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Google Tried To Buy Color For $200 Million. Color Said No.

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Re: Google Tried To Buy Color For $200 Million. Color Said No.

#91

Post by DarkShikari »

derefr wrote: post #73
DarkShikari wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether there's good money in solving this sort of problem is another question -- but sorting through shared photos at events is a surprisingly hard problem, as I learned recently. I attended Anime Expo 2011 in costume. Over the course of the two days I was there, I probably had at least 100 people stop me for photos -- not unexpected with thousands of people walking around carrying cameras. I attended a photo shoot…

Sounds like a good case for NFC. Put RFIDs in the attendee badges, and a sufficiently-advanced camera app could auto-tag those people as the picture is taken.

Does that sort of technology work directionally? Typically the place was so crowded that you'd often have 40 other people within 15 feet when taking a photo, so it'd have to identify exactly the people in front of the camera, and not to your sides or behind you.

Re: Google Tried To Buy Color For $200 Million. Color Said No.

#92

Post by nir »

zoul wrote: post #12

I feel like I live in a different universe. Can please someone explain to me what rational thinking might be behind such offers?

There isn't rational thinking behind this. There's a lot of money and a growing fear of becoming irrelevant.

The people running a company like Google don't necessarily have wisdom you don't - see Microsoft, Yahoo! or (especially after dismantling Google Labs) AOL.

Re: Google Tried To Buy Color For $200 Million. Color Said No.

#94

Post by abraham »

DarkShikari wrote: post #63
natural219 wrote: post #45

I might be the only person in the universe who thinks Color is a fantastic idea, but not because it's trying to be an uber-cool new social network. Location-based photo sharing is an incredible idea. When I'm at an event -- say, a concert -- there are hundreds of people around me taking lots of different pictures. I want those pictures, but I don't know any of those people. Imagine going to a venue, not bringing a ca…

Whether there's good money in solving this sort of problem is another question -- but sorting through shared photos at events is a surprisingly hard problem, as I learned recently. I attended Anime Expo 2011 in costume. Over the course of the two days I was there, I probably had at least 100 people stop me for photos -- not unexpected with thousands of people walking around carrying cameras. I attended a photo shoot…

If you have a seed image then Google Search by Images solves this to some extent.

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searchbyimage.html

Re: Google Tried To Buy Color For $200 Million. Color Said No.

#95

Post by onan_barbarian »

DarkShikari wrote: post #63
natural219 wrote: post #45

I might be the only person in the universe who thinks Color is a fantastic idea, but not because it's trying to be an uber-cool new social network. Location-based photo sharing is an incredible idea. When I'm at an event -- say, a concert -- there are hundreds of people around me taking lots of different pictures. I want those pictures, but I don't know any of those people. Imagine going to a venue, not bringing a ca…

Whether there's good money in solving this sort of problem is another question -- but sorting through shared photos at events is a surprisingly hard problem, as I learned recently. I attended Anime Expo 2011 in costume. Over the course of the two days I was there, I probably had at least 100 people stop me for photos -- not unexpected with thousands of people walking around carrying cameras. I attended a photo shoot…

This is true for what it's worth (and you acknowledge that there may not be 'good money' in solving this problem).

If you _really_ wanted a picture of yourself from the expo, you'd have gotten someone to take a photo of you. So your interest (given that it comes from after the fact friend-curiosity) is right at that marginal level.

If you just wanted some non-specific photos of the expo without any particular goal in mind, that's already easily done, as you saw.

So what you're looking at here is people with specific goals in analyzing a photo stream but who didn't, for one reason or another, turn up and take photos to meet these goals. I don't know if you can make any kind of money - good or otherwise - from providing a service to such a marginal set of customers.

The exception might be law enforcement - find some better photos of the guy who followed a woman into a bathroom at exactly 12:42, or the person who grabbed someone's purse, etc.

Re: Google Tried To Buy Color For $200 Million. Color Said No.

#96

Post by sparky »

DarkShikari wrote: post #91
derefr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a good case for NFC. Put RFIDs in the attendee badges, and a sufficiently-advanced camera app could auto-tag those people as the picture is taken.

Does that sort of technology work directionally? Typically the place was so crowded that you'd often have 40 other people within 15 feet when taking a photo, so it'd have to identify exactly the people in front of the camera, and not to your sides or behind you.

GP conflated RFID and NFC a bit, at least their colloquially accepted meanings. What we normally call 'NFC' has a range of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_field_communication). This is what also makes NFC more suitable for mobile payments than RFID.

Re: Google Tried To Buy Color For $200 Million. Color Said No.

#98

Post by JED3 »

natural219 wrote: post #45

I might be the only person in the universe who thinks Color is a fantastic idea, but not because it's trying to be an uber-cool new social network. Location-based photo sharing is an incredible idea. When I'm at an event -- say, a concert -- there are hundreds of people around me taking lots of different pictures. I want those pictures, but I don't know any of those people. Imagine going to a venue, not bringing a ca…

There is a startup out of Raleigh, NC that's trying to solve this exact problem.

deja Mi has built an iPhone app that allows you to capture media and upload it to a collection of media assigned to the specific venue or event you're attending. You can hear the spiel straight from the horse's mouth here: http://www.mycarolinatoday.com/2011/07/deja-mi/

On a side note, for those local to the Triangle, NC there's going to be free concerts throughout the weekend in downtown Raleigh to kick off the release of their app. The lineup of musicians is very impressive, go check it out if you're able. More details: http://dejami.com/dejafest

http://dejami.com/ http://itunes.apple.com/app/deja-mi/id447681380?mt=8

Re: Google Tried To Buy Color For $200 Million. Color Said No.

#99

Post by derefr »

sparky wrote: post #96
DarkShikari wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that sort of technology work directionally? Typically the place was so crowded that you'd often have 40 other people within 15 feet when taking a photo, so it'd have to identify exactly the people in front of the camera, and not to your sides or behind you.

GP conflated RFID and NFC a bit, at least their colloquially accepted meanings. What we normally call 'NFC' has a range of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_field_communication ). This is what also makes NFC more suitable for mobile payments than RFID.

Hmm; true. Maybe just passes with large, simple QR codes on the front of them, then? Then the device taking the picture wouldn't even have to decode them just-in-time; the data would be encapsulated in the picture itself.

Re: Google Tried To Buy Color For $200 Million. Color Said No.

#100

Post by megablast »

nextparadigms wrote: post #72

In Groupon's case ($6 bn offer), Twitter's case ($10 bn offer) and now Color, I feel as if Google got lucky those companies didn't want to sell, because it seems they would've been a huge waste of money. Google seems to be pretty happy about over-spending on these companies, but is extremely cautious about over-spending for patents that could save Android in the long term.

I guess that with the patent issue, Google evaluated the fact that it will be cheaper to fight them, using lobbying, and licensing, than to pay that much for them.
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