BBC NEWS | Technology | Web photo storage market hots up
I have been thinking about this aspect of the web for some time - although admitedly on a broader outlook, at, as Marc Canter puts it 'Digital Lifestyle aggregations'. Photos are an essential place in a lot of people's lives - they convey meaning, emotion for time and place and can evoke powerful responses. As the article suggests they are also an important form of social history artifacts that offer incredible insight into people.
From a technology perspective it doesn't appear at first glance to be too much of an issue after all, storing phots isn't a problem - you just need more memory - and that's not expensive. The big 'but' though is format of the photo and its ongoing compatibility with future formats - something that has caused problems with such projects as the BBC's Doomsday Book project which was originally stored on VideoDiscs in BBC Micro format.
It also causes problems for people now too. Whilst digital formats are extremely easy to use, in terms of taking and storing personally, sharing digitally and physically can be an issue. My family have hundreds of stored photos but we rarely look at them unless they are stored physically because we don't have an obviously easily accessable digital viewer to hand (i.e. we have to switch on the PC and look at them there - not convenient - an my father in law leaves the photos on the memory card in the camera).
Ideally then a service that could provide a means of sharing, a device capable of showing pictures to their full effect which is portable, a means of showing pictures anywhere within the household and a means of printing high quality physical prints. And of course a format that is compatible cross devices and future proof.
Not asking for much am I?
Whilst there are a number of firms in and around this area, none of them have really caught the imagination or developed the 'killer app'.
I wonder whether a service that allows storage and view over TV, mobile, Internet with third party printing and perhaps rental or discounted pricing on a suitable mobile viewing device could be a business model that would work?
Anybody needs someone to help work up a business model?
Posted by Paul Goodison at January 19, 2005 09:42 AM | TrackBack