2015 internet bubble

That Photo of the Eclipse from the ISS is FAKE. Here are the Real Ones (and they’re not very good.)

Phogotraphy2 Comments

Stop sharing it!

With increasing frustration I’ve watched some of my gullible friends post this image in relation to today’s spectacular Solar eclipse. It’s cited as ‘The ISS took this photo of the eclipse today. #eclipse2015‘

Don’t be fooled, it’s fake. Besides they don’t have Photoshop on the ISS (or at least I don’t think they have.)

Maybe a touch of Photoshop happened here.
Maybe a touch of Photoshop happened here.

The real photographs taken by the astronauts currently stationed on the ISS are much more underwhelming. In fact, somewhat pleasingly they make all the ones I’ve taken look pretty good.

Here’s what NASA had to say when presenting them:

You can certainly sense a bit of embarrassment from that tweet, and quite rightly so. Poor Sam Cristoforetti who seems like an absolutely lovely person, is no match as a photographer to the now widely known Chris Hadfield.

Here’s a selection of the REAL photographs taken today during the Solar eclipse from NASA’s Flickr feed: Continue reading →

Experts That Said Facebook’s Acquisition of Instagram was “Ill-advised” are proved wrong.

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Two and a half years ago the web was abuzz with news that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook.com had struck a deal with the owner-founders of Instagram to buy the photo sharing service for a billion dollars made up of $FB stock options and hard cash. On the most part it was considered a very risky move by Facebook, as Instagram wasn’t even turning a profit. Purchasing a completely separate entity rather than innovating themselves is something Facebook has made a name for.

The general sentiment at the time was dampened as not long had passed since Yahoo had completely desecrated the once king of photo sharing sites Flickr by rolling out a complete redesign at the bereft of its users. If one of the major players in social media can do that to Flickr, what will Facebook to to Instagram?

Connor Adams Sheets for The International Business Times summed up how much of the industry felt about the deal at the time:

“overpaying for companies like Instagram won’t help Facebook maintain its dominant market share, as a billion bucks for a fun (and admittedly useful) photo app represents a huge overestimation of how much the company is really worth.”

Oh how wrong we all were. Because today, Facebook announced by virtue of the brokers CitiGroup that their acquisition of the selfie, filtered, food-fest site is now estimated at a very cool $35 billion dollars. The maths involved has had a few commentators a little sceptical, but even if it’s only half that value it is an impressive investment.

Next comes the real test, as you may recall early this year Mark made another photography related (yes, perhaps a little tenuous) acquisition by bringing on board the mobile messaging app WhatsApp for $19 billion dollars! Let’s see what Citigroup have to say about that next quarter.

Related:

Wired.com – Instagram’s Buyout: No Bubble to be Seen here

The Telegraph – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Defends $1bn Instagram Purchase