Andrew Lisy's Blog

I have a ton of photos that I've taken over the years, and managing them is a constant challenge. Part of the problem is simply the fact that there are so many great things you can do with digital photos -- view them online, make cool photobooks, create collages, order prints, send them to friends and family, etc. There are many different applications that are useful for photos, and while some of them come close to doing it all, there still isn't one solution that works for everything. 

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Of all the recent trends in online computing, the one most game-changing is the trend toward developing platforms and allowing users to build applications on top of them. The greatest example of a platform on the web is Facebook, which started as a simple social network, but by opening up to third party apps, has become the most important web development since Google. Platforms allow downstream developers to wield the entire power of the "parent" to create interesting and valuable applications without requiring massive resources to lay the groundwork for the basic functionality. The reason platforms are so important is that they allow developers to use massive technological leverage. To illustrate this point, lets use the example of Dropbox, an outstanding online backup application.

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