Monday, March 05, 2007

Hybrid Photo Apps - steps to take us from desktop to the SAAS world

You have seen me track the online photo space from simple photo printing options from walmart to shutterfly to desktop apps like picasa.

Here is a potential new player, an expert in the Desktop world entering Web services with lot of promise - Adobe! (http://news.com.com/Adobe+to+take+Photoshop+online/2100-7345_3-6163015.html)

In 2001, before Picasa was born, I had approached Adobe with my mobile Server platform startup Coola, trying to sell the dream of how users would love to upload photos from mobile devices to the Server to create Web Services, offering a strategic sustainability of hybrid Apps across the desktop and Web. This was before Macromedia aquisition and Adobe was not a server company. We were walking with Kodak Pix cameras attached to Palm pilots before the days of cameras on cell phones.

Today I am excited by Adobe's entry in this space because

1. Adobe will increase the standards for photo processing on the web which is set to a basic standard with no differentiation among existing players.

2.Also, Adobe owns the photo space with Photoshop and knows the real users, not just web consumers who would like to gift picture mugs to grandma, but those who appreciate the beauty of creating good pictures and tools that help them express their creativity.

3. It will wake up the online photospace and we can sure see lot of creativity and new solutions.

4.Of course, since Adobe is a desktop software company, I am dreaming here to see not just web services, but Adobe strengthening its place with hybrid Apps that will create a new space taking us from the desktop to the hosted world with a series of products and services. Adobe is positioned well with customer access in the desktop world that a pure online company like Google does not have.

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