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0 pointsJemaclus11y ago0 comments

Right, so I agree with you that it's cool. What I'm getting at though is... is it necessary? Wouldn't all of your vacation photos be roughly in the same spot, since you took them at the same time and presumably put them in the same album? (The dog example is more compelling, but you get my point.)

Is this a problem worth solving? It just seems to me like it's more of a solution in search of a problem -- and photo management is largely a very solved problem. The number of people who have so many photos that they can't sort through them quickly is probably really low. The entities that would get the most out of this kind of technology are places like Facebook and Google.

Put another way: is releasing a photo management app into a market flooded with photo organization apps worth the time, money, and effort put into it? Are there other equally cool problems out there that are actually problems that need to be solved in markets that are not saturated at all?

My go-to example of something like this is something I heard at SF Nerd Nite (http://sf.nerdnite.com) where one non-profit is using drones to help farmers manage their huge tracts of land. That sounds like a really cool solution to a startlingly common problem in that industry. Right now, farmers tend to have to go out in person and spot-check parts of their fields, but there's no way for them to get a detailed look at everything really fast... that's where drones come in. They fly over, snap hi-res photos of the fields, and then bring them up on the computer screen -- all while the farmer is making coffee and eating breakfast.

So I mean -- and again just from a thinking out loud standpoint, because I totally get how cool Photomatic is from an image processing standpoint -- what I'm trying to get at is... does the world need yet another photo organizing app? Is this really what we think the world (or even the tech industry, or even the mobile app industry) needs?

Maybe it is. Maybe not.

I understand how this is cool and how it could be useful, though, and I totally agree that it would be great if someone besides Google/FB could develop something like this... and then hold out and not get bought by those companies.

Finally, just in case it's not 100% clear, I'm not picking on Photomatic. It really does look very well done and I'm definitely impressed with the tech behind it. I'm really thinking more along the lines of most of the stuff I see on Show HN. The vast majority of the apps on Show HN are what I call "first-world solutions." That is, they're for problems that I don't really think are epic problems. Yeah, okay, so maybe we can organize photos a bit better, or maybe the to-do app really is the worst way to manage something, or maybe there just isn't a perfect invoicing system out there.

But at the end of the day, millions upon millions of people out there manage their photos just fine, get things done just fine, and invoice customers just fine without a shiny new app. So, other than as a learning exercise or portfolio piece, why bother? Why not invest that time and money and energy into solving something that truly stymies people, inhibits progress, and prevents mankind from reaching ever greater heights? (Which, incidentally, would double as both a learning exercise and a portfolio piece, while also "saving the world".)

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Hope I don't offend too many people.

P.S. Thanks for a serious answer. :)

0 comments

rgbrgb11y ago

Yeah, I completely agree that organizing consumer photo albums is not the biggest problem. However, what I'm trying to say is that (consciously or not) Photomatic found a viable (looking) way to work on basic research problems in computer vision. And as you mention, the technology could have much broader applications if it makes enough money and gets enough users so that is can be developed and scaled.

The drone company you're talking about faces at least 3 large problems that need solutions before they can make their first dollar of profit: 1) drone automation, 2) image processing, 3) customer education. That's going to take a lot of upfront investment. I'd go as far as to say that the photo organization app solves a proper subset of the drone farming app you describe.

All I'm saying is that I think you should hold judgement when a relatively boring application is solving some pretty hard problems under the hood. Often the application is boring because it's a low-risk vehicle to work on good problems. I'm of the opinion that a lot of really valuable technology (like valuable to humanity) is being developed under the guise of social networking and Apps. For me (for now at least), whether the apps are truly great art or revolutionary tools is a tertiary concern to making progress on and directing funding towards the more basic research problems that they're based on.

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