Tretakoff Musings

The world is a'buzzing this morning with the big news: Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion . HUGE move: one of those seminal business moments that will mark a seismic shift. Hearkens back to the moment AOL bought Time Warner, or Netscape's IPO, or Google crossing the $400/share mark: all moments the landscape changed. In this case, the ramifications are many, but I want to highlight two. The first is the title of this post: this is truly the triumph of the echo over the voice. I've recently been wrestling with the perception dilemma of a feature vs. a product/company; there is a very good argument to be made that Instagram is nothing but a feature of Facebook: just a slightly better photo sharing. $1 billion is a lot to pay for a supposed feature, right? Here's where it gets interesting: there is a steady succession of companies who you could argue have taken a feature of other companies and turned it into a full product. For example, Twitter is, for all int...

Just a quick note that Schmap, the travel guide site I mentioned in February , has released an iPhone version . Even better, in a burst of savvy viral marketing, they emailed the folks who contributed photos...or were harvested from Flickr. And, completing the viral circle, I have now fulfilled my blogging duty by letting you know. Congrats, my loyal minions. :-)

A street fair in San Anselmo. In addition to corn dogs and fried calamari, only in Marin do you also get dim sum.

In the central plaza of downtown San Rafael, CA, on a wet and windy day, I encountered this homage to all who have suffered the pain and frustration of a flat tire on their bike. Nice to see this expression of catharsis and irony.

Two seagulls hover for the hope of a Friday snack as the ferry departs the city for the weekend.

Ok, I'll be the first to admit that I had never hear of Schmap . Time Magazine raved about it. The Washington Post gushed over it. And I was ignorant of it all. However, thanks to geotagging my Flickr photos , I was approached by the editors and asked if they could include two of my photos in their San Antonio edition. I was flattered, and received word today they are in. The photos in question? From the King William section of San Antonio, with it's stately mansions and immaculate grounds. The Guenther House, a working flour mill with a restaurant on the banks of the river. We were tipped off to this King William gem from a great Riverwalk waiter, and brunched here the next day amid the most tranquil setting in a factory you can imagine. Check out the widget with my photos included. Geotagging pays off!

I do love Flickr ; it makes photo sharing, storage, and all around management perfect. But one annoying problem I have is getting my nice Flickr photos locally, on my hard drive. Half of you are going "Huh? That makes no sense: you uploaded them from your local computer, didn't you?", while the other half of you are asking "Uh...why would you want to? The photos are all on Flickr; can't you just view them there?" Both of you are right, but here are my reasons: 1) I use Picnik to edit and improve my photos. Once edited, I save them directly back to Flickr, overwriting the uploaded versions. That means, even if the image was originally sent from my hard drive, I don't have the edited version locally. 2) Windows' built in screensaver has an option to display pictures, but only local ones. Sure, I can use a Flickr screensaver , but it doesn't fill the screen like the Windows one. 3) I also have a networked DVD player hooked to a TV. While it can wire...

Brian, as they say, be careful what you wish for. Who is Brian? Brian is an intern at Box.net. Not familiar with them? They are an online storage company: a virtual drive, if you will. My Netvibes membership introduced them to me. I rarely use them, but thought they were generally fine for a free storage service. Then Brian contacted me. See, Brian noticed I was blogging about Picnik , a great photo editing tool for free online. Brian, out of the goodness of his heart, thought I might like to know about Box.net's service to do the same; he even took the time to email my Gmail account to tell me. Hello, My name is Brian, I'm an intern working at Box.net. I saw your post about editing photos online and I wanted to write to you in case you would be interested in knowing Box.net now lets users edit photos online as well. Using our OpenBox platform, users can now right-click on any image and edit it instantly, for free. OpenBox is a platform which lets developers write software that...

Flickr managed to seduce me from keeping my photos on my website, but Picnik takes me all the way. See, normally I upload my raw pictures to the PC, fire up Photoshop to do my crops, color balances, and edits, and then painstakingly save each photo, finally uploading the finished product to Flickr for the world to see. However, Photoshop is a HUGE program, and, as the last version I purchased is several years old, I am always loathe to get in there with the monstrous kludginess. This year, after taking some photos in San Antonio and capturing the Blue Angels from Angel Island , I decided another approach was in order. I uploaded the raw images to Flickr, then fired up Picnik.com, a site that claims to be a free online Web 2.0 photo editor. In literally seconds, I was pulling in my Flickr images, and editing, faster and better than Photoshop ever let me do. Cropping? Definitely. Color and contract balancing? Count on it. Best of all, an "auto-fix" feature that corrects my ho...

Courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle , a good look at my typical morning commute , as well as Charles, my co-founder of Loyalty Lab and the inspiration for my two wheeled commuting. (Psst...he's the one in the spandex in the photo.)

I've written (and showed photos) of how Windows error messages appear at the airport occasionally. Well, looks like I am not alone with this wry observation. The ever-improving Download Squad blog points out a whole flickr group dedicated to these. My favorite is that one to the right: the Vegas-style video billboard that is frozen for lack of a login screen. I want to see some from the Strip, or a football stadium: when those fail, it must be spectacular. :-) To be fair, the images are not just of Windows crashes/errors, but embedded systems and NT, as well. The reality is that, the more complex the technology, the more that can go wrong. As we move from dumb phones to cell phones, to smartphones, we had better keep this in mind. For instance, my Palm TX is clearly at the end of it's life: the programs I've loaded into it cause memory leaks, and the Palm OS behaves erratically...until it crashes. How to fix it? Rebuild the Palm (hard reset) and start loading the program...

Ok, before we start, the pics are all here. We headed to Tucson to see my mother's new winter homestead. Never been, but I love the desert, so we were looking to have some fun. She lives in the Catalina Foothills, with the city below. Tucson's population is, surprisingly, about the same as San Francisco's; it's also the home to the University of Arizona: I had no idea. While downtown is nothing to see, the landscape is stunning. First tourist attraction: the Wildlife Museum . Located way out in the desert, it's an open-air, self guided sprawling facility that covers all of the native plants, animals, and minerals of the Sonora desert. The cave tour was amazing: walk through the cramped passages, and see a wild open cave, along with gorgeous exhibits of semi-precious stones from the area. The native plants and cactii are stunning, and the feel of the place is decidedly unhurried and hands on. Lots of trails and paths to explore. The animals? WOW. A pair of mountain l...

Loyalty Lab recently moved offices to 100 Pine St, on the 21st floor. I've mostly worked in low-rises on the Peninsula; our last office was the 7th floor. But this is a GREAT view of the city. Located in the heart of downtown, we see the Bay, the other buildings, and can see the icons of San Francisco, such as the Ferry Building and Transamerica pyramid. My office is wonderful, looking down on the Tadich Grill, a favorite restaurant of mine, and one of the oldest in San Francisco. From my desk, I can catch a glimpse of Coit Tower and still hear the cable cars, 200 feet below. A welcome respite from the cramped quarters we've had for some time. The strange thing about the building is the noise and vibrations from the elevators. Years ago, I visited a company in the Twin Towers in NY, and was struck by the din from the passing elevators, and the vibrations of the winds and elevators. It's eerie, being up so high, and feeling shakiness, especially in San Francisco, but it'...

We welcomed 2007 with a cruise on the Bay, courtesy of Hornblower Cruises. A luxurious windowside seat, with a decadent 4 course dinner of Tiger Shrimp & Scallops, followed by duck, with a main of Filet Mignon, and a Cappuccino Napolean for dessert. Charles and Karen arranged the trip, and we had a wonderful time, punctuated by a great fireworks display and a Zino Mouton Cadet #3 on the cool deck air, as we passed under both the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges. Lloyd and John turned us on to Hornblower, years ago, with the fabulous lunch cruises, and the dinner aboard the California Hornblower was absolutely memorable. A reserved table, open bar with premium selection, seated on the topmost Captain's Lounge, with a jazz duo playing 20 feet away, was just the way to start the new year off right!

Having lived in the Bay Area for more than a decade now, I always appreciate it, but sometimes forget just how amazing every place can be. For instance, Christmas Eve Day was an overcast, cold (Northern California cold; all you Midwesterners, pipe down) kind of a day, perfect for a late breakfast to warm the bones. We headed out to try someplace new, the Lighthouse Café in Sausalito: I ride by it on my bike, daily, and it was always busy. Seems like a good sign. **WARNING: Mini Dining Review ahead...skip down if you don't care (also will be posted on Yelp )** The café is right on Bridgeway, the main approach to Sausalito, but before downtown. From the outside, it's kind of cool and kitschy, with a scaled down, two story lighthouse built in to the structure. Inside, small, with a long counter by the open grill, and several booths. Two people service the whole place, plus the cooks. While the look of the place is classic working-class coffee shop, the food and prices are very def...

An amazing example of Google technology layered on over the ever increasing ability of cameras to capture extremely large images with amazing quality. For instance, this gigapixel image of my hometown, Boston, captured from the Prudential Tower's Skywalk, allows you to drill in so tightly, with such clarity, it allows you to be come a virtual peeping Tom. For instance, take a look at the original image here: Now, here's the Hatch Shell (where the Boston Pops plays on July 4th, miles away: The photo of the Hatch Shell is not a separate photo; it's a zoom of the top left of the 1st photo. You can practically read the names of the composers etched into the steps; that's Mozart's name on the right. Amazing; we're finally getting technology that shows like CSI always supposes we have. Enjoy a virtual visit to a still life of Boston in the summer. See you there!

Think of the ludicrousness of combining a camera with a phone. What a seemingly arbitrary combination! Why not a music player, or a video game, or even a newspaper reader? Nope, for whatever reason, just about every phone is a cameraphone, and usually, like mine, not great quality. Yet, maybe those phone designers have more forethought. How many times have I been someplace and said, "If only I had a camera." Now, albeit a really poor excuse for a camera, I find myself in just that place, with the tool in hand. And sometimes, you get lucky. For instance: The full moon, rising over the Bay Bridge, as seen from the Golden Gate Ferry during the last full moon. Sure, with a real camera, I could have had a masterpiece. But at least I got enough to make you understand the sheer impact. Better, consider this: The view from the top of the lighthouse on Forbes Island, a man made island/restaurant, just off the edge of Pier 39 in San Francisco. The lighthouse gives the best view on the ...