Global warming of the head

June 3, 2007 by pmelcher.

Technology news : Google acquires Spanish company to add terrestrial images to Google earth. Humans can now geotag their images to a location as to provide a more detailed view of the world. The competition becomes, is there any place in the world that hasn’t been photographed yet ? the process involves uploading an images and locating it on a map so that others can see a closer view . Since this is not a photo sharing site, the question becomes who will spend their Sunday afternoon uploading images, placing them on a map with absolutely no retribution. You cannot see how many times your image was seen, or add comments or anything. My experience with human beings is that they usually do something, especially for free, if they can get something in exchange. In this model, I just do not quite see what they would get besides helping Google photograph the world.

Talking about geotagging, Flickr wanna be Zooomr has crash launched their version III. After many months of anticipation, sneak previews and other teasers, Zooomr Mark III went live for 10 minutes and completely crashed soon after. This version is supposed to let users price their images in the hopes of licensing them. Anticipation in the industry are running very low as the model has no potential for success. However, seems like the owners are more motivated by web stardom and in selling for a few billions dollars then really. It is the new San Fransisco gold rush.
PDN has launched its own internal user generate blog. Dividing itself to better conquer, VNU launched PDN Pulse, a second on line site with industry news. Not quite sure why they couldn’t just add the same info to their PDN newswire but corporation have mysterious ways and one should not question those.

And finally, the best for the last. While departing, “I am writing this looking over the busy industrial harbor of Hong Kong” CEO Steve Davis finishes a final world tour forgetting to thank the photographers who helped him build Corbis, new CEO Gary Shenk, also completely ignoring Corbis hard working “content providers”, goes all out with a new directive for the giant warehouse : “We’re going to be acutely focused on profitability over the next couple months”.

Now, that is something new and refreshing. As anyone told the new guy that is what Steve Davis has been saying for the last 14 years ?

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