Flickr, iLife and Betty Crocker
Tanya Silverstein has a project in mind. She wants to share a collection of annoted pictures from a collection that she has in iPhoto on her Mac. It used to be that the LSB would help a teacher to learn how to make a web site from scratch using tools like Dreamweaver. It was painful work, but teachers learned a lot and had a unique product that they had some sense of ownership of.
During a quick meeting here in the LSB a couple of weeks ago, we showed Tanya how easy it was to share photos on the web with a site like Flickr and Shutterfly. I thought that this would be the best way to go since it wouldn't require her to learn about ftp, web servers and making web sites. Tanya had already experimented with the service and was unhappy with the limited text she was allowed to describe her photos and the low resolution she was limited to with that type of service.
When we walked through the process of using iPhoto and iWeb together to publish a simple photo blog, Tanya really seemed happy with the result. She liked how she could change the look and feel of the site quickly. I mentioned that we could throw up another drupal site (like the lsb site) and make her the administrator, but that scared her off a little. She seemed really excited to move forward with her project after she saw how easy it was to create a "custom" site using iWeb.
I think that Apple's iLife has hit a psychological sweet spot that could be likened to the "Eureka!" moment when Pillsbury realized that Betty Crocker cake mixes that were too easy to make wouldn't sell. The wife needed to feel like she was baking by adding a couple of "fresh" ingredients herself. When Betty Crocker cakes had just the right amount of "diy" bundled with them, they sold.
I look forward to working on this project with Tanya. I want to ask her a little about whether or not the technology motivates her, gets in her way or is completely neutral in the development of her project. I'd love to know how much of her satisfaction is due to the "ease" of publishing her work versus ability to customize her site. Will she use new features in the software as she discovers them or is this requirements driven?