As the veteran venture capitalist Bill Gurley said recently, it’s important to be an optimist in the startup business, as most great tech companies “will sail close to death and then rise up again.” Just a year and a half ago, Aviary, a New York startup focused on creative tools for photo editing, was certainly lost at sea, its original vision floundering. But by drastically shifting its focus from the web to mobile, and from a consumer facing startup to one that powers other businesses, Aviary has become a juggernaut, the closest thing to a modern day Adobe for the mobile era.A great business story and just the kind of innovation the photo industry needs.
“When we were web only, during a big day, we might have 100,000 people edit photos. This year, more than 50 million people used our tools on Thanksgiving.”
My favorite end-of-the-year lists are always the photos. Here are a few that have made their way online so far; I’ll be updating this list throughout the month so send me your lists.
2012: The Year in Photos from In Focus: Alan Taylor is still my favorite picker of photos. Here’s part two.
Best Photos of the Year 2012 from Reuters: Almost a hundred photos, heavy on hard news.
The 45 Most Powerful Images of 2012 from Buzzfeed: A wide-ranging selection of photos designed to tug at the heartstrings. See also The Best Animal Photos of 2012.
Pictures of the Year 2012 from AFP (Agence France-Presse): Not an official list but a nice selection of AFP photos nonetheless.
Matt Stopera’s BuzzFeed list is rad.
Who needs Photoshop? Not the Soviets. Years before Photoshop became the photo-editing software du jour, they already had some fairly advanced photo-retouching technology. Sure, the tools were a little big and clunky, but clearly they were ultra-effective. If only they had kept at it a little longer; we might all be speaking Russian at the moment. source
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