Webshots just put out a new experimental product called the shoebox. It is a way bookmark and share photos from around the Web.

http://shoebox.webshots.com

I am also maintaining the shoebox blog as the product grows.

[Disclosure: I am a founder of Webshots and currently employed by CNET Networks]

Thomas Hawk’s recent musings on image search got my brain spinning. My thoughts (forgive the haphazard sequence):

Webshots has been terrified of Microsoft since we were a three person outfit in 1995 providing content and “photo sharing” with a windows screensaver. To us it seemed like at some point, Redmond would start including photos with the OS. It took many years for that to happen and it never happened in the doomsday scenario we imagined–an integration with Gates’ own Corbis. How about a library of Corbis images for MCE!

We are witnessing the democratization of photography and the resulting downward pressure on the “value” of images as they become commodities. The days of Life magazine are long over and the long tail has arrived. (more…)

From today’s New York Times article talking about the new Web.

For Ms. Fake of Flickr, however, the business model is still secondary. “We’re creating a culture of generosity,” she said.

I may work for a competitor but I am a Yahoo! shareholder too and I am pretty interested in the business model!

Unless…the flickr acquisition was a multimillion dollar PR spend. In which case, I have one word — genius.

I have just completed migrating to WordPress! Matt, I hope you are happy now.

Moving from TypePad to WP 1.5x gets a difficulty rating of moderate. The codex instructions explaining a Movable Type switch are solid, but I ran into a few glitches.

Before my notes, just a couple of thoughts on why I made the switch. TypePad is a great product but it sits in the middle of a continuum for self-publishing and I found myself increasingly appreciating the flexibility and very clean UI of WordPress (it doesn’t hurt that it is free!)

Notes:

• Some thought is required on a “zero down time” move when migrating your domain name. I migrated before pulling the DNS switch
• It took 4 attempts before the WP importer got all of my posts into the new system. There is a known issue with the process hanging. I just kept trying and it would import a bunch more at a time (I had ~30 entries.)
• If you have spent a lot of time devising a custom style sheet then you have some work cut out for you. I am somewhat new to CSS and basically upgraded my existing blog to a Kubrick derivative. The CSS in Kubrick isn’t the cleanest code particularly the scattered use of formatting (e.g. jamming margins in h2 descriptions). That said, it only took about 2 hours to get something I like better than my old version!
• The biggest pain is porting the permalinks. The methods described are primarily for MT users as TypePad is a hosted solution. I settled on a big .htaccess file with redirects. A lot of back and forth and typing. About 4 seconds after finishing, I managed to delete the file I had been working on and had to start over (Grrr…)
• With my individual posts, I had some line break issues in about 25% of them so I went through every entry to make sure it looked good.
• If you had any additional assets (e.g. photos) at TP, you need to migrate those over to the new site. I created a new filing structure but you could try to mimic the old one. I use WebDrive to mount my remote sites which made this very easy, a quick save as to the remote folder. Once you have the assets on the new server you need to edit any posts that reference them. The Kubrick template also defaults to excerpts on the index page which left me scratching my head for a while because my photoblog photos weren’t showing up there!

That’s it. Took 4-5 hours but I am also learning as I go.

Oh, and WordPress rocks.

I was fortunate to complete this triathlon over the weekend! It is always a thrill to jump from a ferry in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.  The swim is a big unknown but thanks to location based information (coming soon around the planet) some things are being demystified.

How far is it from Alcatraz to the Marina Green beach? Well, it isn’t the 1.5 miles that Tricalifornia claims. Have a look at this GPS activity from Motion Based, a very cool company doing slick stuff with location data.  Would you believe 2.16 miles. Of course, outside of intimidating a newbie, the actual distance is mostly moot due to the tides that are chosen for race day (very friendly, I am an OK swimmer and did it in 44 minutes).

Here is a breakdown of all of the disciplines (it curiously omits the swim data that is available in the first link). Turns out that the run is 0.75 miles shorter than advertised!

Walt Mossberg has officially sanctioned blogging for the masses.  His blog at msn spaces is about baseball (he is a Red Sox fanatic). I hope he updates it frequently because there aren’t that many good baseball blogs out there. The only peril is if he gets consumed by it, loses his day job at the WSJ and is relegated to supporting himself with Google AdSense pennies…

Jumped the gun on my Yahoo! dominance. I am no longer in the top spot.

This blog is now the top result for "narendra" in the Yahoo! Search results.  Hoping to conquer google next!