[svlug] Any other photo geeks?

Wed Feb 6 12:00:03 PST 2008

hi

On Feb 5, 2008 4:38 PM, Bill Ward <bill at wards.net> wrote:

> > http://picasaweb.google.com/digitaltippingpoint/
> >
> > We are using Picasa because Flickr, which much larger, is a Yahoo
> property
> > and we switched to Picasa when rumors of a Microsoft buyout of Yahoo
> > started.  We just can't have any "assets" (for lack of a better word) on
> a
> > Microsoft property.
>
> Well, looks like you may've been right about this... I was unaware of
> it until last week when the offer came out; I hadn't read this thread
> obviously, but here you are almost two months beforehand saying it.

Yeah, when I heard the rumors back in the spring of 2007, I immediately
moved to Picasaweb, because I didn't want to get dependent on an asset that
would become a Microsoft asset.

I hope that the MSFT acquisition of Yahoo fails, simply because consumers
are more well-served by three competitors.  As awful as the borg is, I do
welcome even their competition against Google, because as much as I like
Google, I would not want to see them be the only vendor of on-line
services.  As long as Microsoft stays down there in its miniscule 6% market
share for search, I am happy.  heh.  Yahoo is definitely needed as an
independent voice.

And yet, the borg has played this card well, at least in terms of making the
acquisition.  The BoD's duty to its shareholders requires it to consider
this offer, as it is one way to return value to Yahoo's investors.

In some ways, I am even a wee bit excited about this deal going through,
because I see it as a tremendous debt burden for the borg.  Did anyone
notice that, for the first time in its history, Microsoft will need to
borrow money to make this acquistion!  woo hoo!  go Google!  Google is
hitting the borg where they live, in cash flow.  This acquisition, if it
goes through, could well be the borg's Waterloo.  They are paying a premium
for a somewhat troubled venture (Yahoo), and IMHO, Microsoft lacks the
competence and experience in monetizing on-line services, and so this
acquisition will only slow them down.  So I think that this is quite
exciting.

There is another reason that this acquisition is exciting.  It is, in some
senses, consistent with Harvard Business School professor Clayton
Christensen's observations of former market leaders' responses to a
disruptive market entrant.  In the case of Sony v RCA, for example, RCA
ceded the low end transistor market to Sony, because RCA could not make
enough money in handheld transistor radios, where Sony was making sufficient
margin to grow its then tiny business.  At some point, though, transistor
technology became sufficiently robust that RCA saw a business case for
entering that market, but by that time, it was too late.  Sony had
established itself with the same competitive advantage in terms of supplier
relationships and downstream distribution channels that RCA had previously
enjoyed.

Now we are seeing the same thing with Google v Microsoft.  Microsoft has not
been able to figure out how to leverage the power of FOSS, because they sell
software as a product and they *think* that business model requires them to
control the source code, as opposed to sharing the source code.  And they
are probably correct in this assessment, at least with regard to Microsoft
Windows and Microsoft Office.  So Microsoft is both married to its current
business model and downstream chain, and it is also too late for it to gain
a foothold in Google's business network.  The Yahoo acquisition will not
remedy that problem, because Google has already drained too much blood from
Yahoo.

> I just installed Picasa on my Windows laptop, and will plan to do the
> same on my Linux box at home soon.  I don't know much about Picasa
> though.  Aren't there any open source (preferably Gnome) photo
> management tools that are any good?

Lots of them.  Just open Synaptic and type in photo in the search box.
There are probably 5 good photomanagement clients.  Also, you can use
Google's photomanagement client, but I think that client is only free as in
beer, not Free as in freedom.  I don't use it.

> And preferably that handle the
> Panasonic .RAW format which my FZ50 uses?

Not sure.  I haven't tried that.  But I don't hear lots of people
complaining that their FOSS photomanagement clients can't grab digital
images from their cameras.  It seems that they just work.

> > We are releasing all of our video and photos under a Creative Commons
> > Attribute-ShareAlike license, and so we are hoping to get photos under
> that
> > same license.  We want to allow people to make commercial use of our
> video
> > and photos, because our goal is to maximize the visibility of FOSS for
> > newbies.
>
>
> Nearly all my Flickr photos are thusly licensed, including my Picnix
> photos from years past before SVLUG/Sbay politics made me lose
> interest in attending (and helping organize) them.
>

If wouldn't mind tarring up those pics and sending them to me, I would like
to put them up on the DTP picasaweb site.  Thanks either way for considering
my request.

-- 
Christian Einfeldt,
Producer, The Digital Tipping Point
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