SeattlePi: "Flickr users, many of whom are amateurs, will be paid in the same manner as professionals if their images are used commercially. Getty customers usually pay between $29 and $200,000 for an image, depending on how freely they may use it. Photographers receive 30 percent to 40 percent of the licensing fee if the customer's rights to use the image are limited in scope or time, or 20 percent if the image may be used with fewer restrictions." - Thomas Hawk
Sounds good to me, would be nice to make a little bit of money... Being that my current income is somewhere around nothing... - Grant Bierman
i guess we'll hear more complaints from "pros" about having more competition and how hard it is to make a living. - ramil
@grant bierman : don't count on it though. you'll be competing with bajillions of other flickr users, in addition to the seasoned pros. your photo really has to stand out. - ramil
I'll be curious as to how seriously Getty markets the "Flickr" collection. The cynic might say that Getty is simply locking in Flickr away from competitors, especially #2 Corbis which is 100% owned by Bill Gates (which would make for an interesting play if MSFT acquired Yahoo). Whether or not Getty seriously markets these images or is simply playing lipservice remains to be seen. - Thomas Hawk
Current Getty photographers are probably pissed as hell about a new bunch of amateurs joining their ranks. Getty has always put a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon between their Pro work and the "substandard" work of amateurs who have all been directed to iStockphoto where they can sell their image for $1. It will be interesting to watch how they finally handle the admission that many amateurs are in fact just as good as the Pros. - Thomas Hawk
i doubt this leads to much for either group. yahoo doesn't own the world's largest collection of images. they own the best site for image sharing. we own our images. yahoo/flickr can't make a deal to sell our images. they can make a deal with getty to give getty better access to our images and our data. getty still has to talk to us about getting permission to sell our images. and what kind of headache is this going to create for getty? how many images on flickr have proper releases? how many photographers on flickr have any idea what a release is? i just don't know if this is anything more than hot air. it's a smart move to go through the collection and collect the best images they can, but i truly wonder just how many images it will end up being. - sam b-r
@ramil Yeah I know, it's best pretty much treat it as a lottery. You might win, but there is a whole lot of other players, so just enjoy the ride and not worry about it. - Grant Bierman
Sam, very good points. I too wonder how seriously they will take this. And I also wonder how this will sit with the Flickr community when a few get selected to make money and most do not. Still, I'm excited about the potential of the deal and think that if it's done right this could be a great avenue for Flickr photographers to begin earning money from their photos. So much is still to be determined. I hope it's not lip service or hot air. - Thomas Hawk
I'd prefer that flickr just roll out a feature that a) lets me mark which of my photos I want to and CAN sell (have the appropriate releases, resolution and such). b). exposes a tool/service/whatever so that other people can easily query flickr for photos c.) handles payments for me. - ramil
ramil: I agree. I don't understand why Flickr hasn't rolled something out like this already. - Justin Korn
Ramil, Flickr's not equipped to handle the administration of the stock photography business and Yahoo likely would not be willing to take on the liability. Also Getty is ahead of anyone else as far as marketing stock photography goes today. They are the 800 pound gorilla. Partnering probably makes more sense. - Thomas Hawk
I don't mean that they'll handle marketing too. Just that, the tools they're exposing to Getty could be exposed to other stock photo companies as well.......I guess that is indeed a nightmare to manage. - ramil
I agree with ramil but Tom is right. Flickr, to me, might not have the ways to do stock photos. - Outsanity
I wonder how much of Getty's decision to partner with Flickr was defensive, i.e. if MSFT were to get Flickr #2 Corbis which is 100% owned by Bill Gates would probably be better positioned to do a deal with Flickr than a Yahoo owned Flickr. - Thomas Hawk
Thomas: Is there any mention of who approached whom and when? I'm assuming Getty initiated it and if so, is there any reason to believe it was NOT a defensive move? - Justin Korn
@Thomas "I wonder how much of Getty's decision to partner with Flickr was defensive" That sounds quite plausible, in which case, I'm skeptical that Getty will take this venture seriously, or only go through the motions to get their toe in the water so to speak. I'm also a little concerned about the rather low 20-40% cut that the photographer will receive. If that is the case, I would expect a significant amount of marketing and management services to be provided by Getty. - Jeff P. Henderson
Justin, no way to know. But I'm sure Getty and Flickr have been talking for years. When I met with the Getty BD people up in Seattle two years ago they told me about meetings with Flickr even way back then. My guess is Yahoo/Flickr was the hold out more than Getty. There was a rumor for a while that Yahoo was trying to buy their own stock agency. Could be that Getty sweetened the deal enough to keep Flickr out of the hands of Corbis, especially in light of a potential MSFT YHOO acquisition. - Thomas Hawk
What worries me about the deal is that it has the potential for Getty to make a deal and then just put it out on an island and not market it in order to appease their current stock pros who might jump ship and go to Corbis, etc. Plus I'm sure Flickr gets a cut and so they may make less money selling Flickr images than other Getty images. Who knows though, this is all total speculation. It will be interesting to see how it plays out though and I'm excited about the news and potential. - Thomas Hawk
I've always believed that Getty bought iStockphoto purely as a defensive play and purposely marketed it miles away from their Pros or fair prices for photos. it was giving lip service to the growing ranks of weekend warrior amateurs while keeping a potential serious competitor out of the business. - Thomas Hawk
What is funny is that iStockphoto in fact did steal business away from Getty's more lucrative high end core business. So their defensive move ended up shooting them selves in the foot so to speak. What photo buyers realized is that there were just as good quality photos in IStockphoto for a fraction of the cost. If Getty tries to categorize the Flickr photos into their high end portfolio, it may be a defensive move to try to gain back the high end market share they lost to iStock. - Jeff P. Henderson
I think this would make more sense if the majority of the accepted Flickr photos are sold through iStock. Otherwise, I feel the stakes are to high for Getty. The old pros could jump ship as Thomas writes. To appease the pros, Getty might see an opportunity to pay the Flickr photographers less than the old pros, and increasing their earnings. It's hard to predict how the different categories of people (pros, Flickr photogs, customers etc) will react to this deal. - Henrik Johansson
maybe they'll reduce the price to something reasonable, like something not $400+ per image - Bjorn Tipling
Thanks for the extra info on this deal Thomas, you've answered a few of the questions I'd posted elsewhere on another FF thread on this subject. Do you know if Getty is looking to boost its creative or editorial business with this or both. Do they see this as an answer to the Yahoo/Reuters iwitness style deal that was recently announced or more as a way to cut costs and boost their creative/illustrative businesses? - Jon Dillon
Do I have to relicense my photos, or does Getty want to pick ones and purchase them from me? - Andrew Feinberg
OH! how i wish for that future world you painted for me thomas, of zooomr's {original} "marketplace"... a real website where users had the power to take on stock image companies... for a second i thought that was what might be happening at flickr, but i'm still holding out for that ideal world.... i daydream about it sometimes.... - djp
Jon, I think this is a win for Getty largely because it will increase their breadth. Flickr has so many more images. When Choice Hotels licensed my Grand Lake Theater photo they did that directly with me because they found the image on Google Image search. Do a search for Grand Lake at Getty and you get nothing. This allows more meaningful search at Getty which will solidify them more as a first choice to look for photos with image buyers. - Thomas Hawk
@Henrik, Getty would be shooting themselves in the foot even more if they were to market Flickr photos though iStockphoto. It would further cannibalize their high end business. If you read the link I posted above it indicates that they will be selling Flickr photos along side their existing high end pro photos with a similar or the same pricing structure. What they are trying to do is keep from loosing sales from customers who are going directly to Flickr photographers instead of to Getty. - Jeff P. Henderson
Andrew, not sure how the relicensing might work. Details will be coming out in the next few months though I suspect. djp. yeah, Zooomr's original marketplace idea was a pretty good one. Photrade has a similar one in beta right now. Photographers get 80%. But neither Photrade nor Zooomr have the marketing clout of Getty in this business. I'm not saying one's better than the other. Much of it might depend on how well Getty ends up marketing this collection. - Thomas Hawk
My guess is that Flickr has a significantly larger selection of images in many categories. Savy Getty customers know this and go to Flickr to find what they want when they can't find it at Getty. Getty is smart to try to leverage this. I'm sure Getty knows better than anyone else where their collection is lacking and will be looking to Flickr to fill the voids. A smart move on their part. If they are doing this to fill voids, it should not piss off their existing pro photographers too much. - Jeff P. Henderson
Thomas: You underestimate istock far to much. If you look at sales volume, istock outranks Getty sales. While some photos are amateur, some are as professional as any at Getty. Each has their own niche. - CJPhoto
@Jeff: But what about those photos subjects that are already well serviced by the pros. Is there going to be some way of filtering out Flickr from your Getty search? If I search for the Effiel Tower on Getty, I get some great shots... Search on Flickr and you get some fairly average ones. Is Getty in danger of diluting it's photos catalogue and therefore souring their reputation for high quality? - John Worthington
Marketplace was the reason why I originally choose Zooomr rather than Flickr. Now that Photrade has started it will be interesting to see if they ever get the numbers to make it a viable. Why doesn't Flickr just do it themselves? You don't need the marketing clout of Getty when you are Flickr! - CJPhoto
@CJPhoto, This is precisely why I believe that Getty will market Flickr photos along side their existing high end line and not through iStock. Buying iStock was a defensive move that ultimately hurt Getty's bottom line. - Jeff P. Henderson
CJ, iStockphoto has huge volume but never made any significant money. The real money at Getty was always made by their core traditional business. Getty kept the two as far apart as they possibly could. I agree with you though many of their photos are just as good as Getty's Pro stuff. - Thomas Hawk
@John, my guess it that Getty will be very selective as to what photos they choose from Flickr to add to their collection. Your example would suggest they already have an adequate number of Eiffel tower images, so they would not be looking for any from Flickr. This selective approach will not dilute their exiting catalog, but will only fill in where they have voids. - Jeff P. Henderson
While Flickr could "do it themselves" with a Photrade model, my guess is that they simply don't want to do the work or build the infrastructure necessary to compete in what is largely seen as a declining business. They probably also were afraid of the liability associated with screw ups and looked at Getty as the best in the business at this after coming to the conclusion that they didn't want to buy or build themselves. - Thomas Hawk
Getty likely gets to fill in holes in their library, add much greater depth to their search, and they probably have a contract that locks Flickr into an exclusive deal keeping them out of the hands of Corbis in the event of a MSFT buyout of Yahoo. - Thomas Hawk
These deals are rarely useful to the photographers. The trend is usually, sell your image for dimes with exclusive rights for ever and ever. - Mário Pires
I'd really like to know how to take a photo like this. Long exposure, which I presume is needed, will make the buildings and sky glow with an ungodly orange haze. What's the technique? - Aaron Brazell
Aaron, long exposure. In this case the exposure was 61 seconds on a tripod with the camera set at 100 iso. Lower isos can produce really stunning images and when it's dark you have more time to keep the shutter open which gives light new ways to be presented. The tail lights down Lombard street are the most obvious, but bright lights also take on star qualities and you get some great sulfur glow from a cityscape. Experimentation is key and a good cable release and tripod. - Thomas Hawk
I love FF for this little moment right here. Fave photo, ask question about it, photographer gives insight. All centrally located. Awesome. Just sayin'. - Lisa L. Seifert
I agree with Lisa, thanks for the tip. - sergiooooooo
really excited to be heading up to Seattle. Have the first flight out of Oakland tomorrow a.m. - Thomas Hawk
Thanks Thomas. Gotta try that. Gotta get a tripod first though. :\ - Aaron Brazell
Just a quick add-on to what Thomas said...the starry quality he mentioned comes from using a small aperture (high number). The larger your aperture, the less "starry" the lights will be. - Justin Korn
I love taking long exposure shots. this one is wonderful! - Karoli via twhirl
I am learning so much here on FriendFeed about photography. Thanks - Michael Narciso
I ordered some last week, I will let you know how they look. While it is great to be able to put on photos, I was disappointed that they had so few font and layout options. - Aura Mae
Just went through the order process now to create cards for the company. It was a nightmare we had to re-upload the 50 images for each staff member , no way to reuse the images previously uploaded. Plus as Aura says we were disappointed by the lack of layout options. Hope they print nice though now we've been through that - Jon Dillon
It won't load my images at all. Moo.com is dropping the ball. It's too bad - Thomas Hawk
As a graphic designer, i'm going to check into these, thanks for the link! - orionstarr
but if only their website actually allowed you to order cards. sigh. - Thomas Hawk
I had no issues ordering some last week. Thomas, might it be they have a hard time supporting your collection of photos since there are so many? - Dave Cohen
@Dave -- The problem Thomas and ScottBourne were having was that the load time on Moo was just hanging because of their large Flickrstreams. I emailed them about it and got this response: "The size of the flickrstream shouldn't affect the load time. possibly if you had thousands of sets it might affect the sets tab, but otherwise it's loaded in pages." Tom also got this response, so I emailed them back and await another response. - Matt Donders
They told me the same thing Matt. I think they are lying. I emailed Richard Moross their CEO earlier today, we'll see if he writes back. Hopefully we'll be able to order some Moo cards someday. - Thomas Hawk
I was just heading over there...thanks ramil - Justin Korn
it seems like tinyurl is having issues. I'm hearing others reporting non-working links too. Possible as a result of all the twitter users? hehe. - ramil
hmmm.. tiny url munched my blog post url. haha. - Thomas Hawk
I had that happen to me earlier today trying to link to a game of blockles into FF. - Matt Donders
I think it's amazing how twins stay the same weight and are so close to each other. - Michael Narciso
That would just blow my mind if I walked onto that train. - Jay Martin
What a creative and fun project. would have been fun to have stumbled upon this as it was being executed. - Jeff P. Henderson
@Michael I've know a pair of twins for a long time. They were identical when we were all children but now one is reed thin and the other is huge! They aren't very identical now! - Rahul Das
Added you. Also new to FF. I think it might be information overload, though... - John Storer II via twhirl
I added you two weeks ago. Guys and Gals - use the hide button to reduce the info overload. - Russellreno
yea I am trying to figure out how to make my friend feed posts go out to twitter - Jason Stephens
Jason: why? post to twitter and bring them in. - klecu
klecu: because then I have to leave friendfeed, I want to do everything in here...when I share I want it to go out to all my services too.... - Jason Stephens
I think you've got it backwards. FriendFeed is drawing in everything, not sending out. - John Storer II via twhirl
exactly my point...I think it could be a twitter replacement though...i like posting to hear better then posting on twitter. I'd like the messages I share on here to go out to my twitter followers to help grow my subscriber list - Jason Stephens
So is it Ping.fm that does that (posts to Twitter) then, not FriendFeed? - Jeff Kopp
That is, of course, a very valid example. Unfortunately, It's sort of like the AIM/ICQ Fiasco. All your friends are on AIM... why should they switch, even when AIM now sucks? I just got into FF, so I am not sure it could handle the excess traffic like twitter is dealing with. - John Storer II via twhirl
The method to comment and reply is much better on friendfeed, I think this definitly should either be bought by twitter or find a way to cross integrate them better. I see the option to "also send this comment as an @reply twitter from jpstephens" but thats not EXACTLY what I mean - Jason Stephens
Jason: I totally agree, if you can post out to all your socials then someone tell me how. If not, then FF should have the option or I smell yet another social network for social networks. ;) - Mark
You could try Mahalo share to post to a lot of your socials at once, but wouldn't this create a bit of a spam effect to FF if all of those socials are showing up here? Interested to hear comments from anyone with that experience, because of course you don't want to spam your FF friends, but not everyone is using FF... conundrum - Dave Earley
Glad you got it Kevin. Friendfeed lends it self to more engaging conversation and sharing. - Larry Kless
Problem is, you have to Friend back. :) - l0ckergn0me
Did Scoble block you for begging for followers? - Ryan Kuder
yeah there's real potential. but it's so damn hard to manage your friend list! same as with twitter - this is a huge barrier to the usability of the site. there should be a subscribe/unsubscribe button next to every post from anybody. - Mickipedia
Friendfeed is awesome Kev. Everything at your fingertips. - Vipin Chamakkala
This is a common refrain - people admitting that it takes them months to get FriendFeed. And for those of us who aren't honest enough to publicly admit this, it takes us months to use FriendFeed effectively. Is there a way to reduce this learning curve, so people can productively use FriendFeed from day 1? - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
There are all sorts of things they could do to improve FriendFeed. I guess we have to remember it is version 1.0 - Jonathan Beckett
You don't get it Kevin unless you're willing to friend us back. I believe same goes for Twitter. Why add you to our community if you're not willing to listen to us? - Jesse Stay
So the question now is: Will Kevin friend us back? All of us? Or selective friending? - Winston Teo
So that's a good reason not to get a friendfeed shirt then? - Jason Carreira
This was unexpected. I went to Crossroads for lunch and and an errand. I thought I saw Robert Scoble and went over to say hello. It turns out that he was at Crossroads with a bunch of other people for a FriendFeed lunch. It was a good day to wear my FriendFeed shirt. - Gary Burd
Great to meet you today Gary. Funny how sometimes the planets align. Scoble has a tendency to make things like that happen :) - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Of all the food courts in all the malls in the world... - Alan Cheslow
Neat meetup, "gang sign" idea and you guys are THE FriendFeed gangstas! - Susan Beebe
Really funny. I didn't even realize Scoble was back in town. - Mike Koss via twhirl
I can see why LinkedIn hasn't been heard of. Not many people are into putting resumes and stuff online anyway and it seems very enterprise-ish - Corvida via twhirl
Surely that should be "What WAS Facebook"? - Chris Nixon
I actually think that FF is what I wanted Facebook to be. - Chris Nixon
"What the (bleep) is the internet" - Jay from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - George Smith
I'm a student. Facebook is the only thing alot of them know. Twitter, Flickr, Linkedin -- like speaking Klingon. - Phillip Jeffrey
What closet, rock or hole have they been living in? Doesn't know what Facebook is? OMG you've got to be kidding me! - Susan Beebe
Facebook's a little green patch. Or a place where someone can buy you as a pet. - Christine Cavalier
Did you tell them it's where they let the asylum inmates play? - Todd Jordan
BTW, most college kids are pretty unaware of social networking. My husband is an undergraduate advisor. They concentrate on texting, mostly. The middle-to-upper class white kids know FaceBook, but that's about it. I wouldn't call 21-25 year olds digital natives. The ''true" digital natives are about 3 years old or younger right now. Corvida, I would guess that many more of your peers will come to ask you this in the coming months. - Christine Cavalier
wow, that beats some of my friends - they know what it is, but don't see the point! - Sarah Perez
LinkedIn is for when you have a career (and are establishing a professional network). Incoming freshman may not know facebook, but most do by the time October runs around. In terms of "digital native", the way I think of it is that the digital natives are those who don't understand the concept of a tv show being on at a specific day and time. My 9-y-o daughter has always known Tivo, whereas I used a 300 baud modem in my first job out of school - Barry Graubart via twhirl
Your profile has made my day:
You've really made my day and I feel we can establish a nice friendship!!! What attracted me to your profile was that scarce combination of hot sexy outlook with an obviously high IQ (one can't hide it when it's there!) Anyone on this planet would die for such a female partner ... and I am not an exception!!! Please, contact me at: boro_d@yahoo.com or give me your e-mail address so we could exchange more info, thoughts and pics to get to know each other better.
Hugs and kisses,
Boro xoxoxo - edythe
Dang, someone has stolen my mack game. Need to come up with new tricks. - Jason Toney
hee, Hao Chen. Indeed. Yeah, Jason, better switch up your tactics. :p - edythe
i have to say, the lack of spelling errors and the decent grammar almost make me wonder if this is someone I know playing a little joke on me... i love how he refers specifically to my profile. all my profile on flickr says is "I'm female." Perhaps that is enough for him. :p - edythe
boro is orob backwards. Not significant, just noting the facts. - lisa-k
I was thinking the same thing about your flickr profile. It is pretty spartan, just a list of bands and your photo groups really. He is correct in saying that you are bright, no matter how he divined it. - RAPatton
well, according to him, when one is that "scarce combination" of IQ and "hot sexy Outlook" (which makes me think of the MS program), it just can't be hidden!! - edythe
well, mark t, perhaps I am being too hasty in dismissing his attentions. Look at Les. Not even married and still happy. And Silpol points out that not only are his expressions stable (in the Slavonic languages he knows about) but that he is an entertainment industry expert who lives right here in the U.S. :) Why am I so picky when perfection presents itself to me, unbidden? - edythe
Are you sure he's not some sort of lost African prince just waiting to transfer his millions of dollars to America? You would be fully paid of course. - James Ferguson
Polly, because that dude's creepy as sin. No amount of facetiousness can cover that up! - Mark Trapp
This reminds me of when I was in college in Tucson and some recent emigres(region left out to be PC) would approach women at bar and ask,"Excuse me, can we go somewhere we can touch?" Just sayin. - Mark Forman
nick: ... oh my god. just when i thought people had exhausted all of bacon's possibilities. :D - edythe
@nick looks like fetish can be pushed to new level, only imagination is necessary... where we can order rest of costume? :) - silpol
edythe, the possibilities of bacon can never be exhausted as long as we have faith and pigs aplenty. - Kaia
I am working on my version of this message, though I will be modifying a sentence to test the response rates of different words. "What attracted me to your profile was that scarce combination of [ADJECTIVE1] [ADJECTIVE2] [NAME_OF_MICROSOFT_PROGRAM] with an obviously [ADJECTIVE3] [NOUN2] (one can't hide it when it's there!)" - Karim
karim... words can't express how cool you are. - edythe
lol *blush* "You've really made my day and I feel we can establish a nice friendship!!!" :-D - Karim
Karim, what attracted me to you was that scarce combination of unbridled, nearly extinct Access with an obviously heavy key chain (one can't hide it when it's there!) - edythe
Promising yes, but less relevant if the machines came with Vista pre-installed. That's the real story: how many folks upgraded XP machines to Vista? - Kevin C. Tofel
I think Vista is a remarkable improvement over XP. I think buying a new PC with Vista though is the better strategy over upgrading. - Thomas Hawk
promising no, forced yes. I've been testing it for awhile now, some things are very slow (file copy), if XP were better at handling advanced CPUs and more memory i'd swap back. - clarke thomas
Promising possibly but I'm hearing a huge revolt from people who GET Vista and were expecting an O/S they could use. May mean a huge bonus for those smaller shops and possibly Ubuntu - Andrew MacNeill
I work in company where we blocked all machines to upgrade to vista,we even downgraded some machine to Win2000,vista is not well received in most company,let the user discover what they need to get vista running properly and all the app you where used to run on other OS,they all soon downgrade or move to linux,or better and easier: buy a nifty Mac - Ben Borges via fftogo
Ed, then it's not really "promising for sure" from Rob's perspective, is it? Basically with your statement, his observation has less to do with Vista, and much more to do with new PC sales. ;) - Kevin C. Tofel
Well, I think the (mistaken) conventional wisdom is that people hate it so they either (a) aren't buying new PCs or (b) are downgrading to XP or sticking with XP. My near-universal experience with ordinary users is that they like Vista and consider it an improvement over XP. - Ed Bott
I don't see any big advantage to upgrading to Vista. I installed Vista on my laptop at home about a year ago and do like it (don't love it), though my laptop seems to overheat now from time to time. Considering going back to XP if I have the time to deal with the formatting and installation. - Justin Korn
I guess I'm in the minority here. I bought a laptop 6 months ago and decided to have it shipped with Vista... moving forward and all. Blue screens, memory dumps, hard drive scans, and random reboots are how I was rewarded. Maybe it was just a bad install? I did a fresh install; Same errors. Next install; I am now happily running XP Home. Of course i had to finance my own copy because Dell won't admit that Vista was a horrible option for my laptop. - Becca
My parents bad mouth Vista every chance they get. I'm currently in a windows-free environment, so I can't say. - Brian Norwood
@Kevin C. Tofel - Not many at all, I think. Most are new purchases - about what I expected.I'd never encourage anyone to upgrade from XP. - Rob Bushway
@Kevin and @Ed: A lot of regular folks I'm seeing are choosing to buy new laptops with Vista rather than staying put with what they had with XP. I'm with Ed. This to me shows that regular home users are not "holding out" for the next version - nothing scientific, just something I've been picking up on as I've seen people out and about. IMO - Vista is a marked improvement over XP, especially Tablet stuff. - Rob Bushway
Vista should work better with likely more powerful new laptops, and user experience should be more positive on those devices. There are still things I don't like in Vista, but overall I'd take Vista if my device is capable of running it well. I agree with Rob in that Vista is remarkably better for tablet pc platform. I will take Vista anyday over bloated tabletpc xp edition. - Inksim
I upgraded from XP to Vista and then immediately disabled a bunch of the security junk. Personally I like Vista. Most people seem to dislike it because of the popups you get every time you try to do anything or make any kind of changes. As long as it's disabled it runs just fine. - Richard Miles
I get 90% fewer errors on my new Vista Media Center PC then I did on my old XP Media Center PC. It also handles my very large digital media library much better than it's predecessor. I've been really impressed with Vista's performance and there are lots of things about it that I like even more than my primary computer, my MacBook Pro. - Thomas Hawk
Rob, I completely agree with you, Thomas and Ed about Vista being better than XP. That's why I've used it on all of my PCs for over 2 years. My point still remains: if folks are buying new PCs with Vista, how is that "promising for sure"? Is it promising for Vista, for the PC market, for the economy? - Kevin C. Tofel
For me it is a wash -- nothing in Vista that is compelling but since it came with the laptop and works reasonably well ... - Brian Sullivan
@Becca - It sounds like you had a hardware misconfiguration. The only reason you'll see blue screens and random reboots like that is 1) bad memory or 2) bad hardware...but since everything is running fine in XP, it was probably a bad driver for one of your components while running Vista. - Justin Korn
I'm not upgrading from XP Pro on my Dell. Still helping too many friends with Vista peripheral compatibility problems... it makes me nervous having to spend so much time managing it. - Sally Church
Vista has been great for me. Using XP is a hassle - Shey
@Kevin - I think it is promising for MSFT, Vista and the PC market ( economy in general ). What I had been frequently hearing are that people are digging in their heals and largely ordering computers with XP and staying away from Vista like it was the plague. What I'm seeing visually is that isn't the case. Now, I'm not sure they are buying the new laptop because of Vista, but I don't perceive Vista being the stumbling block to keep them from buying. - Rob Bushway
promising??? I guess you are in the PC tech support/repair business - lol - JackRyanBauer via twhirl
Rob, I hope you're right... in my travels, I see far more XP these days, which is a shame. Could be that I see notebooks and not desktops... - Kevin C. Tofel
It was a little shaky back in the early days with driver and program support, but I haven't had a problem with Vista in a solid nine or ten months. It's far more stable than XP *ever* was for me. Yeah, I'd have expected more than a modest improvement after five some odd years - but I really don't get all the Vista hate, or conversely the sudden love for XP (surely one of the worst OSes in history, that didn't become remotely usable until SP2). - Eric
Looks like my 1.0 is for sale as of now. - Jack Baty
Jack, they dropped the price on the old units to $349 at the Drobo site. I think either one is a great deal. For someone that doesn't really need the 2x faster speed (eg. RAW archive storage) the V1 is probably actually the better way to go. - Thomas Hawk
Couldn't find a supplier for this in Portugal, Damn! - Mário Pires
Thomas, I tried using the Drobo as primary storage (Aperture Library and files) and I found it a little too "choppy" when editing. I also work with a lot of video and would love to try the FW800 interface for some of that (even as scratch space). I think I'll keep the 1.0 for offsite backup as you suggested in your post. - Jack Baty
Although not listed Expansys.pt carries the Drobo :) - Mário Pires
Jack, that's exactly how I'd look at this. The new ones are probably great for Lightroom, Bridge, Aperture, Photoshop where you are going to be actively working with the files and the older model great for less active storage. - Thomas Hawk
Although I will say, I'm using one of my V1 drobos to store 110,000 mp3s and about 60,000 JPG images and it serves up all of these files to my Media Center PC and 3 XBox 360 extenders without a hitch perfectly. - Thomas Hawk
I think I might pick up a Drobo 1.0 for a lower price now that the 2.0 is out. Definitely looks like a REALLY good backup solution. - Matt Donders
I'm torn between getting a new one or an old one. Or, more likely, neither for the foreseeable future. - James Williams (willia4)
Matt, for the price I think it's the best thing out there right now. You still need to consider off site storage, but I think this is the best device out there today to protect people against losing data in hard drive failures. My recommendation would be the cheaper V1 for archive stuff and the more expensive newer faster V2 for heavily accessed files or things like Lightroom, Aperture, etc. - Thomas Hawk
Are they going to keep selling the older model for a while? - Mike Wills
Can you slap the drives out of the old Drobo into the new without loss or rebuilding? - Kreg Steppe
The Drobo listed only list a usb 2.0 interface, probably is still the 1.0 version. - Mário Pires
wow that was quick, I didn't think it would happen for a month or more; and 1394b to boot. - clarke thomas
Ok jumping off the fence, now I have to figure out the money situation. - Wes Hoogenboom
Glad to finally see Firewire 800 support. Would have liked to see Ethernet also, maybe the next gen will have it. - Jeff P. Henderson
Well, I guess I am running out of excuses on why to not buy a Drobo. - Kortney Jarman
Mike, it's my understanding that they will keep selling the discounted old units until they run out of them. Not sure how long they'll last. - Thomas Hawk
Kreg, not sure on that question. I'll ask Tom though. - Thomas Hawk
While I'm excited about the new version. I'm more excited about the plans Drobo has with the SDK. http://www.drobospace.com/page.... I can't wait to have rsync running natively between my local drobo and a remote drobo without needing a computer on the far end. - Mark Anderson
ordered, had 2 TB drives I hadn't plugged in yet, bought 1 more, now 2.7TB available with Drobo, go here for cheap TB drives $165 http://tinyurl.com/6m447n - clarke thomas
If anyone from Germany/Europe is interested: Here it's selling for 379 Euros and is available today. - Holger Eilhard
Right now, I'm thinking a 2.0 Drobo with three 500GB drives which would give me almost 1TB of usable space for $725. Not too shabby.And of course, there'd still be an empty drive bay that I could fill in later. Maybe by the end of the year... - James Williams (willia4)
Normy, it looks like a nice product, but if you really want to back up your photos you need to do it off site in case of fire, earthquake, emp or [fill in disaster here]. Isn't that right, Sammy? - RAPatton
A FedEx box with a Drobo in it seems like a reasonable off-site backup strategy to me. The bandwidth could be pretty good on that; but the latency would kill you. - James Williams (willia4)
I just did the math. If you shipped 2TB and it took a week to get there, that would be equivalent to 27.7 megabits per second. That's much better than the few hundred kilobits/s I get from my cable modem. - James Williams (willia4)
I think an offsite backup strategy is an absolute must. These drobos are great in protecting you against hard drive failure but fire, theft, flood, earthquake, etc. could all still kill it. At least with your most precious files you should still back these up to another drobo or at least an external hard drive and give it to a friend/family who preferably lives at least in another state if not country. - Thomas Hawk
One of the things that I do with my music is that me, my brother and one other friend all pooled our ripped CD mp3 files together. Now we all have a copy of the music library. Even back before Drobo days when I lost a bunch of music with a disc failure I was able to get it back by getting a copy of our music archive from my friend. Plus your friends get to enjoy your music as well. Fair use at it's finest. - Thomas Hawk
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Amazon S3 as a viable offsite backup solution. I imagine (though I don't know for sure) that S3 is mirrored and/or striped storage that is backed up itself. - Randy Hall
I agree that if you are really serious about your backup strategy, offsite storage is a must. I live in Alaska, so giving my spare external hard drive to someone out of state is difficult. For now I just bring it to my folks' house (about 20 miles away), and swap the 2 out about once a month. This won't protect me from a major disaster, but I'm at least protected against fire and theft. - Brandon Wood
Kreg, got an answer back to your question about swapping drives out of a V1 drobo and putting them in a V2 drobo. From Tom at Drobo: "Absolutely! We are going to add this question to the FAQ shortly..." - Thomas Hawk
A few weeks back I predicted that FF would overtake Twitter in users in less than one year. Compete's new June numbers are out now. Last month FF grew 33.7% while Twitter grew 5.4%. Assuming a static month over month growth rate, based on June's numbers, FF would have more users than Twitter in a little over 6 months. - Thomas Hawk via Bookmarklet
Interesting - For me, Twitter and FriendFeed still serve different purposes and that seems to be the case for a lot. So while many Twitter-ers may adopt FriendFeed - I don't see it completely surpassing it in 6 months.... - George Smith
I'm guessing the overlap in the user bases should be pretty high. So even though the rate of growth of Twitter may be much lower, i have a feeling most of the people who joined FF recently are already on Twitter. Till we have a comparable number, it may not be a completely true analysis to say people are preferring FF *over* twitter, would it? I too believe they serve different purposes and should co-exist. - Parth Awasthi
They may have different purposes but they are definitely competing for the same attention width. - Brian Sullivan
George, I agree, I have them both open right now, is that weird? - Cody Heitschmidt
Certainly FF is siphoning off some of Twitter's growth. I think though that FF is much more addictive and multifaceted than Twitter and is the stronger momentum play right now. If I were running a hedge fund (I'm not) and these were both publicly traded companies (they're not of course) I'd be tempted to short Twitter and use the money to buy long shares in FF. - Thomas Hawk
This chart also likely corresponds with the amount of Scoble's Friend Feed sticker giveaways :) - Brian Ries
Thomas - Thanks for your thoughts. When twitter has negative growth three consecutive months we will have another facet to discuss. - Russellreno
I'm with George Smith on this one. This is not an either or. These are 2 good tools and I'm sticking with both for now. BUT, with every Fail Whale I see, my doubts grow. - shelisrael1
The initial growth of FriendFeed, but if you look at the total volume of users of both services, FF has a ways to go before it's going to overtake Twitter. - Brandon Wood
when either gets to 10m users they we will have a story - David Henderson via twhirl
i see the need for both but would like to see friends collapsed as 1 set - Lee Kent
we'll know these companies have made in when all the good people have left, the comments are full of pr0n spam and your mum asks you for your username... - Barry de la Rosa
I think one of the main reasons for more adoptiong is the ability to have a tru conversation, without having to hunt for messages every few seconds. I think it would be great if they do some more features to make it easier - Shivanand Velmurugan via twhirl
comparing month on month growth rates isn't really that helpful here. obviously the doubling time for FF is going to be less than Twitter because it is starting from a smaller base. In terms of users/month Twitter has been growing faster than FF, something I expect Twitter are pretty happy with given their recent problems. - Samuel Bostock
Samuel, that's what people said last month. Since then FF's growth has only gotten stronger though while Twitter's has gotten weaker. month on month growth rates certainly are anything but accurate forecasting tools. Still, perhaps FF will eclipse Twitter's growth even *more* next month. - Thomas Hawk
I never imagined this would have this fast - Akshay
any idea on total user #'s? Twitter's surely saturated - John Cozen
The big question in my mind is when will the FF graph flatten out? Trees don't grow to the sky and every site / service will start to plateau at some point. Either way, this will be fun to watch. - Mike Doeff
Just imagine how fast they would grow if they incorporated Facebook status and Myspace content. Right now they are siphoning from a small pond, Twitter and the microblogging networks. There is a lot more opportunity for growth if those two are brought into the fold. - Andrew Burd
I don't think it's a shock that FF growth rate is high. Twitter broke new ground. Most FFers are Twitters also -- and Twitter was probably the first mircoblog we've all used. Making the switch is easier. -
