On the joy of making technology do a delightful dance, Dave Winer saidbest:
This is one of those rare moments, when something works, and now my use of computers reaches a plateau that makes total sense. I call this feeling Living In The Future. It’s the nicest feeling technology can deliver, and it’s one important reason I like playing with these toys.
Ah, the future. It’s about time.
What did Dave do? He simply integrated three disparate technologies, from three different companies, so that he can take a picture on his iPhone, upload it to Flickr, then post it to Twitter, which when combined alerts anyone who cares of a new photograph almost the instant he snapped it. He can now capture and share a moment, any moment, as it happens. And soon, you will be able to do it too.
Interestingly, not a single company could have done this on its own, not because its hard to do but because it’s not foundational to their business. However, each of the three companies (all big favorites of mine) had the foresight to expose their interfaces and leverage existing standards to make it possible for one man to stitch it all together.
But possible isn’t enough on its own. Delightful is what makes it and us dance. Dave continues:
If you want to make a product that people use then you have to pay attention to their experience when they use it. The better you are at understanding, the better your product will become over time.
I followed his blog and twitter as he developed it. I watched as he quickly responded to feedback, and relentlessly improved the service. This is no accident, and certainly no small feat, but the work of a brilliant man in the right place at the right time. I can’t wait to use it, expect to do so on a daily basis, and believe we all will in due time…
Related posts
- “It’s like we’re living in a third world country, ruled by iron-fisted fascists, whose way of dealing with public unrest is through force and violence.”On the entrenched power of telecom companies and their blatant attempts to obstruct any innovation that they cannot exploit financially,...
- This is a genuine outpouring of love and enthusiasm and excitementOn the subject of the throngs of people (of which I was one) waiting for the Apple iPhone to be...
- “Used to be, we were innovators. We were leaders. We were builders.”Absolutely epic rant on the ills of AT&T and business in general from an old favorite, Fake Steve Jobs: While...
http://callingbull.blogspot.com/2007/08/its-just-mashup.html
Hey thanks for stopping by to slam me and completely miss my point. The triumph here, no pun intended, isn’t that it was a hard problem for Dave or anyone else to solve, but that it was a creative solution to an interesting problem: how to share a moment captured in a photo, at that moment, with anyone in the world.
My “gushing post” had nothing to do with his technical prowess, rather with his foresight to pull it all together. Sometimes what is clever, and dare I say useful or even delightful, is much more interesting than what is difficult.
You note “it was a creative solution to an interesting problem: how to share a moment captured in a photo, at that moment, with anyone in the world”.
The question is does anyone really care?
If you want to see pictures, subscribe to Dave’s Flickr RSS feed. QED, EOM. The point is a solution already exists and one that is much less intrusive/spammy.
Twitter merely exists as an alternate alert mechanism in this case. Twitter is interesting when you are able to follow activities that you may have a similar interest in. It is not interesting when you get 15 URLs in a row all pointing to Flickr pix.
BTW your comment poster eats line breaks.
Yes, I do need to fix comments.
Now, wrt the question “does anyone really care?” Are you asking if I care about Dave’s photos or are you asking if there is anyone who would like to see my pictures? To be perfectly blunt, I don’t care about Dave’s photos. However, I am willing to bet my mother will want to see photos of her grandchild as I take them, just as I’ll want to see photos as my wife takes them too, say while I am stuck at work…
True, we could in fact just grab the feed from flickr, once these new pics are uploaded at some later date and time, but I really like the idea of being able to do that in the moment. Will someone come along and create a more seamless experience that doesn’t require four different companies to do it? Sure, I would imagine and hope so, but that is simply not the case today. It is very early in the game, but this is an exciting development that in my view will change the way we will interact with photos in the future.
Of course, YMMV.
The feed in my experience is pretty up to date.
The reason what I called this out is this is not cutting edge work. Photosynth on the other hand is extremely exciting and would be much more game changing in terms of changing photographic interaction.
The feed in my experience is pretty up to date.
The reason what I called this out is this is not cutting edge work. Photosynth on the other hand is extremely exciting and would be much more game changing in terms of changing photographic interaction.
Again, I never claimed this was cutting edge work, in fact I specifically pointed out that it wasn’t its difficulty that impressed me, but the imagination required to piece it all together. Photosynth is amazing technology, no doubt, but it’s apples and oranges here…
If I may quote myself again, “Sometimes what is clever, and dare I say useful or even delightful, is much more interesting than what is difficult.”
I do appreciate your pov and thank you for stopping by throughout the day to continue this thread. btw, I am truly honored to be the subject of the first post on your new blog and hope to be a part of many more…
If you think I’m full of it, call me on it. I only ask that you address the actual substance of my post.
Referencing your quote, there are other examples of mashups that are arguably more useful, delightful to use your words. See some of the mashups on Yahoo Pipe’s for example or tourb.us’s ability to take your last.fm feed and alert you to upcoming music events. Now that’s seriously useful.
Therefore, I stand by my statement that this is a mashup (with some glue) and a fairly simple and mildly interesting one.
Stand by for more callouts. I’ll be gentler than uncov. =)
You’re trying to be like uncov? Does that mean clever like the guys who write it or moronic like the people they routinely pick apart? Best of luck either way. =)
Nice try. Watch. =)
The silence is deafening. Bravo, TL, bravo.