Advocate: Matthew Bock
Project description: Photo clouds is a system to allow people to easily share their pictures with many people quickly and easily. It does this by allowing users to create small, temporary clouds and inviting other people to upload their pictures to that cloud. The initial goal of the system is to alleviate the need for people to try to share large amounts of pictures (like from a day out or an event that they all attended) using slow, clunky means like MMS messaging or Email. All the photos would be in one place, and allow for people to browse, pick, and choose which photos they would like to keep without having to ask the owner of each picture to send it manually.
Expanding on this idea of a specialized cloud, we can also use this system to create a kind of collaborative photo album. For example, imagine a big event like a wedding or a family reunion. One person can start up a new photo cloud at the beginning of the day and open it up for everyone attending the event. As the day goes on, people can post pictures to the album from their phones as they take them, perhaps adding captions or comments. The end result is a huge collection of pictures taken by many people throughout the whole event, capturing the event in a way that one dedicated photographer could not.
And that’s that! I’m really excited about this idea, and I hope other people will be too!
