

Photomatic - brendanlim
http://photomaticapp.com/r/ixEh4lfH

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canistr
Does anyone find it weird that a "Show HN" kind of lacks on the "Show" aspect.

All the site really has is a beta signup button and one screenshot. I
personally don't want to give you any information (including my email) for
something I barely understand or see.

~~~
krapp
I understand this is SOP for startups - put up a form, start getting emails,
start making money, then at some point down the road maybe actually offer a
minimally viable product.

But a "Show HN" to me should definitely include more than this, I believe. The
audience for these threads isn't potential customers but fellow programmers,
hackers and entrepreneurs.

~~~
tannerc
Agreed. I haven't been tuned-in long enough to know, but have any companies
tried landing pages (or similar) offering an "exclusive" first look at a
product via a Show HN link?

I wonder what the community response to something like that might be. I know
I'd personally appreciate a company taking the time to put it together,
particularly if they tout the "hacking" aspects of the product or how it came
about.

~~~
bramm
I can't remember if it was on HN or DN, but I have seen exclusive access to a
site for readers recently.

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BorisMelnik
Agreeing with all that has already been said and the fact that it lacks a
product or something to test, even the descriptions are very vague.

" _Amazing photo albums created from all of your photos automatically - it 's
the best photo organizer ever made._"

What photo albums? Facebook? From my hard drive?

" _Never worry about your photos again. You can choose what albums to
backup_..."

Where? In a cloud infrastructure you own and manage or within one of my own
existing backup solutions?

Ok you want to collect signups for a beta, fine. But at least have a video,
thorough descriptions, about us, mission statement, links to press etc.

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PeterWhittaker
I hate to "me too", but I agree with all of the comments so far. There is
simply too little there to "show" me anything, and too little to make me want
to go any further.

HN needs a way to upvote a whole bunch of comments without all the tedious
clicking. Or a way of indicating that the comments are worthy, the original
topic of discussion is not (and therefore not worthy of upvoting).

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Jemaclus
I don't want to detract from this team or anything, because this looks very
pretty and well done. But on the other hand, I have to ask... Do we really
need another photo organizer? I'm an amateur photographer, and I take a ton of
photos, but I rarely need anything better than Flickr or Dropbox or even a
Facebook photo album. What's the selling point for "a better photo organizer"?
Is this a pain point that's big enough to justify this kind of time and energy
investment? Or is a "photo organizer" app the new to-do app for showing off
mobile design skills?

Aren't there more pressing problems to solve out there?

(Not trying to be snarky, btw. Just kinda thinking out loud. I fully support
the developers' ability and right to build whatever they want. I just kinda
think this is a first-world problem that has already been solved to death.)

~~~
rgbrgb
Alright, so Google image search is cool right? Imagine if you could do that
with your own photos without tagging and such... I want to find pictures of my
dog so I search "dog". Or I want to send my mom all the pictures from my
vacation so I search "puerto vallarta" and share the album it creates. There's
a lot of cool stuff left to do at the intersection of image processing and
photo collections. I'm all for parties other than Google working on problems
like this. This app looks like the first stab at an MVP in that domain.

~~~
Jemaclus
Right, so I agree with you that it's cool. What I'm getting at though is... is
it necessary? Wouldn't all of your vacation photos be roughly in the same
spot, since you took them at the same time and presumably put them in the same
album? (The dog example is more compelling, but you get my point.)

Is this a problem _worth solving_? It just seems to me like it's more of a
solution in search of a problem -- and photo management is largely a very
solved problem. The number of people who have so many photos that they can't
sort through them quickly is probably really low. The entities that would get
the most out of this kind of technology are places like Facebook and Google.

Put another way: is releasing a photo management app into a market flooded
with photo organization apps worth the time, money, and effort put into it?
Are there other equally cool problems out there that are actually problems
that need to be solved in markets that are not saturated at all?

My go-to example of something like this is something I heard at SF Nerd Nite
([http://sf.nerdnite.com](http://sf.nerdnite.com)) where one non-profit is
using drones to help farmers manage their huge tracts of land. That sounds
like a really cool solution to a startlingly common problem in that industry.
Right now, farmers tend to have to go out in person and spot-check parts of
their fields, but there's no way for them to get a detailed look at
_everything_ really fast... that's where drones come in. They fly over, snap
hi-res photos of the fields, and then bring them up on the computer screen --
all while the farmer is making coffee and eating breakfast.

So I mean -- and again just from a thinking out loud standpoint, because I
totally get how cool Photomatic is from an image processing standpoint -- what
I'm trying to get at is... does the world need yet another photo organizing
app? Is _this_ really what we think the world (or even the tech industry, or
even the mobile app industry) needs?

Maybe it is. Maybe not.

I understand how this is cool and how it could be useful, though, and I
totally agree that it would be great if someone besides Google/FB could
develop something like this... and then hold out and not get bought by those
companies.

Finally, just in case it's not 100% clear, I'm not picking on Photomatic. It
really does look very well done and I'm definitely impressed with the tech
behind it. I'm really thinking more along the lines of most of the stuff I see
on Show HN. The vast majority of the apps on Show HN are what I call "first-
world solutions." That is, they're for problems that I don't really think are
epic problems. Yeah, okay, so maybe we can organize photos a bit better, or
maybe the to-do app really is the worst way to manage something, or maybe
there just isn't a perfect invoicing system out there.

But at the end of the day, millions upon millions of people out there manage
their photos just fine, get things done just fine, and invoice customers just
fine without a shiny new app. So, other than as a learning exercise or
portfolio piece, why bother? Why not invest that time and money and energy
into solving something that truly stymies people, inhibits progress, and
prevents mankind from reaching ever greater heights? (Which, incidentally,
would double as both a learning exercise and a portfolio piece, while also
"saving the world".)

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Hope I don't offend too many people.

P.S. Thanks for a serious answer. :)

~~~
rgbrgb
Yeah, I completely agree that organizing consumer photo albums is not the
biggest problem. However, what I'm trying to say is that (consciously or not)
Photomatic found a viable (looking) way to work on basic research problems in
computer vision. And as you mention, the technology could have much broader
applications if it makes enough money and gets enough users so that is can be
developed and scaled.

The drone company you're talking about faces at least 3 large problems that
need solutions before they can make their first dollar of profit: 1) drone
automation, 2) image processing, 3) customer education. That's going to take a
lot of upfront investment. I'd go as far as to say that the photo organization
app solves a proper subset of the drone farming app you describe.

All I'm saying is that I think you should hold judgement when a relatively
boring _application_ is solving some pretty hard problems under the hood.
Often the application is boring because it's a low-risk vehicle to work on
good problems. I'm of the opinion that a lot of really valuable technology
(like valuable to humanity) is being developed under the guise of social
networking and Apps. For me (for now at least), whether the apps are truly
great art or revolutionary tools is a tertiary concern to making progress on
and directing funding towards the more basic research problems that they're
based on.

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vinkelhake
> Amazing photo albums created from all of your photos automatically - it's
> the best photo organizer ever made.

Ok..? Should I just take your word for it? Got a demo of the organizer up
somewhere? I must be missing something.

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hrktb
If it's just an app, I guess there won't be much integration with OSX and web
clients ? e.g. a way to integrate a massive amount of already existing photos
that won't be on the phone. Or add the new photos taken from time to time with
a DSLR, or integrate with Lightroom or other photo management applications.

While thre's not much details available, it brings a lot of (perhaps undue)
sceptism from the start.

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shapov
The 4 features that are mentioned on the front page, do not differ from the
features already provided by the default Photo App.

> it's the best photo organizer ever made

Perhaps you should elaborate on that, or at least provide a visual
demonstration.

