The fact that lavalife is the originator of this contest actually makes it even more interesting. I’ll admit to it, I’ve used lavalife in the past. Online dating so far has really been an expanded version of the newspaper classifieds. Basically more words than you’d normally put in the newspaper and some pictures if you want. Video now I think is also possible, but there’s been video dating agencies before the internet too. Nonetheless, all the dating sites I have known were basically the same thing, a storefront for an ad for yourself. (I may be slightly outdated, I haven’t really looked at the latest offerings.)

This contest makes it interesting. There’s something organically genuine about showing people the world that’s around you, like somehow that also defines very well who you are, more than seeing you directly. You have to admit that there’s a big difference between reading “I have played the piano for many years and would never stop even if I never become a professional” and seeing a picture of the piano in my living room under the heading “A picture of the most important item in my house”.

I’m a little confused about how separate the snap contest is from the general lavalife website. The contest sounds fun, but I’m not so interested in participating in it if I have to sign up to lavalife and create a profile. (Not that I’d expect to get tons of propositions, but I’m just not interested.) Would there be a different platform to host such a contest?

There is something similar on the forums at Digital Photography Review, namely on the Pentax SLR Talk forum. There’s a weekly assignement challenge contest. The previous week winner makes up a theme and people post images. Essentially a very similar concept, but the platform is not superbly well adapted. If you’ve used forums before, you can imagine all sorts of threads getting created to submit images and for people to vote on pictures. It works. People make it work. But it’s definitely not ideal.

I could see someone creating an application on facebook to do something similar. That would be something quite interesting. The platform is right, one could build all the necessary tools. What’s missing now is, as in lavalife’s case, the proper community. Most people on facebook aren’t photographers. It could be that making it an application would make the process self-selecting. People interested in the application would recommend it to friends who would be genuinely interested in submitting photographs. But how about letting people see the pictures easily? Facebook just feels too general.

What I’d like to see is a site like Flickr or Photography Voice build a site with an API so people can build applications that mesh into their site. Imagine if could build applications on flickr. I could go on there and build all the machinery to allow people to participate in such a contest. Maybe open social APIs like the google initiative will change that. Somehow mesh (mashup? that seems to be the buzzword these days) strong online communities with social networking infrastructures.

“Computing in the cloud” seems to refer to a number of different concepts most of which would appear to “blend the desktop with the internet”. Essentially, when you would be working on your computer (referred to as the desktop), you would really also be working on the internet. Instead of “computing in the cloud”, you may have heard “software as a service”. In this case, you wouldn’t install applications on your desktop. Rather, you would log on to a website, which offers one or more “software”. You never own the software, you never install it, you upload your data to their servers and do your modifications there.

Adobe has talked about “software as a service” for photoshop, for example.

There have also been recent news reports (see here and here for examples) of microsoft coming out with “Windows Live Mesh”. If I understand anything of the press releases, the service would essentially link your desktop to servers accessible over the internet, so that your “desktop” is shared across the web and when you modify a file at work, you also modify it at home. Magically. It appears you could also elect to share parts of your desktop in “social networking” of some sort.

I see two main problems with these ideas, however neat they may be. One is monetization and the other is  ownership.

First, on the topic of monetization. I’m not going to say that it will be impossible for to monetize these services. Quite the contrary. I think it will be too easy to monetize these services! It appears to me that the big software companies now want to monetize their software more. Now that most of the people who use a computer know how to get pirated software, I’m guessing we’re either hitting a monetization barrier for the old system or a decrease in monetization possibilities. Essentially, I’m saying that everyone who’s going to buy software already does and the remainder of the market will not pay for your software no matter what. (Or at least, the coming of that day is dreaded.) Hence, you need to find a better way to monetize that segment of the market. What better way then to never actually sell you the software! All we do is sell you the capabilities of the software as an online service. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, were it not for the track record of some of the big guys in the field.

There was a recent announcement from Microsoft (again), saying they will discontinue their “Plays-for-sure” servers on september 1st 2008. The ironically named “plays-for-sure” format was meant to license music to people. You could buy music from microsoft and you had to get a license for every machine you wanted to get it to play on. When the servers go down, you’ll no longer be able to get new licenses and you’ll be stuck playing these files on whatever hardware you have a license for already. (Unless you just go the illegal way and rip the music to another format.)

In the light of the above example (and I’m sure there are others), one can’t help but feeling trapped by the company. Here I am, paying for my online photoshop service and, one day, they decide that stitiching panoramas is too load intensive, so we’ll charge more for it. Hold on. I stitch panoramas all the time! That’s why I pay for the photoshop service in the first place! Or how about microsoft deciding one day that its “live mesh” isn’t profitable enough changes model and just shuts down its servers. I’m planning a 4 month trip around the world soon, do I really want to be in Asia with possibly no access to important data when this happens?

Another problem is that of ownership. It’s quite evident that some segments of the population will never trust other people with their data. I work for a US National Lab and based on the corporate culture here and the type of work we do, I get the distinct feeling we will NEVER be allowed to edit a report on an online version of word. No matter how cool this idea may sound to management and IT. (Think no software updates, ever. Wouldn’t the IT folks be happy about that one!) But aside from government agencies, I can see other people who would feel uneasy about such an arrangement. For example, I make these huge panoramas. (I’ve printed a 48″ long image once and that wasn’t the full resolution, just as large as I could print it.) I’m not making money on these panoramas (although my mom loves them), but I could plan to one day. I don’t really trust online services with my high-resolution originals. I have friends who are actual (paid and professional) photographers. I don’t see them liking such all-encompassing online services so much. To be fair, they have advantages. They could go on assignment in the Sahara with a tiny machine, put the memory stick in there and, voilà, it’s shared with the editor’s desk in Montreal. But does this convenience outweigh the risks? I don’t trust microsoft to never have a glitch and get hacked. Even Google, who so far benefits from still looking largely like the good guy around the block, has seen exploits of the gmail service. There are some things for which I don’t really want to trust a large company like microsoft. Have you ever tried to call microsoft customer service when hotmail failed to work? That’s right. You just said “oh well, it will start again soon.” Now imagine that everything you do on your computer depends on microsoft. I’m not sure I want to go there.

Being a free software advocate and linux fan and user myself, I’m actually not that scared about the possibility of software as a service and “desktop in the cloud” ideas. I have recently convinced a fervent microsoft user and lover friend of mine to use a piece of free software, The Gimp. This friend’s computer was reformatted last week (too many viruses) and I tried to suggest we install linux on a small partition so he can try it out, just to see. You should have seen his reaction. I thought I had sprayed a witch with holy water. You can imagine why it was a big thing to get him to use The Gimp. The Gimp is a free software alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It’s not quite as powerful as Photoshop (currently it only works in 8 bit spaces if you really want to know, feel free to ignore), but for many, many, many people, I’m sure that would suffice. As it turns out, there’s a whole segment of the population who steals software. (Shocking!) When stealing commercial software will not be an option anymore (or not a practical one), a portion of that segment will be convertible to free software alternatives. More users, more testing, more developement, better free software… You get the picture…

Microsoft has recently said they’re thinking of “leasing” as a “service” more parts of windows. Parts you already use. This is probably great news for linux. One of the main barriers to the adoption of linux by normal people and not just the über-geeks is the fact that windows is preinstalled on every…single…pc…you…buy. Every single one of them. People often complain installing linux is hard, people don’t know how to format drives. Guess what? Installing windows is hard too, you just never do it. On top of it, the price of microsoft windows is pretty much always included in the price of the computer. Essentially, it’s perceived as free, when, really, it isn’t completely free. When people start having to pay to convert a jpg to a gif, the cost of windows will become more apparent. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) alternatives will become more appealing. Essentially, annoyance has a price. The current perceived spending is zero. When the current perceived spending rises, a certain level of annoying will be considered. Annoyances such as “learning the difference between the odt and doc formats”, “learning how to install packages in linux rather than running executables in windows”, etc.

So I dream of the day (there’s my link to my title) the common man will consider foss software as an alternative. To be honest, I don’t think all software will eventually be free. Mass consumption software, I could see. Stuff like The Gimp and Firefox. Specialty software that only a small portion of the society uses may well be software you have to buy for a long, long time. I also dream of the day people realize that and start supporting linux when they sell software.

Seriously though, that is the power of the internet. Can you imagine if I’d posted this on traditional newspaper ads? First, it wouldn’t have made it out before the next morning (at best) if not the day after. Maybe a few days in the case of a weekly publication. Then what would the penetration of such an ad be? Anyway, you see my point. The internet is an impressive medium for the distribution of information and putting people in contact.

I’ve been discovering new social networks everyday. Here is one I find very interesting for discovering music. It has some elements of what I would see as a future sience social network (too bad that acronym is ssn, it could have been a good domain name).

Last.fm lets you discover music that is like something you already like. I think it works kind of the same way as the amazon “you might like this”feature. If enough people buy two of the same things, then when you buy one, amazon suggests the other. In this case as well, if enough people like two different artists, then when you say you like one, last.fm suggests the other.