Photoshop Express First Impressions

Adobe launched Photoshop Express this past week. When they announced this effort about a year ago (March 2007), I was thinking it would be a web-based version of Photoshop. So today I signed up for an account. It's still in beta but there are already more than 17,000 galleries online including my lame attempt for a gallery I just put up a few minutes ago.

So what's the verdict? Disappointing!

This is not so much a web-based version of Photoshop but really more of an online gallery with some editing features. If you're looking for a web-based version of Photoshop, go to Splashup.com. Their web-based software features tools and layers that photoshop users will recognize.

If Adobe's focus for Photoshop Express is the online gallery, they need to do more than just offer a splashy way to show-off your pictures. Two things come to mind when I consider using an online photo gallery. Ease of use and the size and quality of the pictures on the slideshow. I first started using online photo galleries through Ofoto (now called Kodak Gallery) and Shutterfly. Although they were easy to use, their slideshow limited the display size of your photo. This has since changed with Shutterfly now allowing you to view your photos in full-screen mode, but Kodak Gallery still resizes your photo down in their slideshow. The full-screen slideshow was what prompted me to switch to using Picasa Web Albums then and today I'm still using it because it's easy to use and their slideshow looks great.

The slideshow on Photoshop Express has some layout options that Picasa doesn't offer. You can choose a single, strip, grid or ring layout and also choose between 2D or 3D effect. Although these features looked clever when I tried them out, I would probably just stick with the single layout mode. Plus the 3D effect gave me a headache after a few minutes of watching these pictures fly into the edges of my screen.

The one advantage that Photoshop Express gives you is the 2 Gig of free space. Picasa only gives you 1 Gig, but expect Google to bump that up as our pictures get larger and larger.

Web 3.0?

We're just getting comfortable with Web 2.0 and now an article from Newsweek is suggesting the coming of Web 3.0. They're suggesting that web-content written/reviewed by experts (Revenge of the Experts) might be the new era that could be Web 3.0. I wonder what the experts think ... after all it took them awhile to agree on what Web 2.0 was really all about.

The gist of the article suggests that the public is getting tired of inaccurate and unregulated information on the internet and we need the experts to come back and give us trustworthy information again.

I think we need to step back and think about what this really means. Who are the experts? Some would say the professionals are the experts, but to me a professional only means someone who gets paid for what they do. But is the professional landscape designer better than my Aunt who genuinely loves gardening and blogs about her success in organic gardening? Is the professional computer programmer better than the college kid who spends countless evenings writing an operating system that he freely distributes to the world? There are lots of countless examples and I think the internet has allowed us to find these experts that traditional businesses, media and organizations may never define as experts. I certainly hope that whatever Web 3.0 turns out to be, these non-professional experts will continue to shine on the web.

Revenge of the Experts

Unfiltered, Unedited News from CNN - iReport.com

CNN is jumping on the community driven news bandwagon. They recently launched iReport.com which allows anyone in the world to upload news-related articles, videos and photos. The key element of this site is that CNN is NOT going to filter or edit any submission. CNN is relying on the community to be the watchdogs and any reader can flag a news article for review. This is similar to how Craigslist relies on the community to flag a posting and seems to work well considering they receive millions of postings a month that their 19-person staff (??? not sure if they broke the 20 staff mark yet) cannot possibly handle reviewing one-by-one.

CNN is saying they will scan the site for news they find important and relevant and those articles may show up on the main CNN.com site.

I think it's commendable for a traditional news organization to do this. Although considering how CNN started, they may not like to be called traditional. But they're big, and powerful and from most people's viewpoint, they are a traditional news organization. It seems that CNN is embracing community driven news without worrying too much that it may someday eclipse the main traditional CNN site in viewer traffic. The point is some traditional news organizations understand that they no longer have the monopoly of trust and the internet has made it possible for citizen journalists to be trustworthy as well.

Why Verizon FIOS Faster Upload Speed Matters

One of the common questions to ponder these days is which of the two are better - Comcast or Verizon FIOS. I usually answer that technology-wise, Verizon FIOS is superior because technology advances allow fiber optic cables to carry more data at a faster and more efficient rate than copper cable ever will. But a more relevant reason to switch to Verizon FIOS is because they offer a plan that gives you the same upload speed as your download speed. Why does this matter and what is the difference between upload and download speeds?

When you're receiving email or watching a video over YouTube, you're downloading. When you're sending email or sending a video clip over to YouTube, you're uploading. A few years ago, most of us didn't care about upload speeds because the largest files we were sending were pictures and those were not even larger than a megabyte then. But today with larger megapixel cameras and video sharing sites like YouTube, we're starting to care about upload speeds.

Just to give you an idea how upload speeds matter, consider your Comcast service with 20 Mbps download speed but your upload speed is only 1.5 Mbps. So that 1 minute video clip (about 100 MB in size) you just took of your daughter sledding is going to take almost 10 minutes to send/upload to YouTube while on FIOS (if you have their 15 Mbps upload plan) it would only take about 55 seconds.

Note that this only mattes if you are doing some amount of uploads such as sending videos over to YouTube or sending your photos to web sharing sites like Flickr or the Kodak Gallery. If you're not doing any of these, chances are you'll be OK with Comcast and the standard FIOS packages that give you about the same upload speeds as Comcast. Last time I checked, the FIOS 15/15 internet access package costs about $65 compared to about $43 for their 5/2 (5 Mbps download, 2 Mbps upload) plan.

A Trip Down Tech Memory Lane

Found myself enjoying this fun and nostalgic article (1988 vs. 2008: A Tech Retrospective) today on tech.msn.com. They looked back 20 years ago to common gadgets we now live with everyday. Here's a brief summary:

Laptops
- 20 years ago: 9 inch screen, weighed 14 lbs. and cost about $4,000
- Today: 14 inch screen, 4 lbs. and cost about $1,000

Home PCs
- 20 years ago: Tandy 80286 with 640KB RAM, floppy-drive (no hard drive) and 14-inch monitor (16 colors), for about $1,400
Today: HP dual-core desktop with 2 Gigs of RAM, 750 GB Hard drive, CD/DVD drive and 17-inch flat panel LCD (16.7 million colors) for about $1,000

Printers
- 20 years ago: $1,000 color dot-matric printer
- Today: $100 photo-quality inkjet printer

Modem
- 20 years ago: 2,400 baud for about $400
- Today: 38 Mbps for about $60

Internet Access
- 20 years ago: Compuserve, $47.50/hour for high-speed (9,600 baud) dial-up access. Low speed (up to 2,400 baud) was $12/hour.
- Today: 20 MB/sec for unlimited access for about $50/month (and you can wirelessly share with multiple computers at home)

Hard Drives
- 20 years ago: 150 MB for almost $5,000
- Today: 500 MB for about $200, 1 TB for about $360

Cell phones
- 20 years ago: Analog, weighed 28 ounces and cost $2,500
- Today: Digital, weighs less than 5 ounces and cost about $100 (ofte FREE upon sign-up)

It's amazing how far we've come in 20 years. Just imagine what the next 20 years will bring us. Prices will probably not go down much more on some devices because as Dell learned last year, you can't continue selling computers for less than cost and still expect to make a profit. But at today's prices, most of these devices are simply affordable to the general public unlike 20 years ago when not anyone can just plunk down $2,500 for a cell phone. And note that I didn't even show inflation-adjusted prices here, so that $2,500 cell phone is really $4,300 in today's dollars.

Satellite Internet Making a Comeback?

A few years ago, I worked with some satellite companies in the area and another one in the West Coast. Some of them were trying to break into the internet space and one of them had a product out in the market. But the latency issues made the user-experience wanting. The concept was great in terms of span and coverage and although the cost was going to be high there were some good arguments that satellite would provide coverage where terrestrial (e.g. cable, dsl, fiber) products were missing.

But then the bubble burst and the failure of Iridium wasn't good publicity for all satellite companies no matter how different their business models were, so most of us thought we'll just have to wait until fiber covered all the corners of the globe.

And lo-and-behold, just the other day Japan announces a satellite for high-speed access. And the speed they're hoping to achieve --- are you ready for this? --- 1.2 GB/second. That's about 100x faster than your typical Comcast and Verizon access, so that's very fast. Those HD movies coming down the pipe can be downloaded in less than a minute, instead of hours.

So maybe there's hope for satellite after all. It does make sense especially for some places in Southeast Asia where the terrestrial landscape is composed of islands and laying fiber across those islands is more challenging than being included in the satellite's coverage.

eBay sellers strike next week

After the hollywood strike, we now get an eBay seller strike. Sellers on eBay are going on strike next week to protest a change in fees, feedback and search policies. It wasn't too long ago that eBay was considered a lock-in for longevity and their business competition was floundering. But in the recent year, more and more smaller, niche sites are closing in and making for good competition.

This threat to eBay's business can actually be good for eBay's long term prospects. Competition can push a business to do better. Competition can also serve as a wake-up call to businesses that are no longer as exciting and innovative.

eBay is also big enough to buy out smaller competitors like StubHub which was a smart investment for eBay considering how successful the ticket selling site had become. The recent resignation of eBay's CEO is a signal that eBay is ready to chart a new course after almost 10 years of comfortably being the largest *store* in the world.

Just to round out some of the threats to eBay, Amazon is the surprise sleeper hit. While eBay was enjoying its comfortable leadership status all these years, Amazon was busy building out its technology infrastructure and now they're not only positioned to take on eBay's business, they are also becoming a force in the web services arena --- see Amazon Web Services.

Also hear from long-time eBay sellers who have switched to other services to sell their wares --- eBay backlash: 5 sellers who ditched it.

Zero Heating Cost

I've been reading about the Rocky Mountain Institute recently and how their energy efficient design going back to the 80s cuts their heating cost to almost $0. We're up in the mountains this weekend and it's close to zero degrees outside. The house we're staying in is fully heated and warm inside thanks to propane gas heating. This house doesn't have air-conditioning because the summers here are mild and the fresh mountain air and the breeze is enough to cool the house on a hot summer day. The orientation of the house faces the south, so it's already suited to receive the sun's heat from mid-day till the mid-afternoon to collect the heat.

Take a photo tour of the Rocky Mountain Institute building.

And here's an article from MSN about these green buildings.