Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap • Hacker News Board

Re: Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap

#21

Post by defen » Fri, Mar 25, 2011, 1:55 AM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #4

I'm fascinated by this Photo-Sharing-is-tip-of-the-iceberg tidbit: "A few feats of engineering brilliance hide under Color's slick surface. How does the app determine who's in the same room with you? Not with GPS, which is flummoxed by floors because it can't distinguish vertical distances between people. So Nguyen's team taught Color to use a phone's lighting and audio sensors, stitching their signals together with…

But what happens if you have 500 people in different rooms in the same building? "Detecting when people are taking pictures at roughly the same time in the same room" sounds like an awesome piece of technology with about zero practical uses in terms of iPhone apps. Sure, if you have a bunch of uncoordinated autonomous fly-robot things, it would be great to give them really cheap sensors and stitch everything together Dark Knight style, but who needs this in an iPhone app?

Re: Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap

#22

Post by sbarre » Fri, Mar 25, 2011, 1:55 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #13

tptacek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... it's the great photo sharing app of all time , then? Um, ok? $41MM? When's the last time you had even the faintest urge to share a photo? I'm a geek, and that urge hits maybe once every other week.

I think his point is that the photo sharing is little more than a proof of concept. The exciting thing is the automation of ad-hoc networking. The internet collapses geography, but as a result it does a poor job of many tasks at the local level - search for 'Bob's diner' and you may find that you're just on the wrong side of the block, or you might get info on cheap flights to some completely other city containing a…

I had the same thought (roughly)..

Their concept of an "elastic" network that naturally decays your connections with people you associate with less is a perfect complement to a network that self-organizes in the first place.

Re: Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap

#23

Post by Lewisham » Fri, Mar 25, 2011, 1:57 AM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #11

tptacek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPad is a computer that, as far as my mom is concerned, you never have to boot, don't have to think about the operating system on, don't require peripherals for, can stick in your purse, can tap 3-4 times to get install any of 10's of thousands of applications, can tap 3-4 times to install any of thousands of movies and TV shows on, and costs half of what a cheap laptop cost only recently. Can you inform me of th…

It took me over a year before I "got" twitter. Now it would be hard to see how I could replace it - tracking outages, ongoing event updates, what my friends are up to, revolutions in Egypt - Heck, our company's public feed is actually the best way for me to track what's happening at our company than our internal mailing lists. Of course, it remains to be seen whether there's any money in it. Everyone I know uses AIM…

This is a fair point, and one I hadn't considered. Bravo!

But, getting Twitter doesn't mean Twitter pre-any-users-at-all was worth investing $41m at a possible $80m valuation. It might still not be, as it has no business plan to speak of.

I guess I'm naive, but I usually apply the "can (Facebook|Google|Big Company of the Decade) copy this quickly?" as a measure for the value of a service, but then again, it doesn't seem to apply for Place checkins (neither Facebook nor Google seem to have made too much traction against FourSquare) nor GroupOn. I guess that's why I'm not an investor :)

Re: Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap

#24

Post by huhtenberg » Fri, Mar 25, 2011, 2:01 AM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #4

I'm fascinated by this Photo-Sharing-is-tip-of-the-iceberg tidbit: "A few feats of engineering brilliance hide under Color's slick surface. How does the app determine who's in the same room with you? Not with GPS, which is flummoxed by floors because it can't distinguish vertical distances between people. So Nguyen's team taught Color to use a phone's lighting and audio sensors, stitching their signals together with…

Yeah, I too noticed the mic and camera monitoring being an integral part of the app. It seems to me they realize privacy issues stemming from this and are trying to downplay them by calling the microphone an "audio sensor". And this just does not sit right with me. Feeding users half-truths for their own sake is a slippery path.

But perhaps I am overreacting.

Re: Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap

#25

Post by BoppreH » Fri, Mar 25, 2011, 2:05 AM UTC

zachrose wrote: post #15

wallflower wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is photo sharing this generation's equivalent of the mandatory family Kodachrome slide show?

It's not a wheel. It's a carousel.

Quote from the scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bLNkCqpuY

An example of perfect marketing.

Re: Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap

#26

Post by konop » Fri, Mar 25, 2011, 2:11 AM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #9

So let's call Color the Rebecca Black of Web 2.0. Too immature, too early to tell, too much attention out of nowhere, too much momentum for too little effort. But it looks good, right?

Rebecca Black is already profitable...

Re: Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap

#27

Post by kgptv22 » Fri, Mar 25, 2011, 2:32 AM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #9

So let's call Color the Rebecca Black of Web 2.0. Too immature, too early to tell, too much attention out of nowhere, too much momentum for too little effort. But it looks good, right?

Or the Miami Heat of Web 2.0...

Re: Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap

#28

Post by danilocampos » Fri, Mar 25, 2011, 2:51 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #6

danilocampos wrote: post #3

I'm reminded of the nerd response to iPad. I don't have a dog in the hunt, but the idea behind Color is interesting. It could crash and burn but I'll reserve judgment until I see normal people (non-nerds) engaging with it. Meanwhile, the vehemence is weird from everyone, especially Gruber. I wonder if he would have posted the same entry if Color had a Lonely Sandwich video.

The iPad is a computer that, as far as my mom is concerned, you never have to boot, don't have to think about the operating system on, don't require peripherals for, can stick in your purse, can tap 3-4 times to get install any of 10's of thousands of applications, can tap 3-4 times to install any of thousands of movies and TV shows on, and costs half of what a cheap laptop cost only recently. Can you inform me of th…

> The iPad is a computer that, as far as my mom is concerned...

Preaching to the choir, man. iPad is amazing, especially for mom.

But the point stands: nerds, especially as a group, have no idea what people want.

Re: Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap

#29

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 25, 2011, 2:56 AM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #9

So let's call Color the Rebecca Black of Web 2.0. Too immature, too early to tell, too much attention out of nowhere, too much momentum for too little effort. But it looks good, right?

[deleted]

Re: Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap

#30

Post by GregKrajewski » Fri, Mar 25, 2011, 2:56 AM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #9

So let's call Color the Rebecca Black of Web 2.0. Too immature, too early to tell, too much attention out of nowhere, too much momentum for too little effort. But it looks good, right?

I am betting money there will be a "Double Rainbow" parody video made with Sequoia execs seeing "color" for the 1st time.