Last night I drifted back to my Mac at about 9 PM. I’d installed the new iLife for 09 on my Mac earlier, after dinner. I started fooling around with iPhoto. By the time I pulled myself away it was the next day. I clicked to my Twitter account and wrote:
oh no I just spent 3 hours doing maps and faces in the new iPhoto … I had so many better things to do, but it’s spellbinding. Damn!
And immediately after, I added — because it’s also true:
and also the new iPhoto mapping led me to download the new Google Earth, also spellbinding … don’t start if you have other things to do.
Which is a good reminder to me of why I like this business; software, and technology marching on. The face recognition feature on iPhoto probably isn’t game changing — reviewers are generally not impressed — but for me it’s really cool. Or, as I said in the tweet, spellbinding. And the mapping feature is a terrific addition. And Google Earth’s new version 5.0 is just plain amazing technology. I could spend hours, days, weeks with it. Especially the combination, posting my 50 years of photos onto the map.
It’s also interesting how technology develops. I was dabbling with tying photos to maps and looking at face recognition three years ago as my son and his wife developed amiglia.com, a photo site. As time goes on, the technology gets better, and the bigger players adopt it.
And other businesses develop in their wake. Google Earth and Google Maps have generated thousands of new applications. Easy photo management, photo mapping, and easy application of face recognition will also create new opportunities.
Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com. Follow him on Twitter @Timberry.
