Color: Social photography or voyeurism?

[Bateluer]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/03/23/color.photo.app/index.html

(CNN) -- The makers of a new and much-anticipated smartphone app called Color are operating on this principle: "We're all inherently voyeuristic," said Peter Pham, president and co-founder of the Palo Alto, California start-up.

Color, however, is a location-based, photo-sharing app that takes voyeurism to post-Twitter level by letting users see all of the photos that are being taken by strangers who happen to be within a 150-foot radius of the user's smartphone.

Photos taken through the app, which launches on Thursday morning, are public by default. They're stored on Color's servers and the company owns them, said Pham, who co-founded the 30-person company with Bill Nguyen, previously of Lala.com and a force to be reckoned with in the tech world.

Only other users of the app will have access to those photos, and only photos taken by people using the app will be shared.

Pham described the effect of using the app as a sort of bug-eye experience -- one where you're seeing the world through dozens of lenses at once. Imagine sitting in a restaurant and being able to see all of the photos that are being taken, or have been taken, by nearby patrons. This mosaic of photographs -- depicting the world within eyeshot -- shows up on the screen of your phone.

Personally, I see this as a MAJOR privacy breach. Especially since Color basically owns every picture you take, and stores them on their servers. To be fair, you don't have to install the application. I find it unsettling that so many people are so quick to surrender not only their personal privacy, but virtually every aspect of their lives so readily and without a second thought.

 

[rcpratt]

How about just stupid and useless?

I don't know how it can be a privacy breach if you downloaded the app.

 

[werepossum]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/03/23/color.photo.app/index.html



Personally, I see this as a MAJOR privacy breach. Especially since Color basically owns every picture you take, and stores them on their servers. To be fair, you don't have to install the application. I find it unsettling that so many people are so quick to surrender not only their personal privacy, but virtually every aspect of their lives so readily and without a second thought.

As long as it's a voluntary sign-up program it can't be an invasion of privacy. Could be considered an intelligence test though.

I wonder if they'll strip any GPS info from the pictures before making them available. Otherwise I can foresee lawsuits.

 

[TechBoyJK]

how f'n stupid will you feel when you are the only person in the restaurant with the app

 

[Throckmorton]

I think it's pretty cool... what's wrong with running the app specifically to take pictures to share? It's not like it transmits all your pics.

The only difference between this and Panoramio is this is real time... You people are paranoid.

 

[Bateluer]

I think it's pretty cool... what's wrong with running the app specifically to take pictures to share? It's not like it transmits all your pics.

My understanding is that if you have it installed, it does in fact share any picture you take. Might be some configuration settings or camera settings you can select to selectively disable it though.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Just an optical version of Twitter for those to lazy to type or read. lol

Not something that would interest me.

 

[MotF Bane]

You choose to get that app, not a privacy breach.

 

[Double Trouble]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/03/23/color.photo.app/index.html I find it unsettling that so many people are so quick to surrender not only their personal privacy, but virtually every aspect of their lives so readily and without a second thought.

This. 1000 x this. And it's not going to get better, we have an entire new generation of narcissistic people who think every aspect of their lives should be published and that privacy is not needed.

 

[JSt0rm]

I heard obama is going to force you to use this, if you are white.

 

[Doppel]

This is the future. Anybody with a facebook account knows a multitude of people who post anything and everything on there for everybody to see. Their privacy settings are set to nothing and they don't care what's on there. Cameras on phones take this to the next level.

Of course, the ultimate next level is full integration of image recognition. Once google or some similar engine begins categorizing and aggregating every picture on their servers with image recognition and breaking out all of the faces, attaching those to a name, it will be very easy to quickly pull up a huge pictorial history of a person--even if they never put themselves online. Maybe you'll be in somebody else's background shot and now when I search for you I see that you were in such and such restaurant on a certain day and time.

Government doesn't need to survey us as we'll do it ourselves. I absolutely expect a huge number of unwanted side effects. The job losses we hear about now with idiots posting things on facebook could be greatly magnified when a categorized image history of us is online.

 

[Bowfinger]

My understanding is that if you have it installed, it does in fact share any picture you take. Might be some configuration settings or camera settings you can select to selectively disable it though.

No, only those pictures you create using their app. From Color's TOS:

Our App does not disable any other photographic or video features or apps on your Device; you may take whatever pictures and videos you like on your Device’s native camera/video applications or through other Apps and they will not be displayed in the Color Environment. Please take your private or potentially inappropriate photos and videos using these other applications.

TOS here: http://www.color.com/terms

Reading their TOS, they sound terribly full of themselves and more than a little arrogant. I can see many people thinking it's wonderful, however. To each his own.

 

[wuliheron]

Physicist and science fiction author David Brinn speculated that in the near future violent crime in public would drop close to zero as people everywhere adopted wearing wireless cameras in public. Instead of Briton's CCTV we could have private citizens wearing cameras everywhere and using programs that monitor video for violence and immediately alert the police.

 

[irishScott]

Physicist and science fiction author David Brinn speculated that in the near future violent crime in public would drop close to zero as people everywhere adopted wearing wireless cameras in public. Instead of Briton's CCTV we could have private citizens wearing cameras everywhere and using programs that monitor video for violence and immediately alert the police.

Wouldn't affect crime outside of public areas, but it's an interesting concept.

 

[Munky]

Social networking is all the rage these days, didn't you know? On one side, you've got business entrepreneurs taking a page out of twitter's and facebook's playbook. On the other side, millions of computer-illiterate iDrones willingly throwing their privacy to the wind for a chance to be the center of attention on the internet.

 

[wuliheron]

Wouldn't affect crime outside of public areas, but it's an interesting concept.

You might be surprised how many people will use it in the privacy of their own home and, of course, there's no reason to advertise whether you have a camera on you or not.

Then there are the advances being made in the technology. Right now the pentagon is doing research into gigabyte cameras with the ability to take panoramic pictures. As useful as it is to zoom in a licence plate from orbit they want to be able to see the big picture as well. Imagine a cheap camera with a lens the size of a pinhead that can take a 360 degree picture and you get the idea.

 

[Doppel]

Physicist and science fiction author David Brinn speculated that in the near future violent crime in public would drop close to zero as people everywhere adopted wearing wireless cameras in public. Instead of Briton's CCTV we could have private citizens wearing cameras everywhere and using programs that monitor video for violence and immediately alert the police.

I am absolutely convinced of few things in the future. I cannot predict where gold will be, whether Jessica Biel will star in an adult film, but I can predict that image recognition in near real-time combined with a huge number of cameras, whether private or public, are going to absolutely plummet certain behaviors and/or assist vastly with solving crimes quickly. I know this because we have the marriage of two key things: 1) Technical ability to make this happen at reasonable cost and 2) What will be a huge demand for it. A reduction if not of our real privacy certainly our sense of it, knowing that we are recorded in ways that previously have not been possible.

A hundred years ago no social security numbers. Not even cameras. If you wanted to move across country and start fresh it was easy breezy.

Nowadays, could you do that easily? It's difficult, but not impossible, to live on cash and without a social security number and being digitally tied into private and public services.

20 years from now it will be impossible in any advanced country to "run away" and restart. You'll get nowhere without regular authentication of who you are for many services and image recognition will make it impossible to move around substantially without it being known. And for most people they will be fine with it.

 

[wuliheron]

20 years from now it will be impossible in any advanced country to "run away" and restart. You'll get nowhere without regular authentication of who you are for many services and image recognition will make it impossible to move around substantially without it being known. And for most people they will be fine with it.

They already are fine with it. Our constitutional rights have been suspended indefinitely and everyone from the government to Amazon.com knows more about us then our own mothers. Endless wars, illegal immigrants, corporate crime, and on and on and on. The majority seems to have pretty much given up on complaining about anything except money and even that looks to be a loosing battle.

 

[PottedMeat]

Photos taken through the app, which launches on Thursday morning, are public by default. They're stored on Color's servers and the company owns them, said Pham, who co-founded the 30-person company with Bill Nguyen, previously of Lala.com and a force to be reckoned with in the tech world.

I figure the company was setup to fail. The idea is to accumulate a library of pictures for essentially free, shut down the company, sell off library.

 

[pcgeek11]

Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, ... Color. = All stupid IMO. Look at all the trouble people have gotten themselves into due to those sites and their own stupidity.

 

[Martin]

Apparently raising 41 million doesn't imply you can make an app that doesn't crash. This hilarious "investor deck" made the rounds yesterday:

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ajdtctfhv4hn_264g329gwcc&pli=1

 

[Anubis]

TBH this ap sounds like a trolls wet dream

actually seeing as i never use my phone to take pictures i think ill do just that, send nasty pics to everyone

 

[PottedMeat]

TBH this ap sounds like a trolls wet dream

actually seeing as i never use my phone to take pictures i think ill do just that, send nasty pics to everyone

Oh shit it's free too and you don't login.

Color is free and will be available for Apple iOS and Google Android.

At least he has his $40 million. :awe:

 

[Anubis]

Oh shit it's free too and you don't login.



At least he has his $40 million. :awe:

nea not sure how he didnt see that comming

4 chan will have a field day with this

 

[rudder]

Personally, I see this as a MAJOR privacy breach. Especially since Color basically owns every picture you take, and stores them on their servers. To be fair, you don't have to install the application. I find it unsettling that so many people are so quick to surrender not only their personal privacy, but virtually every aspect of their lives so readily and without a second thought.

Probably because people are taking stupid pics that they do not care who sees. But no privacy breach unless the app installs and runs itself.

I can see this going the wrong way. Within a week the system will be inundated with penis photos.