Archives

colorless: getting group photo sharing… or not

Last night paging through Zite (my new favorite iPad application), I came across a TechCrunch article on Color‘s launch. Color uses your smartphone (iOS or Android) to take geotagged photos and share them with whomever is very nearby right now.  The use case mentioned is that of being in a restaurant and taking a a photo with Color, then seeing all the other photos that are being taken with Color right now, right there, in that restaurant.

There’s a gap in group photo sharing that needs to be filled by someone, something on the order of this: I’m at an event with 5 of my friends and we’re all taking photos of this event and we all want to see in one place all of those photos in a meaningful, usable manner.  What Color gets right here is the elasticity of getting the photos from smartphones in your location near you right now and the apparent ease with which these photos are shared.  Cool.

What Color gets wrong here (among other things) is that it’s all dependent on being in the land of early adopters and start-up/dot.com/web2.0/insert-silly-name-here.  This may work and be very awesome in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York City or SXSW (where, oddly, they did not launch), but it’s likely not going to get much traction out here in Middle America (or either, apparently, in England outside of London).

I live in Colorado Spring, Colorado, which has a population of ~400k people, is the seat of the most populous county in Colorado, whose primary industries includes aerospace, homeland security, information technology, biotechnology and national sports governing bodies (an Olympics training center is here).  We also house Colorado College, a private liberal arts school, and the University of Colorado.  We are not the middle of nowhere, but we have nowhere near the adoption rate on sites like Foursquare, Gowalla or Twitter that San Francisco/Silicon Valley does. Facebook does rather well here.  I already know that firing up Color here will net me the same thing it netted Robert Scoble in Half Moon Bay – nothing.  And it may well be a long time before 1 other person here starts using it – and then we’d be lucky to find each other in the same place here at the same time, since the Springs is pretty large.

Color just received $41 million in VC funding, which is a phenomenal sum.  What truly irks me about that — beyond that this is likely more than Flickr ever got from Yahoo!, a rant for later — is how much money is being given to a product that will likely only have meaningful adoption in densely populated, high tech communities, has no FAQ to speak of (see the reviews it’s getting in the Apple Store about apparent non-ease of use), and ultimately does not solve the group photo sharing problem.  Also, it’s dependent on solely users with iOS or Android (so, forget about your friends using point and shoots or DSLRs). That’s a very narrow field for 41 million, no?

Color’s got a neat concept in locating the serendipitous – whatever happens to be nearby you right now – which is valuable in its own right and something Flickr meant to do (with the money they are not getting from Yahoo!), but it’s still not providing a central location for unique people to upload photos from the same event regardless of method used to capture the photos.  

Wait, Flickr does that, right?  I mean, I can create a group and the 5 of us at an event can all upload our photos into that group, no?  Well, yes, and of all the photo sharing sites out there, Flickr still does this the best.  But look a little closer and you begin to see a need for improvement.  There is no way to sort photos in group pools, there is a barrier to entry because you need to have a Flickr account (although the recent changes to login should make that easier), the map could use some loving in that you can only view X many photos at a time on it and there is no real group functionality on mobile, unless you’re willing to fire up the main site on your smartphone.  But it’s got the privacy controls that many appreciate (Color has none – it’s all public), so photobombing isn’t as likely as it will be on Color.

Facebook doesn’t support group albums, so you’re reliant on people tagging the photos in order to sort them, but has no way to see them on a map and no way to print them.  There is privacy, but only if you’re savvy enough to navigate the morass that is Facebook’s privacy controls.  Google shines at its collaborative albums on PicasaWeb, so that mom can add her photos to Aunt Sally’s album, although it suffers from not having the rich discussion environment of groups on Flickr.

So, there is a lacuna here.  I’m curious to see what ZingZang is all about, but they are in a closed beta.  I’m also not impressed by the gimmick they are pushing to get higher up on the wait list – invite your friends to sign up for the beta.  I’m not going to invite anyone to anything that I have never used – that’s just bullshit.  Flickr got that one right when they launched, they did their word-of-mouth marketing deal with Pro accounts *after* they launched, when people could try their product.  Flicsy is another contender for this space, however their product is based (for now) solely around Facebook’s social network (although that might work in their favor, based on how many people use Facebook).

I guess I’m irked that Blake Irving isn’t throwing $41 million at Flickr (a rant I will save for later).  I may be missing what’s so hot about Color, but perhaps the next time I fly out to the Bay Area (to see the Giants, of course), I’ll actually be able to use it to see what the fuss is about.  And then I’ll come home to… oh right, it’s only useful in the Silicon Valley bubble land.

giving trend a chance? no.

An update released this week that calls out for users to 'just give it a chance' is Twitter's update to their iPhone client, which includes a trend bar at the top of your screen that cycles through the trending topics for your area.

Having worked for Flickr for a year and a half, I understand the company moxie that goes into developing new features and the push for users to try things out before dismissing any update as unadoptable.  You're not going to please every user out there; in fact, you shouldn't design to please every user out there.  Rollbacks shouldn't be on the table.

That said, I hate the new Twitter trend bar on the iPhone (and I rarely hate new features).  It serves me, as a user, no real purpose out here in the heartland, mostly because I'm… out here in the heartland.  Not being in San Francisco means that a whole slew of crap developed in the SF Bay Area serves no useful purpose. This trend bar is one such thing.  It shows you trending topics for certain areas, with no way to dismiss them and no way (from the iPhone) to adjust the trend area.  For example, Colorado Springs, CO, is simply not an option for trend locale on the Twitter website.  In fact, neither is Denver, CO.  Or anywhere in Colorado or any of the adjoining states.

Seriously?  If I switch over to the Nearby page, there sure are a ton of tweets nearby. I expect that Denver has even more content available.  So, seriously, why am I stuck with the handful of choices that are available and why can I not select these choices from my iPhone?  This myopia is what pretty much galls me the most about the Silicon Valley mindset of 'what's good for us is good for all of you, too.'  No, actually, it isn't, and we out here in the sticks (I say with a smirk, since I live in a city with a population larger than that of San Francisco) do have our own culture and trends and interests.  No, really.  You have our geo-location, if you're going to pimp this trend bar, then please give us something local & relevant, too.  Who knows, you might get more adoption out here.

But even if I had stayed in California, what's trending now is really of limited interest to me, and what interest I may have in a topic is ruined by the waves of spam that penetrate trending topics so quickly.  Here's what trending now in SF:

The top two rankle me because this is just us lining the pockets of Charlie Sheen's twitter presence, rewarding idiocy with money.  The rest of the list isn't as bad as other trending topics I've seen, but I also don't have any motivation to click through them. That flashing bar at the top of my Twitter stream is an annoyance that actually will stop me from using this client.

However, out here in the sticks, I'm also not commuting to work on a bus or a ferry or a train, since public transit here isn't really much of an option (yet).  So, I'm finding that my use of Twitter on the iPhone has dropped significantly.  Thankfully, this trend bar hasn't made its way onto the iPad application, which I'm using more than my iPhone to read Twitter.  

I also imagine that there probably aren't a lot of us out here using iPhones and iPads (and that's probably why AT&T is so wonderfully blessed with 5 bars nearly everywhere I go here).  It does seem like more companies and people here use Facebook than they do Twitter, too, which is quite different than in San Francisco.  That was a surprise to me, since I find Twitter to be so much useful than Facebook (although I draw a very sharp edge between what I use Facebook and Twitter for).

At any rate, while some blogs I've read seem to think that Twitter will roll out some way to hide the trend bar (which you can do right now with a jailbroken iPhone), I somehow doubt they will (or rather, would be surprised if they did).  Twitter needs to be monetized someday somehow, and the trend bar is a good way to do it.  But until they get a better handle on what topics trend and what locations can trend, I'll not be using this iPhone client.

what did happen in my day thanks to @rdio

So, earlier today I mentioned what wasn't working with rdio and my commute and my iPhone, mostly bitching about the use of Adobe products and the lack of multitasking on the iPhone.

In the interim, Steve Jobs announced multitasking on the iPhone's 4.0 upgrade.  That solved a pretty big problem, but I still couldn't get over the price point for using it on the mobile.  I did, however, fork over for a web subscription, since there was enough cool going on that I enjoy the site, generally.  I'm enjoying the social, the discovery of new music, and the re-discovery of old music.

What I had sync'd to my phone yesterday and listened to on my morning commute was Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, one of the best engineered albums of all time.  In fact, I was surprised that I didn't have that album in my iTunes collection, since I've owned various copies ever since the LP was released when I was a kid.  Not sure wtf happened to the CD and why I didn't rip it, but finding it again on rdio was a treat.

Listening to it on the commute this morning was a trip.  It holds such significant memories for me, that tears actually rolled down my face on the bus while I was grooving to Dreams.  Embarrassing.

During the day, I turned on web rdio and listened to my iTunes collection of music, a collection I carry with me at work only on my phone.  Sure, it wasn't all the songs I have at home, due to licensing issues, but I also listened to what my workmates were listening to and once again discovered more music I liked but didn't know. I enjoyed a playlist from a good, good friend back home in Colorado.  Win.  Easy to fork out for the subscription, despite my complaints.  

What did not happen on my morning commute thanks to @Rdio

I did not check Flickr, twitter, email, Facebook, my bank balance, the schedule for the next bus, Foursquare or Gowalla, and all because I was hell bent on utilizing Rdio's sync service for music and testing it for offline use.

So, what this service does, for $9.99/mo, is allow you to listen to any music Rdio has on its service, but specifically to synchronize songs to your iPhone so that you can play them in offline mode, thus not using up any more bandwidth than what it took to synchronize the songs in the first place.  I found some music I did not have in my collection, sync'd then to the phone, then got excited to listen to it offline on my morning commute….

…Completely forgetting that the iPhone cannot multi-task.  Since the music plays within the Rdio iPhone application, not through the iPhone's iPod application, the only thing you can do while listening to Rdio is…. listen to Rdio.  That won't work for me over the long haul (I tend to do too many things on the bus online with my iPhone), although I didn't mind it much this morning thanks to the music I'd chosen to listen to.

So, for $9.99/mo, this is never going to work for me, just based on that.

For $4.99/mo, I can get a web-only Rdio subscription.  So far, Rdio has been awesome at social, with a bunch of my workmates logging into the service over the weekend and adding music to our collections and making playlists.  That's been fun, more fun than last.fm has ever managed to be for me, somehow.  However, Rdio also relies heavily on Adobe technology, Flash and Air, to power its website and its desktop app.  I hate dealing with both (really, I do) and had nothing but trouble this weekend even being able to install the application and match my existing music collection.  Rdio's desktop app won't run on Mac OSX 10.4, which is where my home's music server is stored, and it runs on a lesser version of Adobe Air than I had currently installed on 10.5.  I ended up copying over my music files to an external drive, pointing my 10.5 Mac to the files, removing a file buried in the library for Abode Air to trick the older version into being installed, and then running the Rdio application against the iTunes on the 10.5 Mac to match the collection… only to come out with a slew of duplicates.  Note too, that I'm never going to use that install of iTunes again, since my home music server works just fine and I use my iPhone at work if I need to listen to music.

I want to like Rdio because I have really enjoyed using it, but I do question why I'd pay to use on my phone given its limitations and why I'd give money to developers so reliant on Flash and Air.  That sounds harsh, I know it does.  It really does since I had been having fun with Rdio over the weekend, like the crisp feel and smooth playback of the site, and think it all has great potential.  I also found new music over the weekend, music that pandora and last.fm haven't been able to surface for me.  So, I'm rather curious to see what Rdio is like over a longer period of time that the 3 day trial allows for, so later today, I likely will fork over for the web subscription.  I want to like Rdio, so I'm kind of motivated to try it out.

More on what did happen on my morning commute later. ;-)

Fit this

Today I found a great little iPhone app called Lose It!, via Jesse Stay. The timing couldn’t be better, since I have my iPhone with me everywhere I go… and I was just thinking I needed something to track caloric intake and exercise in an easy and convenient way.

Yesterday, I found a website called Calorie Count, which does the same thing and has a ton of info, but the iPhone app is just better for me, since I need something at hand… not something to remember to update hours after I’ve eaten or worked out. I also briefly checked out SparkPeople, but I work in social media… the last thing I need is some super-comprehensive social networking thing for weight loss. I don’t have that sort of time or energy.

Anyway, I need to get in shape and drop weight, and right away the idea of counting calories in an easy manner seemed a good fit for me. I like numbers. I like that it’s easy to do with technology. I like that it gives me a daily goal. I like pausing to think about whether I really need sour cream on the potato.

The lightbulb came on in my head that I am sooo sedate and that it’s sooo simple to burn a few calories doing, well, household things. 10 minutes of vacuuming daily is a simply thing I can do instead of doing it once a week. Getting off the bus a few stops earlier gives me another 10 minutes of walking I wouldn’t otherwise do. The iPhone app’s convenience is ridiculous.

Last month, I also bought a gym membership, so this week I’ll be getting in there twice a week. I’ll be doing weight training because I know it best (from my trapeze days)… and – conveniently – it’s a good way to drop weight since it raises your metabolism if you do it right. I also don’t mind building up muscle.

Tally ho!