Isn’t it funny that your $300 digital camera needs a $1500 accessory to be properly used? People used to buy a film camera, take photos with it, and take negatives to the printer. A simple process that involves one simple device. Now you have to own a computer if you want to enjoy digital photography.
I wonder how this is reflected in consumer photography trends. There must be a whole contingent of people out there who don’t own a computer or would have no idea how to use one. Do those people still take photos? Are they using film cameras? Do that have someone to manage their digital photos for them? Has photography shifted to younger demographic as a result?
We’ve been cranking out code for over a year and a half. It’s been a labor of love building our platform. This weekend we finally hit our Alpha release.
WOW. It’s rare that I try something that I think will completely change an industry. Yes, I’m talking about a product my team has built, but I like to think I can still be objective. And there’s a big difference between thinking that something is good and thinking that something is game changing.
iLovePhotos is game changing. I’ve never seen or used anything like it. Even though I’ve been closely involved in the development of this software since day one, every time I see a new internal release, I’m blown away.
This isn’t a Twitter meets Flickr meets Facebook meets YouTube clone. This is a completely original concept. In a sea of companies trying to build a better mousetrap widget, iLovePhotos is a completely new way of thinking about and interacting with your personal content.
Think text based interface evolved to GUI. Think Game Cube evolved to Nintendo Wii. A desktop photo application that automatically organizes your photos and brings them back into your life. Yes, automatically. It’s so simple, anyone can use it, even the most tech illiterate of computer users.
I can’t wait to release Beta!
I like to think that every entrepreneur is in it because they love to do what their doing. Personally, I love the process of creating something from nothing. I really really love creating value where there was none before and all the challenges that come with that.
Part of what I think makes people successful is being able to identify personal weaknesses and delegate those to people who can do it much better. For example, every person I hire is smarter than me. No doubt about it. I mean, honestly, why would I hire them if they weren’t smarter than me in some way?
As I’m preparing to raise our next round of funding for Blue Lava Technologies, I’ve stumbled across a personal weakness. I _hate_ accounting. I mean, I really really hate creating balance, income, and cashflow statements. Don’t get me wrong, I love the data. That’s some of the most important data any entrepreneur has to make good decision and be sure that the business is running well. I just hate putting it all together, which is the job I’ve been tasked with for the last two weeks.
It’s made me really appreciate how much I love everything else I do. It’s also made me realize that I need to hire a CFO to handle this for me in the future. So if you know anyone, let me know.
Oh yeah, we’re also looking for a really good COO and Project Manager.
To those of you who know me in the real world you might have noticed that I’ve gone into hyper stress mode. I’m actually not that much fun to be around these days. My apologies. We’re about to raise our next round of funding and the perfectionist in me wants to make sure that everything is, well, perfect.
I was doing some research and came across some pretty crazy stats from InfoTrends. In 2006, a cumulative total of about 330 billion images were saved on a worldwide basis. This number is expected to jump to about 880 billion by 2010. On average, U.S. digital camera owners currently have about 1,000 images saved and this number grows larger every day. By 2010, there will be about a trillion images saved on hard disks, optical media, and other storage devices.
Sharing these photos and finding specific photos out of all these images is becoming a daunting, if not impossible task.
Progress…. Wow!
I’ve been traveling a lot lately, so I didn’t have a chance to see some of the latest updates from the Blue Lava team. Recently I saw a demo of our desktop application which we’ll be releasing under ilovephotos.com next month.
Holy Shit!! The software is vastly improved from the last version I saw. I can’t believe how much it’s changed. It actually feels like something we could release. It’s amazing. Chad and Cory have been hauling ass on the interface, completely mastering the front end, making it beautiful and functional. They have seriously outdone themselves.
