Douchebag of the week award goes to: VectorMagic

20after4 — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 21:29:13 -0500

Note: VectorMagic is an awesome ~~piece of software~~ online service that will vectorize your images to SVG or EPS format. It does a much better job than adobe illustrator or other similar "tracing" software, however, the price that they have decided to charge ($2.50 per image) is not so awesome. Uploading photos to an online service for processing is an inconvenience compared to using desktop software, however, the superior quality provided by VectorMagic outweighs the slight inconvenience. When using a free service there isn't much concern about inconveniences, however, they are now charging a very premium price for the same service. Adobe or Google should buy this company and quickly. Their business model is flawed, I can't see them making it as a start-up.

5:58 PM
Monkey: man did you see what became of our beloved vectormagic? ...boo I say!

6:48 PM
Trench: nope, I haven't seen vector magic since the day I showed it off

6:49 PM
Monkey: oh... well I used to use it all the time... now it's not free ;(

Trench: I'm scared to know

wow

that's extremely lame

Monkey: yep

fucking stanford

first google, now this

Trench: maybe they are trying to pimp it to google

6:50 PM
Monkey: why would charging for it help with that cause?

they should have pimped it to adobe since adobe's vector algorithm sucks

6:51 PM
Trench: No no, I mean perhaps, being it is stanford, they threw the price tag on it showing that they "can't afford" to maintain it in hopes of someone at Goog going "oh, wait, this is bullshit, we need to help our Stanford peeps."

6:52 PM
Monkey: no it's not from stanford technically... it was some stanford students who are trying to make a business out of their school research project

6:53 PM
Trench: I could actually see it being a vital part of Google office apps... it could easily become clip-art++

6:54 PM
Monkey: yeah goog needs to buy this startup ASAP

but not for the sake of clipart...

it would make a nice standalone app...actually the app is fine, don't change it just make it free damn it

6:55 PM
Trench: right

Monkey: make me watch youtube videos with commercials while it renders

6:56 PM
Trench: I just mean it could be used in their other apps, with a new interface, for easily grabbing or creating clipart. Which douchebag business people still heart. "What, I can make my own bumble bee clipart? From an actual photo? Of an actual bee? O. M. G."

Monkey: I could even see paying for it if they made a standalone version that I could run on my own machine but I

I'm not paying for it as a service

6:57 PM
Trench: fuck paying for it

Monkey: well I agree but I would rather pay once for it than not have it at all

and I'm not buying their "credits" so right now I'm stuck with not having it at all

6:59 PM
Trench: true, but it's not really that hardcore. It's hardcore... and I could see it bundled with another package for purchase. but just as a standalone I don't think it's worth money as desktop software or service. That's teh gay.

Very teh gay

with = worth

just woke up out of sugar induced coma

sugar

induced
SUGARCAVE

Monkey: but it is worth something

7:00 PM I would pay $50 right now to buy it

Trench: Boo

Monkey: boo to them selling credits

Trench: Consumer! (lols)

7:02 PM I wonder how difficult the app would be to deconstruct

and then reconstruct

7:03 PM can't be too hard if it didn't take a team to do it. Even if it was a team, it wasn't a big one. /me looks

oh, here's the most recent count on the russian "incidents"

Monkey: it was a team of stanford graduate students... that means it's a hardcore program.

7:07 PM hah

they actually have the url

Monkey: ?

7:08 PM
Trench: when I went to it before it was a stanford url... damn, we should have looked to see if it was purchased. Somebody probably made bank selling it to them

"http://vectormagic.com/"

Monkey: I'm sure they bought the domain

a long time ago

7:09 PM motherfucker!!! they want $3.50 per image

or $2 each if you buy 50 tokens

fuck them

7:10 PM
Trench: I'm looking at that shit now... this is hardcore gay

it's not going to work

Monkey: it's good but not THAT good

7:11 PM
Trench: they may be code magicians, but they certainly aren't business-model magicians.

Very few people will do this... somebody will end up making another

7:13 PM What will probably end up happening is they will either have to completely change the business model or... some image hosting company will try to by it and use it for their thumbs and such. Because it would definitely free up some server load, and wouldn't be noticeable in thumbs at all

Monkey: oh they are working on a desktop version

use it for thumbs?

7:14 PM that doesn't make much sense at all

Trench: Don't misinterpret

I mean use it to make scalable thumbs

Monkey: the server load generated in the tracing process would offset the benefits

Trench: I could see flickr having fun with this

7:15 PM Not if they are already using the server to create 6 difeferent sized duplicates of the same image

7:16 PM I'm betting the tracing is actually coded so well it's very light on teh server, else they wouldn't have been free this long

7:17 PM
Monkey: the problem with using it for thumbs is this: most browsers wouldn't support the svg format

so they would still have to make a jpg or png format

Trench: true

Monkey: and svg doesn't save file size on small images, it only saves file size on large ones

7:18 PM so a png thumb is less bytes than an svg

also it's gonna take more cpu to trace than it does to scale pixels

7:19 PM
Trench: You win

Monkey: motherfuckers... after reading their blog I'm no longer interested in supporting their project. I wouldn't even pay for the desktop version if it were available. fuck them

7:23 PM
Trench: Without even reading their blog, and totally being a graphics dude, I say it's shit. The problem is: The created a nifty little app. It's kinda like the douchebags that tried to sell filters for photoshop (don't know if they still exist), but they were idiots. If you make something cool like this you have to walk into it knowing that there are only a couple of good business models. You either do it for free (with ads if necessary) until Goog, or someone else, comes along to purchase it... or you straight-up market it to adobe. You can't do what they are doing... not with this. It's too small. Sure, it'll get a lot of use... but so does gausian blur in PS. It doesn't make it a marketable standalone.

7:24 PM
Monkey: people do still sell photoshop filters... some of them are super expensive

if this thing was a cheap filter for photoshop then that would be a better biz. model than what they are using

7:25 PM it's an annoyance to upload a big file for rendering, let alone paying for the service

7:26 PM
Trench: i'm actually surprised adobe just hasn't scooped it up, more I think about it. They are getting burned. By a webapp. that is doing a better job than one of the standout features in illustrator CS2

7:27 PM Half of their marketing for illustrator cs2, if not more, was the new "live trace" feature

again, by a webapp

7:28 PM
Monkey: yeah it's not just a little better, it's like several orders of magnitude better...

Trench: that's not good

at all

It's def wuhay better

Monkey: and that's why these guys got a big head about it and turned it into a startup...

7:29 PM adobe's trace is almost useless

Trench: prob is, they don't realize how few people really know what "live trace" is. Muchless Illustrator.

7:30 PM conversation being sent to douchebags@vectormagic.com

(kidding)

Monkey: do it

Trench: but we should

douchebag award

Douchebag of the week award goes to: VectorMagic