Mathew's comments - Latest Comments in A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

jonknee — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:39:08 -0000

Flickr's default feeds don't contain the high quality images. The ones from Photocastr do (if you want, there is an option). Combined with iPhoto, it's essentially the same thing as FlickrFan.

Each photocast feed you add in iPhoto shows up as an option in the OS X screensaver. You could also easily view the images via an Apple TV since they get added to your iPhoto library.

So in effect iPhoto does the same thing as your software and Photocastr just helps out.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

jonknee — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 17:58:05 -0000

I tooled around with it for about 10 minutes before deleting the DMG. I don't really see the point, this stuff has existed for years. The AP feed was really cool though, so I wrote a Python script that syncs a local folder with its images. It updates via cron every hour so I get the same live screensaver but without having to run the OPML Editor (which seemed to hijack a lot of CPU, maybe because it's carbon and PPC?).

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

Shelley — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 17:09:25 -0000

No offense, Franky, but nowadays a person could present Pong to their development teams and a third could see potential.

The problem is that people get caught up in the hype, but when you scrape away the blather, what you're left with is an application that a) isn't new, b) isn't ready for even an alpha release, and c) isn't all that revolutionary.

If it hadn't been Dave Winer that released the app, it wouldn't have gotten any press. That's rather sad, because there are a lot of great apps that are ignored because they're not released by one of the Insiders.

We're losing the ability to differentiate the hype from the innovation, and that's not necessarily a healthy state to be in.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

franky — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 14:50:19 -0000

Dave, next should be the obvious: UI and clear documentation.
Then I would give it a marketing twist and throw it out at the WordPress (blogging) community as the _ultimate thing to publish a photoblog_.
I reckon that could be a good move to hit virality.

Let the community do their thing. They decide if a platform gets adapted and if your code and hooks are easy enough it will.

After that, move on and build a similar thing for the already existing HD video sharing platforms. Integrate a search and you've just created the _user content generated Joost_ for HD.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

franky — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 14:06:46 -0000

Shelley, I presented FlickrFan to our team (we're in online banking security). One third saw potential for FlickrFan. In an online world where 'everything almost exists' I reckon one third, without having a great documentation about what all could be possible, is not bad at all. Think RSS immediately was considered great by 1/3 and there were no competing products at that time which could be considered 'doing the same'.

The hype only is because all those people have time to follow techmeme and echo it.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

dave — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:01:12 -0000

Thanks for the benefit of the doubt Franky and btw, it does most of those things now. Tell me what you think the next steps should be. Very interested.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

mathewi — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:51:02 -0000

Thanks, Kris -- although I have to say that the name DeskLickr is kind
of unappetizing :-)

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

Kris — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:48:54 -0000

An app called DeskLickr does the same. Mac only. I love it, but I think it is hardly a revolution. The homepage of my company's website fetches a random image from a group on Flickr dedicated to its employees photo hobbies. How about that?

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

mathewi — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:48:01 -0000

Paul, I don't know why you seem to dislike me so much, but if you
don't like my blog posts then don't read them. Other people seem to
find them worthwhile. As for Dave, I think I outlined pretty well what
I think of his software, and it has nothing to do with not liking it.
I specifically said that I think it's a great idea -- it's just that
you can already do virtually everything that Dave's software does with
other programs, and so I think the amount of attention it has gotten
is unwarranted. That's all. Please take your trolling elsewhere.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

paul jones — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:41:19 -0000

@earl I only say it about Mathew because if you read his blog he is always negative and often without knowledge or fact. Read a few of his blog posts and then see why I made my comments.

I wouldn't care but Mathew is loved by Gabe and gets on Techmeme so often now that people are beginning to take notice of his ill-thoughtout posts.

@Mathew write about technology not gossip. If you did not like Dave Winer's product tell us why and what you might do technically different, given you claim to be a technology writer.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

Shelley — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:24:55 -0000

"It is obvious that engineers and reporters read feature lists, platforms options differently. And here I have to agree with Dave."

I'm a software engineer, and have been for 25 years. I agree with Mathew in that I haven't seen anything released with this product deserving of the hype. In fact, most of the hype has come from non-techs. Marketing folks, in fact.

A responsible engineer controls user expectations. You don't release obviously alpha software as the next great coming.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

mike_mcgrath — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:36:48 -0000

http://mike-mcgrath.wordpress.com/2007/12/28/de...

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

franky — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:04:45 -0000

Mathew (correctly spelled this time) :S

Sorry for the word silly, too harsh probably as a term, but being in the development camp I couldn't think of another word. Hence why the italic styling.

It is obvious that engineers and reporters read feature lists, platforms options differently. And here I have to agree with Dave.

It would be great to see this develop and maybe become the next great thing.
That said, I think the same for HD online video would be more timely.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

ianbetteridge — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:59:00 -0000

Oh come on Dave, that's a pathetic comment. It's the standard "wah wah wah well you do better mr man!" familiar from the playground.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

ianbetteridge — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:52:16 -0000

I think the thing is, Dave, that in the face of people getting "wrong" what the key features are, you have a choice: you can either go on the offensive with ad hominem attacks (of the "you just don't get it" kind), or you can just explain where people are going wrong. So far, I haven't really seen much explanation from you.

Yes, it's not JUST a screen saver. But its most obvious feature - and the one which virtually all posts, including yours, have highlighted - is the ability to put images on a big screen, using the Mac OS X screen saver. That, as you undoubtedly know, duplicates the functionality which already exists in the OS X screen saver.

So what else does it do? If I'm right in my assumption, it downloads any image which it sees hit the RSS feed via the Flickr API (am I right?) What are the applications of this which we're missing?

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

mathewi — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:47:02 -0000

Thanks for the comment, Franky -- despite the fact that you called my
post silly. I eagerly await all the features that you describe. Then
maybe there will be something worth getting excited about.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

franky — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:28:04 -0000

Mattew, one of the problems of tech journalists/bloggers is that they do not see everything. This entry is just as silly as Duncan Riley when he proclaimed the new Hotmail should have been released with Silverlight, only 3 days after the presentation of Silverlight.

Never possible!.

In this post you don't see several things:
- We're speaking about an 0.33 beta release to start with. Be happy if any version before 0.5 (let's be realistic and say 0.7) is widely usable, has an acceptable UI and is cross-platform.
- Go read the feature list. I'll wait here. We're speaking about a free two way platform, completely open source, to flickr (and some more). Yes, this COULD become revolutionary. Think of the possibilities that it even might be turned in to an iTunes plugin and more. (I have no Apple TV and MBP is not linked to TV so couldn't say how easy it is to display HD pictures on TV).
Imagine browsing your pictures/slideshow/screensaver/whatevah. They are backed up nightly in a folder monitored by Windows Media Player. By just dragging and dropping you can upload them to Flickr. Or better even, Dave also created XML-RPC, and already called this Real Simple Photo, so you can bet he might even implement the option to publish the pictures directly to a gallery on your blog. Actually I can see that this might already be possible on Mac (with Expression Engine CMS: I can easily have a folder which is regularly synchronized via Transmit FTP client and the EE photo gallery can be set to automatically import picture.) W00t, I just discovered how to painlessly backup my flickr account twice all while at the same time showing them off on our company's intranet.
- Twitter, I bet soon also tumblr aso. All this can happen automatically if things work out well. (Dave, can I have some folder monitoring please with auto-upload to XML-RPC for new pictures, please? This could be awesome for a photoblog.)

I digress. Both Marshall and Robert are hardcore RSS freaks, Marshall could even be called an evangelist. I'm sure they immediately noticed the potential of two way and how RSS (and OPML for that matter) can be used.

Yes it's a big deal, options are endless, and who knows if Dave can pull it off once more? And he calls it a platform in his blog announcement. Open source. ;-)

Let's just not forget this is version 0.33.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

dave — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:26:06 -0000

Ethan, Photocastr basically does something that Flickr (seems to) already do. I could be missing something. Regardless, the feeds it produces would work fine with FlickrFan (I checked). So it's not a case where it does what my software does, it's very compatible with it.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

dave — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:12:12 -0000

Ooops, sorry about that. I guess I've done it before? Getting old over here, memory's not so good these days. Again, sorry.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

mathewi — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:51:45 -0000

Thanks for pointing that out, Ethan. I hadn't heard of that one.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

kp — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:45:40 -0000

Thanks for calling what it is - a screensaver (so what it could be an HDTV screen - it is still screensaver). There are several products out there so the hype is just marketing and shameless self-promotion.

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

ethan — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:11:28 -0000

You know there is a really good service called Photocastr that does exactly this, and you know, works. http://photocastr.quantumfoam.org/

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

Sach — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:52:03 -0000

yeah! I don't get it either...

http://tinyurl.com/22xmzh

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

George — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:49:24 -0000

Sycophant

Re: A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible

mathewi — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:04:01 -0000

Thanks for the comment, Shelley -- and I would agree that this is
definitely a steak and sizzle situation. Not that there isn't some
meat there -- there is, as I acknlowedged in my post. But the sizzle
is much larger than the steak.