Back in ’07 when my buddies and I started tinkering around with tools like Jena and languages like OWL-DL, we recognized the power of the semantic web and machine based reasoning to be able to expose the connections between things that would otherwise remain hidden to the naked eye. Hidden in massive social graphs like Facebook and Twitter, are billions of attributes about people, things and places that connect us. When we meet someone new, its often the things we have in common that attract us but the differences that ignite the flame of curiosity. Machines are now able to help us discern these subtleties in connections. Knowing what connects us and how is cool. But all connections aren’t created equal. Knowing that for example, my best friend and I are connected through hip-hop music is one thing. But learning that my best friend influences my hip-hop music purchasing decisions because I trust his taste in classic hip-hop music more than say 10,000 reviews from people I don’t really know or trust, well, that’s more interesting.

Color, in essence, distills down Facebook and its massive social graph with a focus on photos. A lot of market research has shown that 2 of the top 5 things people do on most social networks is share photos and eyeball shared photos. So dispense with the textual nature of life-logging and use photos instead because pictures say a 1000 words. Not ground breaking. Color aggregates photos around physical locations — geo-caching photos. Not new. Color attempts to figure out where you are. GPS is inaccurate at best so in densely populated locations like New York, you can’t really tell if all the photos you’re seeing are pinned to the place you’re actually at or nearby. Does that matter if you are constructing a social graph of photo experiences centered around location? What happens if the happy smiley faces Color shows me at the restaurant that I’m near which presumably is supposed to influence me to gravitate to that restaurant, actually turns out to be photos of another restaurant nearby?

What about noise? Increasingly we are inundated by services that allow us to express ourselves in volume but not necessarily in quality. In fact, the way we communicate is becoming increasingly distorted and lossy making us more malleable to bias. $41M for Color is certainly brow-raising. Perhaps they have weaved some cool story around photos + social influence + object recognition (like Google Goggles) to help investors part with their monies. Either way, Color is only pushing an envelope that was already set in motion by others before them. Wait till the hype dies down. Then lets see who’s pushing what social graph envelope.

If they really DO do what you say they do (which they don’t do now but maybe down the road), this is quite the amazing concept.

It would be truly a collaborative masterpiece of the human network, a collective point of view collaboration of all things in their space time continuums.

The thing I read that I REALLY like is the fact it doesn’t really on incredibly shaky GPS satellite systems, and instead relies on the phones actual internal systems. Awesome.

This statement is fine in regards to the App user – but has utter disregard for the subjects of location tagged images. Making the image taking process completely anonymous may protect the user, but at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, opens up a host of issues relating to personal security and privacy for the unwitting subjects of such images. In its current manifestation, the App makers seem to have either no awareness of such issues or just don’t care.

>> OK, that said, what Colors does is
>> offer up a visual public timeline of
>> any given location, in real time.
>> Every single image captured at any
>> given location is instantly “placed”
>> at that location, forever, and is
>> served up as an artifact of that
>> location to anyone using the Colors >> application.

GPS did this for photos before Color existed. The only improvement Color provides is overcoming the deficiency of GPS when we talk about more granular placement. Knowing whether one photo’s location is within 2 feet of another, and which direction, with GPS is bad. So the real novelty is finding out the relationship in space between 2 photos that doesn’t rely on GPS. So that’s all well in good, but wow, your post reads like it’s the second coming of Jesus.

>>”OK, that said, what Colors does is offer up a visual public timeline of any given location, in real time. Every single image captured at any given location is instantly “placed” at that location, forever, and is served up as an artifact of that location to anyone using the Colors application.”

GPS did this for photos before Color existed. The only improvement Color provides is overcoming the deficiency of GPS when we talk about more granular placement. Knowing whether one photo’s location is within 2 feet of another, and which direction, with GPS is bad. So the real novelty is finding out the relationship in space between 2 photos that doesn’t rely on GPS. So that’s all well in good, but wow, your post reads like it’s the second coming of Jesus.

GPS did this for photos before Color existed. The tapestry you talk about blanketing the world already exists — look at geo-tagged photos on Flickr.

The improvement Color offers is overcoming the deficiency of GPS when we talk about more granular placement. Knowing whether one photo’s location is within 2 feet of another, and which direction, with GPS doesn’t work because accuracy is poor at that granularity. So the real novelty is finding out the relationship in space between 2 photos that doesn’t rely on GPS. So that’s all well in good, but wow, your post reads like it’s the second coming of Jesus.

GPS did this for photos before Color existed. The only improvement Color provides is overcoming the deficiency of GPS when we talk about more granular placement. Knowing whether one photo’s location is within 2 feet of another, and which direction, with GPS is bad. So the real novelty is finding out the relationship in space between 2 photos that doesn’t rely on GPS. So that’s all well in good, but wow, your post reads like it’s the second coming of Jesus.