Thomas, nice cemetary images!

by on January 2, 2007

I wish I could do Photowalking every day with Thomas. He gets interesting images. Yesterday he was shooting a cemetary in Oakland. He has the details up on Flickr (he’s CEO of competing service “Zooomr” — I love that he always posts his stuff first to Flickr). What CEO do you know that uses the competitor’s product before he uses his own? Thomas is the only one that does it in public.

Imagine what would happen if Bill Gates used a MacBookPro every day? Well, he might complain that it’s always shutting down. Heheheh. But, I bet he’d learn a thing or two. Or, if Oracle chief Larry Ellison used MySQL or SQL Server?

  • You think Larry actually uses an RDBMS on a daily basis? :)
  • Andy: maybe not, but he should. Gates uses all sorts of stuff every day. He's VERY adept at using all sorts of stuff. I doubt he writes code, but I bet he could bang out a line or two if called upon.
  • Hey thanks Robert. I love Flickr and use it every day. As well as Zooomr. I think that (at least for avid photographers like me) there is definitely room for both. I post more shots to Zooomr than Flickr, but this has to do with the fact that anything on Flickr beyond 5 shots in a sitting will likely be missed by your contacts.

    Flickr really does some things right though and certainly with the community of friends that I've made there I can't imagine not keeping up with it.
  • Derek W.
    If the software you are creating is not the software you are using, you should be adept enough to analyze why that is the case, then fix it. I don't support anyone who does't eat their own dogfood. I also like this summary of the idea on Wikipedia, which specifically mentions Microsoft, with discussion of NIH as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_one's_own_dog_...
  • It's really refreshing to see the comments by Thomas. To be honest if he buried his head in the sand and ignored Flickr then it could (no sorry would) come back to bit him in the ass. What better way to discover your competitor that using their products. Oh and I agree, I think the both can survive :)

    Nigel
  • I am sure that Bill Gates has several computers in front of him using several OS X and several Linux distributions. :)
  • DAG
    It's good to know the comp and to see things through different eyes.

    Back in the bad old days of the Cold War, the US Army kept a few units around that used Soviet Weapons (right up to tanks), uniforms and tactics to act as aggressor forces during training. No brainer, right?

    The other thing (much more important) they did was allow the troops to try the Soviet Weapons, which actually provided an understanding beyond merely opposing them in an exercise. Imagine being an M-1 Abrams commander and getting to command your crew in a Soviet Tank. That one experience can tell you things about the capabilities and weaknesses that couldn't easily be communicated otherwise.

    As a photographer for the Army I got to see this many times. Concepts that were just dry facts came alive after they (the troops) saw what the capabilities and implied strategy resulting from those capabilities from that experience.
    Many in business and technology could benefit from living with the comp on a regular basis.
  • Flickr is a long way ahead of the competition. Tell me Robert, was it true that the public displaying of an Apple iPod was frowned upon back at Microsoft?
  • Stuart: not true.
  • Good, it seems that everyone is too quick to believe (or want to believe) the juicy negative press surrounding the software behemoth. Thanks for clearing up the rumour.
  • Slightly off topic (sorry) but how does Bill listen to his music on the go (Zune or iPod)

    :)
blog comments powered by Disqus