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This is a game changer:
If you haven’t factored this into your business yet, you’re already on the endangered list!
Tags: Apple, iPadIt’s been a few months since I headed back from the Bay area to Sydney. The following time lapse video sure makes me miss it:
Another Cloud Reel … from Delrious on Vimeo.
Tags: Bay area, Time lapseBack in August I posted a chart from Flickr showing the most popular cameraphones being used to post photos. It’s instructive to compare these charts again some four months later. The iPhone has torn open a huge chunk of white space from other cameraphones. It will, however, be interesting to see how the slight dip in the last week trends.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could take a picture of a book someone is reading in your local coffee shop and before the sugar sinks into your cappucino you have all the data on it and where you can buy it.
Or similarly, what if you could snap a billboard as you hurtle down the 101 (preferably with someone else driving) and before you reach your destination you’ve already pulled up more details on the concert being advertized and bought tickets.
Palo Alto-based SnapTell has the solution. Their image matching technology handles real life photos snapped on the majority of cell phones and parses these against a growing database of products. They are also able to extract text from pictures and use this to drive search.
The company has recently launched an iPhone app – read Jason Kincaid’s review.
Tags: SnapTell
Photos give good newsfeed. No doubt about it.
But tagging them with friends who are not featured in the photo purely as a way to disseminate the photo and whatever you’re pushing through it – that’s spam, baby! Dont do it – you are violating the principles of social media in so many ways it’s just not funny.
Sam Lessin explains the how and gives his opinion:
…people have begun to upload a photo of something they wish to promote (perhaps a candidate or event) and then “tag” the photo with the names of as many influential friends as they can. The tagged photo then shows up in the news feeds of the friends of those influentials as if the photo was of them. After people click on it they find out that, in fact, it is a message in support of some cause.
To be clear, the key here is that the people that the cause promoter has “tagged” in the image are not actually in the image and have not actively lent their support to the message. Rather, the individual supporting the given cause is hijacking a friend’s name to broadcast a message to the friends of their friend. Follow?
This is a really terrific idea for someone looking to broadly push a message. If you tag 20 people into a given photo with something you are promoting you can easily reach thousands of people directly in their news feed with a big splashy image that appears highly relevant.
Sam – this idea sucks. I’m with Sarah Perez on this.
Microsoft has rearchitected its Live.com portal to be more of a social network on which users can pull in data from various sources and interact with their friends. TechCrunch has more coverage:
Users are automatically connected with any friends they have on Windows Live Messenger, which is by far the most popular instant messaging service worldwide (Comscore: Microsoft Messenger has 268 million worldwide users, compared to 116 million for Yahoo and 6 million for Google Talk).
Users are asked to build out their profile, and can also bring in content they create on blogs (or any RSS feeds, Flickr, LinkedIn, Pandora, Photobucket, iLike, Twitter, WordPress and Yelp. When you do something new on those sites, the information flows into Live.com for your friends to see (in a very similar way as FriendFeed, Plaxo and others do today). Eventually, says Microsoft, more than 50 partners will be supported. When users add photos, write reviews, and update their profiles directly on Live.com, that content will be put into the activity stream as well.
The hope, of course, is to get people to hang out a lot more at Live.com. At least those people who use Messenger, since they already have their contacts established. Like Yahoo, Microsoft is going with its strengths, which in their case is instant messaging.
Microsoft’s software plus services strategy has clearly infiltrated Live.com as well as their approach with Office. Live.com users can now access a variety of online services like mail, calendar, photos, online storage, etc., as well as downloaded services that include a mail client, instant messaging, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, the Toolbar and other services. And now it’s also one big social network.
Included in this new roll out is a photo sharing site call Live Photos. ReadWriteWeb has a solid review.
They point out that the slideshow background changes color depending on the dominant color in the photo being displayed at any given time – this is an interesting feature and points to photo sharing services growing their intelligence of what is taking place inphoto as it were.
Furthermore:
You can share your albums with very granular permissions, and also share individual photos. Every photo can be tagged and your visitors can also leave comments.
On the other side of the spectrum, Apple is reported to be working on a search engine. This one’s more of a rumor than substantiated Valley lore at the moment. Again from TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington.
Tags: Apple, Microsoft, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch
Recognizing that photos and videos are how we keep and share the most important moments in our lives, Fox Interactive Media-owned photo and video sharing site Photobucket has taken another step towards making the sharing of memories even more personal and entertaining.
The site’s 46 million unique users worldwide will be able to make use of new album design themes and a new photo and video organizer.
With the themes feature, users can choose from pre-made themes in a range of categories (art, entertainment, holidays, nature, sports etc). Artists will be able to provide pre-made themes for their fans – currently Tokio Hotel has a custom theme on the site. In addition, users can create custom themes of their own.
Themes can be added to both individual and group albums and will be viewable by visitors to an entire album, individual photo or video and when photos or albums are shared. Group albums provide access for multiple people to share and view photos in a single album.
The new organizer allows users to add titles, descriptions and tags to photos and videos in bulk, customize the sort order of media in albums, organize content via drag and drop and search through albums based on descriptions, tag contents or titles.
Tags: Fox Interactive Media, Photobucket
Mashable alerted us to Flickr’s new front page feature: a giant panda spewing a feed of popularly rated pictures.
There seems to be general uncertainty as to why the panda is vomiting pictures, but one thing’s for certain – this new “explore” feature is getting attention.
Tags: FlickrI’ve recently joined Burlingame, CA-headquartered connected photography company Piclinq as CEO.
We are currently building up our design and innovation team, which is pinging the market to ascertain what motivates them with respect to photography.
It is a fascinating journey – people exude the most incredible level of passion in and around photograghy, and what is most fascinating is how multi-faceted this passion can be in its manifestation.
The most interesting and thoughtful response has come from Sydneysider Ben Haylock. I’ve set out his thoughts in full below:
Image: Copyright Ben Haylock.
Randal Leeb-du Toit asked
quick poll: what do you do with your photos
I replied
take them, share them, Flickr them. No retouching as I have zero skills. I collect fine art photos and look at them every day.
That’s simplifying things down to 140 characters or less.
Rand followed up
what motivates each of the 3 actions – take, share, Flickr…
Had to stop and think about that.
Image: Copyright Ben Haylock.
I take to reinforce memories, not to create them. I don’t live the event through the viewfinder, I live in the event with the viewfinder. Kress and Van Leeuwen would probably disagree. Baudrillard would have laughed.
Share.
I love to share the image, and the story that goes with it, with others: usually friends and family. Nearly everyone says that, but it’s not a motivation per se. My motivation to share is to learn more about the art of photography by doing, then sharing, then listening.
Flickr.
Honestly, I have tried many, many image sharing platforms in the last 10+ years. Flickr is the best fit for me. So, what’s the motivation to Flickr? Again, it’s to share and to learn. I have a few snapshots in Lachlan Hardy’s awesome group for all our amateur chef-fests. I put images up so my father, living in a very, very remote location can see his granddaughter’s experiences.
And Flickring is fun. Just honest to goodness eyecandy fun.
———————
Way to go, Ben.
Tags: Piclinq
I first saw an early demo of Microsoft’s Photosynthe at the inaugural Web 2.0 Summit in 2006 and wholeheartedly joined in the standing ovation.
Microsoft has now launched the consumer version, which comes with a healthy 20Gb of online storage.
One key snag however…it’s not cross platform. FAIL.
More coverage via Robert Scoble.
Tags: Microsoft, Photosynthe