizen journalism.”
Cost of AOL dial-up plan increasing: If you’re still paying for AOL, your bill may go up 20 percent this month.
AOL’s cheapest dial-up Internet access plan is increasing from $9.99 to $11.99 to offset costs of round-the-clock help by telephone. Subscribers can keep the $9.99 rate if they forgo full phone support, but they must actively change their plans to avoid an automatic price increase.
Millions of AOL users have already ditched subscription plans entirely now that the company is giving away free AOL.com e-mail accounts and other features as part of a push to generate more revenue from its free, ad-supported Web sites.
AOL’s parent company, Time Warner Inc., is even working on splitting its access and advertising businesses, a move that could lead to the sale of one or both.
As of March 31, AOL had 8.7 million U.S. subscribers for Internet access, fewer than a third of its peak of 26.7 million in 2002. AOL no longer breaks down subscribers by pricing plan, though it said most are on a $25.90 premium plan, which remains unchanged.
The low-end plan offers either unlimited dial-up access with basic security software, or 10 hours of dial-up with additional security services.
Even with the price increase, AOL’s plans are still competitive. EarthLink Inc.’s cheapest dial-up plan, at $12.50 a month, requires a year of prepayment, while United Online Inc.’s Juno and NetZero $9.95 services charge for phone help — Juno also requires a year’s commitment.
Google adds log-off alert to Gmail: One of the benefits of Web-based e-mail is the ability to log on from just about anywhere — at home, at work, from a friend’s house, a mobile device or even a public library or cybercafe.
But what if you forget to log off? Someone else who encounters an active session not only can read your personal correspondences, but they also can use that account to grab your passwords from many online services that offer to send reminders via e-mail.
Google Inc.’s Gmail service is trying to address that by letting you know if you’re still logged on elsewhere and giving you a chance to disconnect remotely.
At the bottom of a Gmail inbox is a small notice of other active sessions. The new feature, being rolled out to users in waves, also offers some information on the time and location of recent Gmail activities.
The notification is bound to be useful, though it’s by no means foolproof. You have to be log on somewhere to learn of other active sessions, and you have to look carefully for that notice. And if you have chosen to save your password on the other computer, someone else can simply log back on unless you change it.
But the feature does offer an extra level of comfort.
“Usually I remember to sign out, but every once in a while I wonder if I really did,” Gmail engineer Erwin D’Souza wrote on a company blog. “Now I no longer have to wonder.”
Other major Web e-mail providers — Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.’s Hotmail, Time Warner Inc.’s AOL — also allow simultaneous sessions, but they do not provide similar notice or ability to remotely log off. However, AOL does have a setting forcing automatic logoff after as little as 30 minutes of inactivity. Microsoft said Hotmail will ask for a password if the session remains idle for too long.
Check DNA and more at Wikipedia: Researchers plan to create a library of human genetics, with entries on the workings of individual genes, and make it available for anyone in Wikipedia rather than in an obscure academic format.
Authors of the “gene wiki” say they have created 7,500 Wikipedia entries on different genes and are editing another 650 existing entries.
The group outlined its aims this week in a paper published on the Public Library of Science’s online journal, PLoS Biology. The eight authors are from the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation in San Diego, San Diego State University and Washington University in St. Louis.
Virtually anyone can edit an entry on Wikipedia, the mammoth Internet encyclopedia founded in 2001 and built by volunteer contributors. That could mean the gene wiki will be overwritten — with errors — by someone else who comes along.
Indeed, the scientists considered an alternative, Citizendium, whose volunteer contributors are expected to provide their real names. Citizendium asks experts in given fields to check articles for accuracy. But ultimately, the gene wiki researchers said, they chose Wikipedia because it is highly popular and the site’s volunteer editors tend to quickly correct inaccuracies.
From the Associated Press
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