Shutterfly purchases smaller online picture service

I just read a blog by Erick Schonfeld on techcrunch.com called Shutterfly Buys Tiny Pictures For A Tiny Price.

Shutterfly purchased Tiny Pictures Friday, Sept. 11, for only $1.3 million in cash and then $1.3 million in stocks to employees.

Tiny Pictures used and offered Radar, a phone picture sharing service, where pictures could be shared through your phone among you, your friends and family immediately after being taken. Then, anyone in your circle of "Radar users," would be free to view and comment on the pictures you took.  

The application sounds pretty cool to me, but apparently Tiny Pictures was never able to expand from its core group of users to a widespread audience.  Maybe that has to do with the fact that you're only able to share pictures with people you know, and if you don't know anyone else with Radar, there isn't much reason for you to buy or use it.

I'm very surprised Tiny Pictures sold for such a low price.  These days, especially when businesses are concerned, $2.6 million isn't very much money.

The Machine Is Us/ing Us

I just watched The Machine Is Us/ing Us on YouTube. It was very interesting. I watched it a few times to really try to understand what this video is hoping to convey. It was very original and really opened my eyes to the changing world we are living in. I interpreted it to be expressing the incredible changes we've seen in technology in recent history, specifically concerning computers and the internet. Things continue to change on a daily basis, with the internet becoming more and more complex and more and more available to virtually anyone in the world. With this shift and advance in technology, other things have been and will continue to be effected, including the way we view ethics, privacy and dozens of other topics.