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17 Year Old Creates Flickr Competitor 224

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the any-kid-in-a-garage dept.
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."
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17 Year Old Creates Flickr Competitor More

17 Year Old Creates Flickr Competitor

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  • So? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gunnery Sgt. Hartman ( 221748 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:29AM (#14913629) Homepage
    When I was 17 I was...umm......creating a hotmail account. So there!

  • Competition is nice, but . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nomihn0 ( 739701 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:30AM (#14913634)
    Competition is nice, but innovation is far more impressive.

    • Re:Competition is nice, but . . . (Score:5, Interesting)

      by eobanb ( 823187 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:40AM (#14913674) Homepage
      I feel like Zooomr's use of OpenID alone is reason to celebrate. I mean so far OpenID has been used by, uhm, LiveJournal...and that's just about it. It's a really underrated technology.
      • Unfortunately, OpenID is very weak for an authentication system; it has no authentication or integrity checking. I'll tolerate it for blog comments, because it is better than trusting anything, but there's no way on earth I want to use it where money or real privleges are involved.
        • Unfortunately, OpenID is very weak for an authentication system; it has no authentication or integrity checking.

          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).

          • Re:Competition is nice, but . . . (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            What about trust?

            This is not a trust system. Trust requires identity first.

            -- Quoted from openid.net

            So, the trust layer is still up to him, or livejournal, or your bank, or one of those patches to mediawiki... OpenID is more like a drivers license. Just because someone shows you a drivers license, you don't trust them with your house keys, do you?
            • Just because someone shows you a drivers license, you don't trust them with your house keys, do you?

              What? The TSA guy at the airport told me that it was proof that I wasn't a terrorist. Why else would I need it to get on a plane?
            • Believe me, I've read that, and I understand that it's not a trust system. Unlike the gp poster, I understand the difference between authentication and authorization. gp claimed that "OpenID has no authentication or integrity checking," which is clearly false.

              People like gp read something like "This is not a trust system" and take that to mean "this is a weak system, that you should not trust." They don't expend the mental energy to actually understand what that means, and instead go parroting around tha

  • Awesome, but not so unique (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kickboy12 ( 913888 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:30AM (#14913636) Homepage
    Although it is nice to see someone so young get the attention they deserve, this isn't unique. I can personally vouche there are thousands of people between the ages of 15-18 that have the potential to create things like this. In terms of the technology behind this type of website, I've been working with it for almost 2 years. The problem with people in this age group getting noticed, or getting the attention they deserve, is quite simply a financial issue.

    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.

    • Re:Awesome, but not so unique (Score:5, Interesting)

      by forkazoo ( 138186 ) <<wrosecrans> <at> <gmail.com>> on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:37AM (#14913657) Homepage
      Indeed, many people have made similar technological things. I count myself among them. By 18, I was working at a small local phone company, running their website. A ton of money was probably made from the orders that went through the site. But, it wasn't especially glamorous. It was like any other "E-commerce" site at the time, really. And, the company wasn't about to advertise the fact that their tech staff was extremely inexperienced.

      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...

      • Re:Awesome, but not so unique (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Omaze ( 952134 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @11:32AM (#14915937) Journal
        I work(ed) around many wealthy families at my previous employer. In the 40s the trend for parents to bluster about their kids was the military. In the 50s and 60s the trend was the football team. In the 70s, 80s, and early 90s it was all about which colleges they could get into and the size of the family SUV. In the last part of the 90s and into the 00s it seems that the parents are one-upping each other with what sort of business ventures their children can get into. The people I worked with had children as young as 15 who were: movie producers (with offers from major studios), MMORPG game writers (with offers from game producers), day traders (to the tune of tens of thousands in profit), and database consultants (with small company contracts). The bottom line was, though, none of those kids could have even come close to doing what they did without the several thousand dollars' investment from their parents and the parents' willingness to stand back and give the kids room to pursue the ideas rather than hounding them to get some part time job at the local restaraunt.

        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:Awesome, but not so unique (Score:5, Interesting)

      by woolio ( 927141 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:41AM (#14913677) Journal
      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.

      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...

    • You misunderstand what makes an entrepreneur... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by spagetti_code ( 773137 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:56AM (#14913931)
      Great ideas are obvious - once you are told them.
      The ability to recognise a great idea and take it
      from idea to reality is a tremendous skill. Its harder
      than you think. Or to put it another way - just
      how many million dollar concepts have you turned into
      reality recently? Hmmmm???

      You may be as good a coder as this guy - but he took
      some great ideas (that you didn't have by the way)
      and developed them to reality. Interface with OpenID -
      of course! Sound bites, google maps, etc etc.
      Obvious now we know.

      • Or to put it another way - just how many million dollar concepts have you turned into reality recently?

        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.
    • there are thousands of people between the ages of 15-18 that have the potential to create things like this.

      There are thousands of people between the ages of 15-18 who are about to get introduced to the harsh world of patent law too. Consider it an education in how the "real world" works, the one where a rich established company can harrass you right out of existence with relative ease with a few legal threats.

      -Eric

  • One important difference: (Score:5, Funny)

    by merreborn ( 853723 ) * on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:31AM (#14913638) Journal
    Flikr can handle a slashdotting.

    • pr0n (Score:5, Funny)

      by xixax ( 44677 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:12AM (#14913773)
      And you mustn't upload NC rated pics because the SysAdmin is 17.

      • Re:pr0n (Score:5, Interesting)

        by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 ) <john.oyler@ c o m c a st.net> on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:26AM (#14913822) Journal
        Actually, I am working on this problem. But instead of a lame tag-based system, I've opted for a strict relational model.

        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?
        • 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. ...it's nice to know you've got priorities straight here. :D

        • The problem with complicated data models is that they require effort on the part of the user to understand the model and use it effectively. Tags work because they're simple: a user can get the concept in a few seconds and then, for every item, tag it just as quickly by typing a few words into a box. You can't beat tags for simplicity. The more complicated you make the model, the higher the barrier to entry and thus the less input you will recieve. Since most of these "folksonomy"-like systems rely on a hig

          • Two things. Build a community around it, of early adopters who understand the model and can write complex SQL queries.

            And let them trade saved queries. Want something specific, tweak a query someone else wrote. Tags alone will never be able to do what this does.
    • If this site is going to become something other than a me-too that gets left behind, it'll need to deal with scaling to handle millions of users, and doing so while generating enough cash flow to survive (i.e. to keep buying hardware.) This is very hard - if you fail at scalability, your system slows down enough that new users go away and use something else, and then you don't generate the millions of users you need to be really significant...

      I find it highly credible that a bright 17-year-old can hack

  • But is it... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tajgenie ( 932485 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:32AM (#14913641)
    But is it open source? I think not! Future Bill Gates who will one day terrorize the world!!
  • Good for this kid. He's not necessarily a genius, but he is atypical IMO. Not because other kids his age couldn't do the same, but because most other kids his age aren't because they're being sedated by mass media.

    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

    • Re:Anything is possible when you turn off the TV (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:41AM (#14913675)
      I really don't think I was special...

      If it helps, I don't think you're special either.

    • Out of curiousity how did you get around child labor laws to work as a nonagricultural worker at 14?

      • Re:Anything is possible when you turn off the TV (Score:4, Interesting)

        by humankind ( 704050 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:01AM (#14913739) Journal
        I was doing a lot of subcontracting when I was younger. When I was working for the Fortune 500 company, my father got me that job and he handled it all. So I know nothing about what the law was at that time. However, when I was younger and working, people didn't seem to care about my age except they were concerned I was so young I wouldn't be responsible enough to work on something so important to their business... so I had to be that much more dilligent.

        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.
        • I dont think you were modded as a troll because of saying that TV is a waste of time (which is very true), it did almost sound like you were taking the piss when you said you'd worked for all those companies though. I was doing programming when I was 14, but only in 'AMOS Pro' BASIC on my Amiga. I've rewritten the timesheet system here from pretty much the ground up (the users wont notice a difference, but everything is done in databases now instead of all on spreadsheets), but since then haven't done anyth

        • Re:Anything is possible when you turn off the TV (Score:5, Insightful)

          by snowwrestler ( 896305 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @10:47AM (#14915558)
          Your post was modded troll because it's self-aggrandizing, impossible to verify, and falsely humble. You must know that your single anecdote proves no substantial point about the effect of mass media on children in general, so it could be inferred that the only reason you posted it was to talk about yourself.

          If you had rigorously collected and analyzed data comparing TV to non-TV kids, that would be an insightful or informative post.
          • I think you have an unrealisticly high opinion of what it takes to get an insightful post on slashdot. But this guy is a bit of a troll. Have I ever told you about how I perfected cold fusion when I was ten. When I was 12 I had memorized the value of Pi to 300 significant digits. When I was 14 I was inducted into the CIA to secret undercover work that eventually led to the fall of the Soviet Union. But I really don't think I am special. Outside of the money glamour and endless supply of women I am just a no

        • Re:Anything is possible when you turn off the TV (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Dr. Evil ( 3501 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @12:30PM (#14916530)

          ...my father got me that job and he handled it all...

          ...You just have to use your time and energy more wisely....

          I think you're totally unqualified to talk about opportunities for underage professionals without connections. Connections are more valuable than experience, education or even skill.

          People get bitter when they hear stories like yours because they're the guys and girls with the CS degree who wind up working in tech support while some bigwig's kid causes them grief with buggy software. When they were that age, they were lucky to get a job at Burger King... and it's not because they didn't use their time more wisely.

          Take all the advantages your parents give you, and never be ashamed of that, but never look down on people because they didn't succeed at jobs you didn't even get on your own.

      • Application of labor laws is a relatively new concept. When I was 16, I left home, and got a job running a punch press at a die cast factory in Portland, Oregon (Winter Products). It was a big factory. They didn't ask my age, and I didn't tell them. I'm 42 now, so that would have been around '79 or '80.

        But the guy does a lot boasting, sounds like it might be tall tales...

    • Funny then that what he created will zombify plenty of others.

      Muhahahahahahahahaha

    • 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.

      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 :P ). Currently i'm working with an MVC framework for PHP that I designed myself. I work in an e-business company.

      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.
    • I don't buy it. You've got a 6 digit /. UID. Then again, that's probably proving the parent's media point. While I was reading Chips n Dips, you were writing software.

  • Zooomr (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fanblade ( 863089 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:38AM (#14913665) Journal
    Aside from being a Flickr knockoff (and being slashdotted), zooomr sounds like it has some serious potential. If and when their servers get back online I'm definitely going to try it out. I'm salivating over GPS data within pictures, associating pictures from different users based on time and place.

    Linking users to faces in a picture sounds like the perfect blend of Facebook and Flickr, hopefully without the obsessive/compulsive behavior found on the Facebook social network. I wonder how long before Flickr turns up the heat??

  • Alternative link (Score:5, Informative)

    by Blazeix ( 924805 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:39AM (#14913670) Homepage Journal
    At this risk of completely blowing up his server, here is a testing version of his site: http://beta.zooomr.com/ [zooomr.com]

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:48AM (#14913697)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I doubt that this kid's creation is half as hackable.

      When you were 17, what did you have to show for yourself?

      Stop being a prick and give the kid a compliment or two. At least he produces something instead of just bitching about others' creations.
    • You have no idea what the site offers. For all you know, it goes WAY beyond flickr. Actually, I doubt that it does go beyond, but I would not be surprised to see that his arch. is a great deal more flexable WRT to what the future holds. Keep in mind that Flickr was probably more of a slow hack that developed to where it is. OTH, this guy has an idea of where he is heading (he is not a trailblazer).

  • i18n is cool, but easy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anthony Boyd ( 242971 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @01:55AM (#14913721) Homepage
    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.

    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.

    • I think this kid is a pansy. I mean, look at what this [aaronsw.com] kid did when he was 14 (he co-wrote the RSS 1.0 specification).

    • Re:i18n is cool, but easy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GlassHeart ( 579618 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @03:46AM (#14914081) Journal
      Internationalization/localization is more than just translating strings. At a minimum, you have to deal with local laws, such as the lower volume cap that the iPod had to add for France. Next you need to deal with local sensibilities, such as Taiwan not liking being listed as a part of China (and China not liking Taiwan listed separately), or Pakistan not liking Kashmir listed as a part of India (and vice versa). Finally, you deal with things like icons, because some symbols might be offensive or confusing. Right-to-left languages will also throw all sorts of code into disarray. Beyond merely understandable, you also want to distinguish between UK, US, Australian, and whatever other versions of English you have to deal with.

      Good i18n and l10n is quite difficult and expensive.

      • You forgot character encoding issues.

        What encoding does the EXIF data use? The data submitted by web forms? What encoding should you be sending back to the user? And what headers and declarations should you be using so dumb browsers do the right thing? And how does this all work in email too?

        And then you have to deal with the fact that despite what the specs say, not everything follows the specs. And then you're into the land of work arounds and other troubles.

      • True. Even the straight language translation can be very tricky, unless you have a feeling for languages and coded the whole thing with translation in mind.

        For example, I was working on some fairly complicated validation, which could result in a wide range of messages of the form "You can't [do some action] because [some field] is [too high|too low|zero|non-zero|etc.]" or "You can't [do some other action] because [some other condition]". My first attempt localised the strings for each bracketed bit sepa

  • Ah, but for those of us who have hundreds or even thousands of images loaded and categorized in flickr, how easy is it to move to another service? Are we seeing the dawn of a new and exciting kind of vendor lock-in?

    I know that flickr has a helpful, open API; I just wonder if it's enough.

  • Mitch (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nycto ( 138650 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:08AM (#14913764) Homepage
    At the risk of straying completely off topic, this guy looks strikingly like Mitch Hedberg.

    That is all I have to add to this conversation. Carry on.

  • Imageshack is the best (Score:4, Informative)

    by zymano ( 581466 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:17AM (#14913791)
    Imageshack [imageshack.us] doesn't use the annoying sign up forms.

    If you need to show something fast and don't want the hassle then Imageshack [imageshack.us] is it.

    I use it all the time. Fast and covenient.
    • I also like Imagevenue [imagevenue.com]. I guess it's a matter of personal preference (and IIRC, Imageshack makes a bit more informative theumbnails), but Imagevenue supports batch uploading, custom image resizing (and not just presets), 500 K larger files, but only jpg's. Actually, Imagevenue even supports free FTP via temporary accounts you can get to batch upload even more than 10 jpg at a time.

  • is this a PR stunt? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by moochfish ( 822730 )
    Not to troll, but I find this whole thing a little odd.

    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 som

  • If it's that easy, sell your Google stock... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by finnif ( 945981 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:29AM (#14913831)
    I like how about half of the comments respond how easy it is for the kid to have created the site, or that there's not much innovation going on there.

    I often agree with both of these statements, including for Google, Y!, MSN sites mentioned in Slashdot stories. They're all a bunch of Javascript. Wowee. That's a pain in the butt, but it's not innovative. There's some server technology that's pretty cool behind Gmail and the like, but as time goes on, those bottlenecks will be solved in a more commoditized way.

    So my question to you all is, why would you own Google or Yahoo stock for more than five minutes, to ride up the next big push? It seems like there's virtually no long term value in any website's technology. Surely someone else will take the idea and improve on it at some point -- it's already happened several times over in the last 10 years. We're already seeing the fast decline in the quality of Google's results, and here come a new wave of search engine rivals knocking on the door. Impossible? Ask AltaVista.

    Or do we just live in a world where brand name is all we're investing in anymore? It's has to be branding we buy because no one actually creates products for the ages. When someone creates a "one click ordering" button, that's what they get patented. Owning the rights to a button on a computer screen like inventors once owned the phonograph, or film emulsion... that's what buying stock is about.

    I remember when a Coke used to be a nickel, dammit.
    • Because Google's got a solid reputation with the important half of the equation: making money. Getting money for Advertising is the hard part. Google's automated system nets them a lot of cash, and their reputation brings them enough customers that they automate the process. And it's not like Google isn't busy acquiring and building out new stuff. They rolled out pay per download content in what, less than a year? Their ability to move through internet technologies like a fish moves through water is why the
    • I like how about half of the comments respond how easy it is for the kid to have created the site, or that there's not much innovation going on there.

      It's easy AND pointless, that's the real issue. Who cares? Sharing pictures online is not hard nor is it worthwhile.

      Google serves an actual purpose. Increasinly badly, I'd admit, but it's still useful. Flickr and this thing are just visual blogs and as such just a waste of virtual paper.

      TWW

  • 17 year old creates internet bubble 2.0 webpage! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rm999 ( 775449 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @02:51AM (#14913914)
    This reminds me so much of the internet landscape from 7-8 years ago. Add a 2.0 to the end of the internet, and people forget all the hard lessons they should have learned from before.

    My main complaint, a similar complaint from the first bubble, is a huge waterfall of sites that implement only a few unique ideas. Back then it was internet stores and advertising, today it is tagging, blogs, and letting the user interact with the website.
    • Thank you for bringing some sanity back to this entire thing. If I had mod points (disabled the wish to moderate long ago), I'd mod you up.

      Web 2.0 is a bubble that will pop, sooner or later. I for one, as a little-known 16 year old because I don't do anything bubble-ish, am sticking to tried and true methods. XHTML, CSS, plain designs with little-to-no Javascript, that, above all, work (at least at a basic level) on any browser I've thrown at them. Of course they're 'tweaked' a bit for IE (using MS's commen
      • For what it's worth I don't think "Web 2.0" (and I detest that name) is all about enhancing things with new technology (even if a bunch of that technology enables stuff, even helpful stuff, that's not been possible without it - reorderable draggable lists, autocompleting, and so on).

        Look at Flickr or Zooomr. *Anyone* could have created that even five years ago. It's not about new technology, it's about web people finally getting the web for themselves and doing their thing. The bubble was about conglomerate
  • Ok, so the idea is not new, the implementation for many people here wouldn't be a problem, so the only reason for the hype must be this guy's age... which is again no reason to celebrate this one guy. Ok, credit has to be given, he managed to raise attention, but that's more about hie (or whoever raised the news) pr skills. 17 years that doesn' count that much young in the programming realm, not today, not in the past. Hell, some of my 17 years old friends - that was around '95 - created wonderful pieces of
  • It's not that complex a piece of code. The hard parts are coming up with an idea and getting people to use it. He copied someone else's idea and so far nobody uses his version.

  • Recipe for success (Score:5, Funny)

    by hritcu ( 871613 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @03:57AM (#14914107) Homepage
    1. Create a lame clone of a well known web site ... let's say Flikr 2. Fill it up with Google adds 3. Anonymously submit a story on Slashdot saying that the new site is a Flikr KILLER 4. Profit

  • Age? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by resonte ( 900899 )
    Should we accredite people for something jsut because of thier age? Why is this story in the news? ...Well we can gain two things from this. For some people it might be a nobrainer on how to make your child have more potential to be succesfull, - you just introduce it to the right environment. But for the masses who don't know how to raise their child stories like these could be an inspiration to try harder, perhaps they should look at how his parents have brought him up and apply that same technique
  • So he spent, what, a month longer developing his site than the Flickr guys did? Hmmm, could be a lot more stable then. Nice work, kid.

  • Lets do a survey (Score:2, Interesting)

    by j.a.mcguire ( 551738 )
    Who thinks they could do this? Woah, everyone?

    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.
  • So this is just for sharing photos which are totally irrelevant to the public, like most blogs? Great piece of creativity but it doesn't exactly solve a single real problem of the world.

  • Won't he be sued for this? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @06:50AM (#14914561)
    Excuse my ignorance for US law, but he has ripped off flickr, used a similar name, and wants to profit from this.

    Won't he be sued by Yahoo?
  • I Googled around for some stuff on BlueBridge and found out that they had a couple of PDFs lying around. It looks like some stuff from earlier projects, one being a Subway sandwich shop web site to order custom made subs. Anyway, just thought you might be interested.

    http://www.google.com/search?hs=akR&hl=en&lr=&clie nt=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q= site%3Abbridgetech.com+filetype%3Apdf&btnG=Search [google.com]
  • Just curious... what did he write it in? PHP, Ruby, Python, etc.?

  • What impresses me... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thesandtiger ( 819476 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @09:53AM (#14915165)
    ... is that he followed through on a project.

    Lots of people have ideas for things, but not many have the ability to follow through on things. Especially younger folks!

    When I was about 12, I wrote about half of a BBS on my Apple II - it'd answer the phone, let a user log in, and I made maybe 5 or 6 very primitive discussion boards and a hangman game. Not a single bit of it was "innovative" in the large sense of the word, but I made it all from scratch and learned a hell of a lot from it. I stopped working on the project when my dad, thinking it would help inspire me, got me some commercial BBS product. I wound up getting demoralized - "Someone else already did it, and better than I could." (I wound up trying to write games - there were no worries about someone else "doing it first" since I wanted to "fix" Ultima III to add features [never succeeded, but I did manage to make a tile-based display that would let me move a guy around a map, make characters for a party, and sort-of fight])

    Anyway - lots of people have ideas for really great stuff, but not a lot of them do anything about it. The fact that he made it work, did some pretty nice localization - that's good stuff even if it isn't entirely original/innovative.
  • So I made a similar post yesterday...but I'm basically wondering this:

    If you don't have the programming skills, but have ideas that would make good competition...where do you get started? Especially with web services development? Also, where's a good starting place to learn about the hosting you would need for something like this. I know there are cheap ways to host this much data and expensive ways, so does anybody know what kind of setup Flickr is using?

    BTW, kudos to this kid, and since I saw he posted

  • 23hq.com

    Supports the flickr API, which seems like much bigger news than the age of the authors.

  • This kid appears to have come upon a real Five Dollar Idea [acmelab.org].

    Anyone else want to call bubble on these web-apps? It seems like everyone and his kid brother nowadays has some kind of web-app to do something social but inane that makes a lot of ad money or gets bought by Google.

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