17 Year Old Creates Flickr Competitor 224
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch has an article up on a new Flickr competitor called Zooomr. The interesting thing about all of this that it was developed in only three months by a 17 year old and to top it all off, the site is currently localized in 16 languages."
Awesome, but not so unique (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to gloat, but I've created some pretty usefull projects and technologies in my time comperable to this one, just as simple side projects. However, most of them don't make it past a few months of development for one simple reason: I can't financially support it. As I just noticed when I tried to load the Zoomr website, the ammount of money needed to buy a server that can support such a community is overwhelming, especially for someone in the age group of 15-18 who's primary concern to buying lunch every day.
I would love to see more projects of this calibur come from this same younger generation, and I would love to be part of such projects. But getting ones foot off the ground is the first, and hardest step towards this success.
Kristopher Tate, the 17-year-old who make Zoomr, will undoubtedly become noticed by companies looking for such ambitious programmers. But he got lucky; the rest of us aren't so fortunate.
Anything is possible when you turn off the TV (Score:2, Interesting)
When I was 14 I was doing programming for a Fortune 500 company; when I was 15 I wrote and designed the accounting system for my city's municipal water company; when I was 16 I wrote my own BBS system, which got the attention of Bell Atlantic who then contracted with me to develop a prototype of one of the first online electronic yellow page systems. By the time I was 17, I had written software for Disney, the United Nations and plenty of other companies. I really don't think I was special... I just made the most out of my time and resources. If I had unlimited access to a Playstation or 500 channels of television when I was a teen, I'd probably be working for an insurance company or a restaurant instead of being self employed and successful doing something I truly enjoy.
Re:Awesome, but not so unique (Score:5, Interesting)
So, I won't bow down to this kid from a technological standpoint.
But, shit. He did his own thing, and he managed to get the word out about it. My hat is off to him as a self promoter. Nobody ever heard of me, so he pretty much has me beat from that angle... Even if his website is dead.
Lots of guys like me and the parent poster have a reasonable amount of skill with technology, and did so at a rather young age. We all had neat ideas. He made his idea. That deserves respect. My real time strategy game, for example, still only exists as notes on scrap paper, and the start of a header file for a prototype...
Google ID? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Competition is nice, but . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Awesome, but not so unique (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure this kid getting notice is a good thing for him...
I'm not sure how fortunate he will be. If Ebay can get sued for the "Buy It Now" feature, how long will it be until Flickr [or another compnay] sues the 17yr-old for patent infringement? [Or maybe they will wait until he turns 18]
That is, when his thing takes off and starts to compete, I can see Flickr sueing him into smitherenes. [I didn't read the article:] And since he probably hasn't taken the necessary steps to hide behind his own cooperation, this kid will be paying for more than just college loans...
Re:Anything is possible when you turn off the TV (Score:1, Interesting)
I moved out of my parents house when I turned 18. I'd post the number of women I've slept with but I'm worried my current girlfriend would read this and be horified, not that I want to know how many men she's slept with either.
But ha ha, I get your funny joke... in my case I didn't match the stereotype though.
i18n is cool, but easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Localization systems are really easy once you know how to do them. I used to be intimidated by such things, but then I started making phpBB mods. I saw that the phpBB localization system was basically a set of arrays of text strings that gets loaded depending upon the user settings. Then the array is used as variables to drop in the appropriate text. I've since seen some better systems, and mostly I'm impressed with how simple good developers can make it.
I put some of that into practice for Agitar, a company whose site is available in English & Japanese. I don't speak Japanese, I just added some tweaks to a Movable Type system, and voila, two fields per entry. I do the English, and any employee who speaks Japanese will enter a translation. I suspect that I can create a basic i18n framework for PHP in an afternoon.
What would be really cool would be if he did the translations himself. Does he speak 16 languages? Or did he sit with Babelfish or Google, and nurse some automated translations into something sensible? That's the step that takes talent or hard effort. I would be impressed if he did that completely without outside help. For that matter, if he has a system in place for people to upload translations, have them verified, and be automatically put into effect, that would be impressive too. I tried such a thing, but I just couldn't find good ways to deal with the character sets and launder data that is so open-ended, without human inspection.
Re:Anything is possible when you turn off the TV (Score:4, Interesting)
Someone modded my post a "troll". That's really sad. I know there are people here who are big gamer fans and I didn't mean to malign those who like to obsess over sitcoms and shit like that. It's just not what I did, and I honestly think if my parents hadn't made an effort to not expose me to much TV during formative years, I wouldn't have had the skillset I have now. I'm very grateful to them for it. Some here, apparently resent it, but that's not my fault. I'm only trying to empower others, and not really brag about myself... I'm just saying, you can do what this kid has done; I know because I did stuff like what he's doing too. You just have to use your time and energy more wisely. I don't think playing Halo several hours a day is going to get you a great job... your milage may vary... but don't take it out on me.
Re:Anything is possible when you turn off the TV (Score:5, Interesting)
I think I got your idea, but you didn't quite hit the nail on the head. See, I had cable TV and i've been enjoying videogames since I was a kid. But I learned to program nifty stuff like you, and I cracked my first videogame when I was 12. By 18 I cracked my first shareware app (curse those register screens
I really don't think having videogames or cable TV will make a difference. What really matters is the education and the interest in Science that you're raised with.
See, my dad always bought me science books when I was a kid. Science for kids, that is, with nifty graphics and all that. I really have to say his effort was worth it.
About your talent, I really think you're a gifted individual, there are people who even with good circumstances around them, have trouble learning to program a "hello world". A potential problem with gifted people is that if they don't recognize their gifts, they might end up judging others too harshly, crushing their own self-esteem. Don't make that mistake.
is this a PR stunt? (Score:2, Interesting)
In the terms of service: "By accessing the web site Zooomr (hereafter known as the "Web Site"), a service of BlueBridge Technologies Group..."
While both the summary and TFA seem to focus on it being developed by a 17 year old in three months, the website has job postings. The article seems to gloss over the fact the entire project is sponsored (owned) by some company. Is this a case of sensationalistic journalism? This doesn't seem like a case where someone hacked it out of their basement. It seems unlikely the company picked it up AFTER development started since no mention of the company is made in any journal entry. So if the company is backing the project financially, am i the only one who finds it odd that it is not mentioned in any journal entry? It's a little weird that he's the face of the project, but it could be a PR move. It definintely doesn't add up the way the article's author seems to want to imply.
Re:pr0n (Score:5, Interesting)
Each picture consists of one or more actions.
Each action consists of of exactly two people (both of which can point to the same person record).
Each person record is broken up into "static" (things unchanging throughout their life, e.g. birth name), "daily" (things true for a short period of time, e.g. color her hair was dyed that week), and "instant" (things only true for that split second the photo was taken).
The data model is much more complete than this, and more importantly, I've found a way to actually collect the metadata.
Let people in for free. Have them go through a custom webapp, collecting the metadata (clicking on the photo with the mouse, to grab the pixel color value for skintone), maybe as few as just a few pictures a week. In exchange, they get to search for free.
When finished, it should be possible to search only for pictures with just one girl, whose legs are spread exactly 57 degrees in a "sitting up" pose.
Like I said, you wouldn't believe just how much metadata I figure it's possible to collect.
Anyone want a free account?
Re:Competition is nice, but . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
What are you talking about? It's an authentication system! Of course it has authentication and "integrity checking."
Do you actually understand what its limits are?
(Hint: do you trust your bank's authorization scheme on their website? Your bank could authenticate you with third party sites using OpenID just as securely as they authenticate you with their own).
Age? (Score:2, Interesting)
Lets do a survey (Score:2, Interesting)
Not exactley impressive is it, if you did it for your dissertation you'd be lucky to get a 2:2.
As the guy above said, must be nice to have financial support.
Re:Anything is possible when you turn off the TV (Score:2, Interesting)
Everything you say is very true though, but it's not easy to get out of the groove of just lazing around once you start
Some interesting PDFs on the BlueBridge site (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.google.com/search?hs=akR&hl=en&lr=&cli
Re:Awesome, but not so unique (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't mean to take away from the fellow who's created Zoomr. More power to him and my hat's off to him. Let's stop short of automatically giving him an adult measure of respect, though. He wouldn't have been able to do what he did if he'd been spending his 5 evenings/week after school bagging groceries. Let's not start flogging ourselves remorsefully over wasted youth. The bottom line is opportunity--which most of us never really have.
Re:You misunderstand what makes an entrepreneur... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been working on one [dynobright.com] for the last four months, actually. Yes, some concepts are obvious, and for those concepts, all it takes is the gumption to sit still for a significant chunk of a year. Other concepts, though, aren't obvious at all. If you're curious, watch that URL - once my patents are in, it's going to start screaming what I'm up to loud and proud.
Re:You misunderstand what makes an entrepreneur... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah. Actually, writing code wouldn't even have been the first part for me, except that the basis of the product comes out of my hobby work. The startup capital requirements for this plan are in fact higher than are typical of the Nintendo DS development world, though the total cost won't be nearly as bad.
Then theres marketing (slashdot seems to do a good job of that),
Actually, we have a firm on retainer already.
patents,
About half paid for already.
creating revenue,
Given the nature of the business, this won't be terribly hard; coming to market is a lot more difficult in gaming than benefitting from one's market position.
building the business,
Yeah, this has turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Luckily for me, I have an experienced business partner with more than a dozen successful businesses under her belt.
support, releases, maintenance, bugfixing, delivery,
Nothing new here.
revenue, documentation, white papers,
Documentation and "white papers" are the last things on our mind right now, and the least of our concerns.
attracting investors...
Actually investors seem to be finding me, oddly enough. It comes rather as a surprise to me, but it turns out that one really needs one's patents in place before one can safely accept investment. The mines aren't where I expected for them to be.
Did I mention revenue?
Yes.
Doing this on a shoestring (which I think is *very* healthy) requires determination and inventiveness.
I'm not doing this on a shoestring. What I'm doing could not in fact be done on a shoestring.
A S/W engine for Nintendo DS eh?
Yep. I'm an authorized developer, and it won't be my first. It will, however, be the first one solely for my personal economic benefit. I'm sick to death of the bonehead maneuvers that developer companies make, watering their games down for the lowest common denominator then being surprised when they end up with crap. I want direct control of my work, so that I can see it through to its appropriate output. That means I can't take publisher money until the game is done, because that's the most common way to get control taken away, and to get quality stomped into the ground.