DropShots: a "flashy" new photo site

DropShots, formerly known as JussPress, has just re-launched. This service is based on co-founder and CTO, Ryan Sit's Masters Thesis at UC San Diego. It is still a little rough around the edges which is to be understood as projects come out of an academic setting to a commercial one.

The online photosharing space is a crowed one not to say that there are not opportunities for improvement, especially in user interface. Flash is now a ubiquitous platform for delivery of rich internet applications. This interactivity is a hallmark of the current Web 2.0 movement. Users will soon become accustomed to these interfaces like Google Maps and other services making use of AJAX techniques and will come to expect them. That said, DropShots faces the challenges of all of the new entrants which is building a user base that is either willing to pay or can be marketed as an attractive target for advertisers. As we saw recently with FotoAmigo's closing, not matter how neat your service is and how cheap storage and bandwith are, they are still not free.

We'll keep an eye on DropShots and wish them luck in the move from lab to market!

A paper presented by Ryan and his colleagues at a conference in Hawaii in January 05 is available HERE. Note a login may be required.

Here are some links to work done by the group Ryan was in at UC San Diego.

http://hci.ucsd.edu/hollan/NSF-Report.htm
http://hci.ucsd.edu/hollan/image-based.htm