Sunday, September 17, 2006

Waiting for camera manufacturers

Jeffrey Veen

You know I'm not writing code since I've been posting a lot, and also reading feeds. But one last post...

"But simplicity isn't just interface improvements, but acknowledging the right tool for the job. One of the things that has always impressed me about the iPod, for example, is that the devices have no capacity for editing metadata, deleting or moving songs, or any of the other mundane tasks of maintaining your music library. Instead, designers at Apple moved all those tasks to iTunes, exploiting your computer's keyboard, mouse, and screen real estate. Flickr takes the same approach. They could have waited for camera manufacturers to add GPS chips or asked cameraphone users to thumb in their location. They chose, however, to exploit the fact that metadata can be added asynchronously without much penalty."

spoke to me. I have been thinking about this, and was wondering if geo metadata was in pictures. My initial thought was, camera vendors really need to move beyond just taking pictures. Cameras should send photos to a repository automatically over wifi, or cameras should record not only when but also where you took a photo.

Sometimes, you can't, because you don't have any control over those products. Therefore, you make due with whatever interface is available to tie things together first, and then slowly make it better.

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