Alex Hardy

Microsoft’s $44.6bn bid to buy Yahoo! is a hot topic at the moment to say the least. Since Microsoft offer a huge premium over Yahoo’s market value to its shareholders, the only real question seems to be whether the US government will permit the takeover. As a loyal user of Flickr (I paid my renewal fee last week), it makes me wonder what will become of it.

I believe they will sell Flickr. My reasons for this break down two ways: Positive reasons to “sell” it, and negative reasons to “get rid” of it. Here they are…

1. Sell: Flickr is not a “bubble” company. Unlike Facebook et al, Flickr provides a service that people will not tire of (photo sharing) and are prepared to pay for.
2. Sell: Flickr is profitable and would surely sell for a good price.
3. Get rid: Because it is a paid service, there is no advertising opportunity.
4. Sell: Flickr has an enthusiastic user base.
5. Get rid: The same user base were unhappy when Yahoo bought Flickr.
6. Get rid: Flickr is built on PHP and it isn’t Microsoft’s M.O. to support products based on a rival platform.
7. Get rid: Porting Flickr to .Net would be a massive and thankless task.
8. Get rid: Flickr does not fit within Microsoft’s Windows Live aesthetic.
9. Get rid: Its users would react negatively to any attempt to re-brand it so.
10. Get rid: Microsoft have already made technology investments in photo sharing, having recently bought WebFives.

For these reasons I think Microsoft will regard Flickr as more effort than it’s worth. This leaves the question: who will buy it?

UPDATE: As I thought, Flickr users don’t seem too keen on the buyout.

I got a bit of a buzz this morning when I noticed that one of my iPhone wallpapers was accepted to Pixelgirl Presents. It’s currently basking in the brief glow of front page status.

I’ve been a fan of that website for a couple of years now, and get many of my icons and wallpapers from there.

I don’t consider myself a hotshot photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but I have my moments. This makes me feel like making more of an effort

One of these days I’ll convince Jo to get a dedicated website for her illustration work. She’d kick ass.

Pixelmator is available now to buy (there is a 30-day trial). This is slightly later than originally projected, but that’s life in the world of software

I remarked in a previous post that this application looked like a possible alternative to Photoshop for the casual user or designer on a tight budget. I guess it’s time to find out if that’s true.

For $59 you can’t go far wrong.

When I saw this quote by Steve Jobs at this week’s London event I had a flashback:

The [iPhone] camera is great. More megapixels don’t make a better camera, the iPhone is actually a great camera especially with great lighting.

Oh good I thought… It’s back to the PowerPC vs x86 days and the megahertz myth. Here’s the problem: I concede the above remark is true, if evasive. All the pixels in the world evidently don’t help most camera phones take a decent picture when the subject is in motion or poor light.

… But it’s not about what a few know, is it? It’s about what most people believe, and the MHz argument pretty much fell on deaf ears in 2001. Simply put, people expect that the numbers marketed to them mean something, and bigger = better.

What’s more, when I had a play with an iPhone recently I thought the camera was poor. Laggy, awkward to use (because of the software trigger on the touch screen). No flash (so “great lighting” might be hard to find – forget about taking it to a gig).

What it needs is a campaign of proving its quality by direct comparison, and upgrade the sensor to satisfy the uneducated consumer. iPhone is expensive compared to a Nokia N95 (£360 dearer over 18 months), and only looks tempting if you consider it a worthy replacement for your phone, iPod and digital camera.

At the moment, it’s two out of three at best.

While I was playing around with colour palettes from my photos I thought it would be kinda fun to put some wallpapers on my site. Some of them work pretty nicely in portrait format so here are three to be going on with:

If you’re hungry for more, then check out the iPhone Wallpapers Flickr Group and Pixelgirl Presents.

I think between Flickr and COLOURlovers I have discovered a new addiction!

When you work as a developer full-time, it’s easy to feel that your design skills are wasting away. One reason I started this website was to give myself a creative outlet. I enjoy reading about what’s happening in web design on sites like Styleboost and Web Creme, but it’s more stimulating to be actively creative, even in a small way.

I found the COLOURlovers website over the weekend and joined it right away:

COLOURlovers™ is a resource that monitors and influences color trends. COLOURlovers gives the people who use color - whether for ad campaigns, product design, or in architectural specification - a place to check out a world of color, compare color palettes, submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews.

I’ve started out by visiting some of my favourite photographs and drawing inspiration from them. After all, the best palettes are in nature, no? I think the next design for my website will start here

If you doubt that Microsoft retain some of the brightest minds in their industry, or like to believe that they are unable to innovate, then you should read about their Photosynth project and reconsider your position.

Phenomenal.

… in the UK. Back to business as usual. As the holiday starts to fade, I thought I’d post a few pictures. I’ll be adding more to my Flickr page soon.

Chicago is a fantastic city and New Orleans was brilliant too, in a wierd and seedy kinda way! It was great to see Brent and Lisa, and good to hear that they’ll be paying the UK a visit in December.

Back to work…

Aidas and Saulius Dailide have announced a consumer level image editing application for Mac OS X Tiger called Pixelmator. It is expected to ship in late July for $59.

It’s built on an array of Tiger technologies including Core Image, Spotlight and Automator. It should provide a convincing demonstration of the power of these technologies. Core Image in particular seems to be quite untapped, except to add occasional bells and whistles.

Although the application has been referred to as vaporware (due to it’s unreleased status) it’s worth bearing in mind that the Dailide brothers are founders of Jumsoft, another mac shareware company that has delivered some pretty nice apps. Money in particular springs to mind.

I think their credentials are strong enough not only to believe that the application is real, but that it will be worth a download.

In fact, you can find a video of Pixelmator on The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

I find it encouraging to see that there are still developers who have the courage to try and carve a niche for themselves, in the face of intimidating competition. Pixelmator may find a loyal following among people who would love to dabble in image editing, but can’t justify the expense of larger apps.

With its ability to import Photoshop documents, it could even present a viable option for web designers on a tight budget. Team it up with Coda, and you have a decent web development toolbox for about £80. That’s a bit of a bargain.

This is a well-worn issue by now, but I thought I’d throw my two cents worth in.

The American list price for Adobe CS3 Web Premium is $1599, which is £798 (give or take a few pennies). Yet mysteriously it is £1404.12 (inc VAT) in the UK! What’s even stranger is that if you select the ‘download’ option instead of ’ship the box to me’ on their website, it costs £1,445.95.

Let me recap: It costs more to download it than to get the boxed version!

In the UK we’re quite used to being overcharged. They don’t call it rip off Britain for nothing, but do the sums for yourself. You could book a return flight to America to buy it and have a night out with the change!

Adobe’s excuse for this appalling behaviour is the cost of localisation. Yet I look around my Adobe apps and find US English with ‘color’, ’stylize’ etc. So that is clearly a bare-faced lie. Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen states:

Our customer is not typically price sensitive. The cost of the tool isn’t what’s critical – it’s the productivity and what their output can be. They want to pay for value as long as we deliver innovative features that allow them to be more productive and creative.

Which sounds to me like “screw you guys, we’ll charge whatever we want.”

In an ideal world, designers and photographers across Europe would exercise the only power we have as customers and boycott CS3. Since that’s unlikely to happen, we can at least sign the petition on the matter.

It seems to me that Adobe has lost the plot and the acquisition of Macromedia was detrimental to the industry. They’ve turned from a company that cared about creativity to a fat, arrogant monopolist that should be taken down a peg or two.