Following up on our idea for digital image management software, Francesca and I developed an alpha version in Java that allows the user to quickly rename large numbers of photos, adding keyword, title, caption, and date tags, which are then available in the filename as well as the image metadata fields. We are very excited for this, and have been working on organizing our collection of 3,500+ images, as well as scanning many more of the family treasures! Screenshots with some descriptive text as to how the program works today follow in the post body.
Imagine a world where you could look back into the videos, documents, and images of past generations. Hundreds of years of a networked world have existed, and your great-great-great-grandparents have been preserved eternally somewhere, accessible to all in the family. That would be pretty exciting, interesting.
So how does this come to be? The question is really how to preserve the information - it all exists today. How do families currently preserve old photographs (which have existed only a few generations now). Does your family have all of its old histories preserved? What if it were easier to do so, somehow guaranteed to last. I don’t know quite how to make this happen, but it excites me. It could plug into the idea regarding family compounds.
The value of such a place would grow with each successive generation, until at some point, it would be invaluable. How much would you pay to be able to reach back and see, hear, and experience people who preceded you?
Along the lines of image management, we started thinking about the fact that our lives are largely captured in the digital domain today, and that our extended family and friends are also at this level. While we are aware of blogs, etc, we felt that a central gathering place for a family (or close social group) could be very powerful - more than a blog, more than a “family website”, this would be a secure digital domain for each family member to use.
Picture this:
I plug in my digital camera, and the pop-up window that downloads the images prompts me to enter the keywords, captions, etc. (easily) that the program above allows.
These images are then automatically uploaded to this digital domain, and the information I added is available as real content.
Simultaneously, others in our group get flagged that new content has been added for all to peruse.
Take this idea beyond image sharing, to documents, family history, videos, artwork, projects, and even simple journals. You get to pick who can see your stuff, and vice versa. This could be extended to Yahoo! / Dashboard / KDE widgets, so people could have little “house” graphics on their desktop for each group member, which would wave little flags or something, alerting users that someone in their social group has just shared something with everyone. Something like the town centers of cute little New England towns, a family compound that contains everything and anything a group might want… still fleshing this out… but definitely feel that the options available today are nowhere near the potential.
All (and there is a lot) of the image management programs and websites purport to allow users to organize their image collections. However, my wife and I have over 3,500 images which are not well organized, and we found all the options we tried to be cumbersome at best in bringing any type of order to this. So we brainstormed what we wanted, and came up with the following feature list:
Non-proprietary database (i.e. we want our images portable anywhere! and certainly don’t want to be locked into any one site from a long-term perspective.)
Easy to use / fast - able to crank through 3,500+ images without wasting time
Ability to add metadata directly to the image format itself (EXIF/IPTC/etc.) rather than storing it in that proprietary database we mentioned not wanting earlier
So we are designing and implementing some quick software that will accomplish these goals. Initially this will be used to organize our collection of images, however if we find it quite useful, we may go further with the concept. More to come as progress is made.
Very simple idea - scan people’s analog photos for profit.
Scan photos
?????
Profit
Seriously though, this is a low fixed cost mostly variable cost business, easy to start and play with, and no-one has taken this to a nationwide level, partnering with firms with reputable brands. Today the public does not know where to go to get this done, does not know how much it should cost, and does not know who to trust with their precious images.
I have researched this area quite a bit, DigMyPics has been doing this for two years, currently scanning 170,000 photos a month at approximately $0.25 per photo. Not huge money, but not insignificant. And certainly not capturing the market.
Update - a few VC’s backed a few companies doing this last year… guess I predicted that one!
My friend James Yoneda and I were kicking around an idea relating to distributed p2p backups of your files - synchronizing between computers, i.e. “make my laptop and desktop the same”, backing up to remote locations, i.e. I give James access to my harddrive, he gives me access to his, and we mirror each other’s files. This makes us safer in the event of fire/theft/hardware failure.
On a family/social scale, this would replace the need to continually burn DVDs, etc, if you knew that your data was secure on the hard drives of 10 of your close friends. Disk space is cheap, bandwidth is cheap, and time is expensive. Make this easy and secure, and enjoy.
FolderShare, recently purchased by Microsoft, was starting to do this - but they fell short of their potential. I want it seamless, elegant. Right-click a directory, and be able to select “back this up”. Right-click a file, and be able to select “track changes to this file”… version control. So much potential…
In fact - one could almost pull this together with existing OSS tools (p2p system, subversion/plugins, nice GUI). Too many ideas, not enough time.