500px – the site to finally topple Flickr

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

Yahoo hasn’t got much right over the past decade, but one of the best decisions it made was to buy the photo-sharing site Flickr. Alas, like many of the other once-excellent services in its portfolio, Yahoo has allowed Flickr to stagnate to the point where the only reason to keep using the site is the size and talent of its user community.

The Flickr homepage looks like its designers went on strike in 2003, its uploading facilities are basic and it simply doesn’t display your photos in their best light.

For months I’ve been looking for an alternative to Flickr, and at last I think I’ve found it: 500px.

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Bartz wasn’t fired because she’s a woman

Friday, September 9th, 2011

When Carol Bartz was unceremoniously fired from Yahoo earlier this week, one thought popped into my head: please, don’t let people say it’s because she’s a woman.

Thanks at least in part to the intriguing details surrounding her departure — being fired over the phone, returning fire with some very unpolite four-letter words — the issue of her gender has been, thankfully, a non-issue.

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“Just Google me you dumb f**k!”

Monday, February 9th, 2009

These are the words of genteel socialite Courtenay Semel, after a Vegas bouncer questioned her right to be entering Caesar’s Palace given that she had more chemicals in her than a Chinese medal winner.

Aside from her lesbian dalliance with fellow wallflower Lindsay Lohan and her propensity for setting fire to the hair of ex-girlfriends, Ms Semel  is best known as the daughter of former-Yahoo CEO Terry Semel. All of which makes it rather lovely that she thought her best chance of escaping the handcuffs being slapped around her well-pampered wrists was Google, rather than Daddy’s-own Yahoo.

Terry is reportedly now so sick of his darling daughter’s antics that he’s cutting off her trust fund completely. A fact she will no doubt read about on Google news.

On a dreary Monday, Courtenay Semel has cheered me up no end and I can’t help but feel that here, all packaged up in garish garb, is the solution to all Yahoo’s problems. Put Semel Jr in charge and I guarantee Yahoo will be relevant once again.

You want Yahoo employers coming up with wacky off-the-wall ideas again? Let Semel cater the meeting. Want an immediate Flickr hits boost? Let Semel upload her personal photo collection. Ads? Semel will sell ads. She’s a one-woman keyword factory. Just splash her latest debauched antics over the front page and people will be clicking in droves.

So there it is. Yahoo’s saviour. And if you’re still in doubt, follow her advice and Google her.

The 2008 anti-awards

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

Welcome to Stuart Turton’s 2008 anti-awards. These are not voted for by the public, there’s no free booze, swanky trophy or glittering ceremony, and you better believe they’re biased. Here, in no particular order, are all the things that made my 2008 memorable, whether because they filled my head with happy, or just made my teeth itch.

Most embarrassing event of the year

The will they, won’t they, courtship between Microsoft and Yahoo was just about the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen. Yahoo couldn’t resist Microsoft’s bedroom eyes, but didn’t want to appear cheap, while Microsoft made the old lover’s mistake of seeming overeager. Microsoft proposed, Yahoo said no… for a bit, then yes, but it was too late, Microsoft was shunned and not coming back. Yahoo’s share price is now somewhere south of hell, Yang’s out of a job and Steve Ballmer needs a new plan. Worst first date ever.

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Why Yahoo’s 2009 is looking a little limp

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

I remember a time when Yahoo was the king of search. If you wanted to find anything useful in the morass of the web, you turned to the friendly editors at the California-based firm and, likely as not, you’d get what you were looking for.

But then a certain Google went and changed everything and Yahoo has struggled to maintain a foothold ever since.

It still is, by the look of things. Yesterday I attended a Yahoo 2009 preview event, held in modest surroundings in London’s East End, where the firm was showcasing upcoming developments and changes. The key message seemed to be that a) we’re still big in search and b) we’re going to be more ‘open’. In fact I encountered the word ‘open’ in its various forms more than 20 times during the various presentations (I was keeping tally, just in case you were wondering).

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Yahoo SearchMonkey is simply bananas

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

Look, everyone who has ever read any of my PC Pro columns over the years will know that I am something of a Firefox Fanboy, just like anything that makes my web browsing more efficient and effective. Which is probably why I think the whole Yahoo SearchMonkey thing is just simply bananas.

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Google – great for finding Yahoo

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

Google gave journalists a demonstration of its new iPhone apps at Google HQ in London today (think Segways, free food, Pilates rooms and lots of people looking extremely pleased with themselves).

One of the features it was gagging to show off was that the search engine now guesses what you’re going to enter as soon as you start typing in the box.

So, for example, our demo man revealed, I simply enter the letter W and, lo-and-behold, what does Google think you’re most likely to be searching for? www.yahoo.com apparently.

Cue slightly embarrassed silence and (no doubt) a volley of internal emails urging the developers to rethink their strategy on the letter W.