Color to Get Major Update, Fix ‘Loneliness’ Problem

So their solution to #1 is just to not let you use it? What.

Also, that last picture in the article had me loling. "Take photos together". I'm sure in the near future we'll all be standing 10 ft from each other taking pictures of the same things. I hope that wasn't the intended meaning...

Anyway, as much bashing as it's being given, I think the elastic social network idea is very interesting. Anybody see some kind of guerilla advertising going on in dense places? Like you have a buncha people invade an area taking pics of advertisements hahaha.

Two of us spent about 45 minutes trying "Color" out this evening.

Now, I love gadgets. And New technology. But, for the life of me, and the people at the table, we really could not figure out the color interface. It has a bunch of non-standard icons with clocks, and globes, and loops and a color wheel (that we eventually discovered is the camera icon - not sure what would have been wrong with a camera icon).

The app is still buggy. I would take pictures that eventually would be visible to my friend, but It took me about 5 or 6 more minutes before I could see his.

The whole "We map out lighting to determine if you are in the same room" algorithm may have been the same problem, as different parts of the room had totally different lighting levels.

I'm certainly not getting that Instagram "Wow, this is awesome" feeling. We'll see how it plays out.

I really wish they would also fix the "Crashing every 5 minutes" problem.

The problem I'm having with the app (besides the crashing) isn't the loneliness. It's that it's supposed to be this totally new model for sharing our lives, but I get no hints or instructions on how to use it well/as intended.

Unfortunately I forgot who I'm paraphrasing when I say this, but there is not intuitive, there is only familiar. The mechanics of this application are completely unfamiliar to most people. It would be nice to get some guidance on what kind of use tends to be fun.

Reading about Color while watching news about Middle Eastern protests was an interesting juxtaposition. Having a surge of people using this during a major news event could prove interesting - to the degree of being "disruptive tech" having consequences and uses we can't imagine yet.

At the other extreme, even being far away from others could prove useful, if only to have a starting point for finding others and bootstrapping social interaction. Someone has to be first to turn it on in an otherwise isolated area.

Instead of focusing on the "loneliness" issue, how about you focus on the "crash every 5 seconds" issue?

I don't get this application. Why would I want to use such a thing?

Using the app confuses me. It prompted me for my name nonstop (when I say nonstop, I mean I typed my name and clicked "OK", and then it asked me for my name again, repeat), I finally had to press back until it dropped me at what I presumed was the default screen of the app. After a while it stopped using my name and just said "User". When I took pictures and clicked "Ok", it would flash to the app and then back to the camera to have me take yet another picture.

The interface has no hints as to what's going on. I'm just completely confused by the app and I have a tendency to find my way around all sorts of bad apps and websites.

All I know is, Sequoia better have seen some top secret stuff. My eyebrows are at very different heights.