Flickr Blows

I have rarely played with my Flickr account that has been in existence (though mostly dormant) for about 2 years.

And after playing with it for a few hours, I am not feeling very motivated to waste more time on it.

1. No support for an official Linux uploader. Grrr.
2. Limited to 100MB photos uploads a month – unless you buy a pro account for $24.95. If Google can give you 4GB of disk space for GMail, why is Flickr giving out space in 100MB drips and drops? Zzzz. Just as you get going with Flickr you have a “Oops, can’t do that!” moment. Don’t frustrate users too early.
3. Only allows free users 3 sets. Stupid, stupid, stupid. A set has zero cost. More sets = more pictures. More pictures = affinity for Flickr. Affinity for Flickr = incentive to purchase a paid account. Sets are zero cost to Flickr / Yahoo (zero storage and zero bandwidth for all practical purposes); why not let people go wild with creating sets? Limiting users to 3 sets gives them a frustrating cap on Flickr’s usefulness way too early in their user experience.

Advice to Flickr: don’t whack new users with limits so fast–you piss them off way before they have time to fall in love with the product.

Nice Ajaxy interface. But “wow” interfaces don’t get me addicted to a product–usefulness does. Hitting arbitrary limits too early is a buzz kill.

Ubuntu Frustrations

Lots of little oddities as I tried to stretch my Ubuntu wings.

From small things like Flickr’s advanced uploader (Flash based, I gather) not working right to Firefox occasionally locking up when I opened a new Window, using Ubuntu has not been the smooth experience that I was hoping for. Maybe it’s a bad day, maybe Ubuntu is just rougher around the edges than it’s polished exterior leads you to believe.

I am not giving up. I want to give Linux on the desktop a fair shake, but I am seeing clouds on the horizon. Will they build–or dissipate?

Ubuntu Calling…

OK. I have had it with Windows. Really, I have. The annoyances, the arrogance, the in-your-face-f**k-you attitude they have for their users… It’s time for a change.

I would love to buy a Mac or two (An iMac / MacBook Air combo would be nice), but looking at the bank statement, that ain’t gonna happen any time soon.

So I guess I am going to go with Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu, I really do, and it would probably have been my first choice if Adobe apps ran on it, but sadly, there are no Linux versions of Photoshop and Lightroom. (So I guess I will still be running Windows, but only on rare occasions.)

So, let the experiment begin!

I am trying to, wherever I can, switch my apps to open source versions as well.

Let’s see how this goes.

So far, most days, I can seem to run Ubuntu all day and not ever have to switch back to Windows to do anything.

Still looking for some killer replacements for my old-standby Windows apps. I guess I will find them as I need them. I can’t say I have played with many Linux desktop apps outside of server and network tools and the occasional editor; my Linux experiences have mostly been using it as a server, not a desktop. So there is a lot of opportunity to find some cool desktop apps I have not been exposed to before.

Installing PDT / Eclipse Europa on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

I had a little hiccup installing Eclipse Europa / PDT on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and I thought some other folks might be running into the same problem, so I wanted to post the solution.

When I tried to run Eclipse I kept getting the error:

Error creating the view

org.eclipse.core.runtime.Plugin

I initially installed the GPL version of Java and that was the mistake; you need Sun Java. Period.

So, if this is the problem you are having, go to the Synaptics Package Manager and install sun-java6-bin (and any other Java packages you think you need–but make sure they are the Sun versions!).

This is what I installed:

Barcamp Bangkok – One Week to Go!

We are on the final stretch of planning for Barcamp Bangkok–only one more week to go.

The things I thought would be hard (getting sponsors, spreading the word so we would have enough people to make it interesting), turned out to be the easiest part. The things I thought would be easy, are turning out to be a lot of work (network, location, logistics, mostly because we have 5-10X the amount of interest I expected for a first time event). Live and learn, as they say.

Luckily there are some really good people helping to organize Barcamp Bangkok.

Saturday was the day to survey the location and plan the network. Indus has a 512K DSL connection–not good, so we talked to True about upgrading the connection to their fastest speed for one month and we will pick up the tab. Never enough bandwidth!

Lots of details, but I think they are sorted. Unconventional methods of communication by traditional organizational standards (IRC, Twitter, Google Docs, News Groups, Wikis, GTalk), but surprisingly effective if you have committed people.

Overall, it’s been a eye-opening experience on how to make things happen in a less-structured, more-open, more-participatory fashion. Still, decisions need to be made and the open structure sometimes seems to diffuse responsibility, but as long as people realize that stepping up and making decisions is OK–things work out.