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All the smart people are talking about it. Seriously, everywhere you go, it’s “I’m not saying ‘Web 2.0’ ever again” this and “I’m not linking to you if you say it” that, or “Web 2.0 is arrogant,” which, wait, I said.

It’s become a dividing issue in the blogosphere (note that’s only the second time I’ve ever used the word blogosphere here—I am not a metablogger—note also I’ve never used the word metablogger except these two little times). Unfortunately, both sides are getting too polar and forgetting the point.

Okay, everyone’s going to be talking about flock, but I’m jotting my thoughts down from my initial ten minutes of playing around with it.

First, love the blog integration, but how useful is it going to be to anyone except us early adopters and bloggers? Oh, wait, everyone blogs these days.

Second, pretty rough around the edges (some interface quirks here and there). It’s a beta, I’ll let it slide.

Third, I’m stuck with flickr?? Sorry, I want zenphoto integration. As a side note, how much did flickr pay flock? And del.icio.us?

Fourth, the favorites look good, but I haven’t used them enough to be useful.

Fifth, it seems too fake, and what I mean by that is Web 2.0 is arrogant, why can’t you realize that? It’s a “we’re better than everyone else and we know it” feel. It’s like
saying you’re cool because you hang out with the cool people. Let’s get real, folks. The web is not high school.

So screw the hyped apps, let’s have some real integration. I really want to see a browser so flexible that it exposes this kind of functionality with almost any web app, not just the cool kids—flickr, technorati and del.icio.us. Which leaves me wondering, should all this be in a browser anyway? Aren’t I limiting myself an awful lot here?

So I’m wondering if they got the whole idea wrong from the beginning. I’d feel awfully sorry for them if they did, so I’ll give it a chance and see if it does anything for me. After all, I do like this blog manager.

Update: Joel gets it too. I couldn’t agree more. Also, I’m updating this in Wordpress, and I can’t read the code the stupid Flock blog editor made. So much for that…

Available at zenphoto.org.

Wow that felt good. It took me a while to realize what I was actually doing, but then when I uploaded the front page of zenphoto.org and looked at the domain in the address bar, it hit me.

It’s not 100% as complete as I wanted for 1.0, but it’s pretty darn good, and definately good enough to use and to start making themes for. Speaking of which, theme developers: I’ll have some documentation up soon, but until then, just look at how the two included themes are built and you should be able to figure it out. If you know PHP, the template-functions.php will be good to look at.

So, with that, I leave it to you. Remember that this is a developer release, and as such I won’t be supporting it much. I’m trying to get a support forum set up so you can help each other out.

If you get it installed and working, leave a comment here with a link (if you want) and a sentence or two on your initial thoughts. Thanks!

Update: We now have support forums, which should be better for helping everyone. Please keep the tech support there and the links and comments here from now on. Thanks!

My dad told one of his coworkers about zenphoto and how I’m developing it—in an open transparent process, on the blog, encouraging user feedback and comments (and I do! keep on commenting!)—and I was surprised that this guy thought it was a revolutionary way to develop software.

I read Michael Heilemann’s post about how blogs are revolutionizing the world, and it didn’t really make sense to me until today. I thought, “Gee, this really is different.” I mean, how else would you—a complete stranger, the proverbial and mythical “user” proprietary developers talk about—actually have a direct link to the developer of the software you might use someday.

I think this is revolutionary. Tell me I’m wrong.

I’m going to try to explain this in a succint and clear manner, without writing an essay.

Good designers use web standards because it’s stupid not to. Literally. HTML without CSS layout and design is like C without functions. It’s a perfect analogy—without functions, programmers would have to repeat code that does the same thing over and over again, and get it the same each time it was repeated to remain consistent and avoid errors. Without CSS, designers would have to repeat code for everything, and they’d have to make sure everything remains consistent manually. It’s a horrible thought not to have functions in any programming language—it’s the same with HTML.

CSS is just the natural evolution of web coding. Before, the web didn’t have abstraction. Now it does, and smart people use it. It’s stupid not to. So why all the hype? Because people who understand it really get how important it is. It finally made the web codable. It dissolved the need for middleman design tools. It made web code comprehensible. It’s just the right way to do it.

This is why we need standards support from all major browsers; because once you give people a taste of what’s right, they can’t go back to doing things the wrong way.

Why am I writing this? Because I’m sick of working on this damn project that has 18 nested tables for every piece of text. I’m sure glad we’re moving away from that…

It seems that there are rhetorical fallacies in every corner of public life in the United States—politics, television, corporations, families—everywhere, everyone is misinterpreting everything. That there was a fallacy of generalization. People do it all the time. Half the people in the US have below-average regard for the way they use generalizations when speaking. Isn’t that incredible? It also happens to be a 100% true statement, and on a subject I have no clue about. A statistical fallacy. It’s all in the way you word it. You can make anything sound any way you want it. How often do you think the media or the government (on all sides of the political spectrum) does this? I see it all the time.

I’ve been very disturbed with a new fallacy I’ve seen used all over the place recently. I call it the Fallacy of Potential. Simply put, it is the misinterpretation of a potential for something to exist as the loss of that thing. I’m sure it’s been well documented before, but I just want to point out a few blatant examples of its continuing rise in public media, politics and beliefs, and the effect it’s having on the country.

This is the official announcement for the start of development of zenphoto, a new, better, simpler, more useful, open-sourced, and overhyped personal web photo album app.

Read the full announcement and preliminary specifications (PDF, 63k).

Keep in mind that I’m very open to comments—I’m building this for you, so I want your ideas and feedback!

So it begins…

My project for the summer is this: Make the best web photo album application ever.

Ambitious? Nah. I’ve wanted to do it for ages, noticing the deficiencies in PhotoStack, albeit it being one of the best solutions available. Gallery, Gallery2 even, Coppermine—they’re what you call “bloated.” PhotoStack had the right idea—keep it simple, make it really easy to do what you want, and make the interface beautiful. Unfortunately, as Joen noted, it’s missing many important features including comments, good descriptions, and being bug-free.

So I want you to tell me exactly what you want and don’t want in your ideal photo album. Use the <ul> tag Use dashed lists… ULs don’t work. Think hard about it. I’ll do it if there’s enough demand and response.

A couple other things I want feedback on are implementation details:

• I started already in PHP and I’ll probably stick with it, but I’d like to try Ruby on Rails of TaDa list fame. Any objections?
• Database or flat-file for comments? (I’m already doing album directories like PhotoStack)
• Shall I use AJAX? I can (in moderation) to great effect in the slickness of the UI (think flickr).
• Any other server environment or implementation preferences would be appreciated, but try to focus on your dream app and tell me about it.

What are you waiting for? Get commenting.