A modern version of Cal Henderson's "Building Scalable Web Sites" would be nice to have. I'm sure a lot of it still applies, but it was written a decade ago: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596102357.do

"On Flickr.com, a new feature called Camera Roll organizes them into a reverse-chronological timeline."

10 years on flickr in September.

Retarded idea. Where does the time information come from? The upload time (user & flickr controlled) or EXIF (camera controlled). My bet it's the EXIF which relies on a camera having the correct date. With 20K+ images a lot without correct dates. That's why I generate the dates in tags and titles for own search. Yahoo search is a joke.

"Using Yahoo’s image-recognition technology, Flickr will generate dynamic albums for you across 60 categories including people, animals, landscapes, panoramas, and architecture."

I don't want Yahoo's stupid idea of organisation of images. This isn't for users, people who pay. It's for viewers who search, don't pay but consume and so Yahoo makes $$$.

"But the real opportunity is in helping people manage and browse their smartphone photos"

Nope, still like my choice of camera, pre-processing and manual uploading.

"What’s impressive is what it’s doing for free:"

One of the great things about the web is you can put a face to the words. Casey you missed the chance to ask why the site is un-usable to show a page, why the front-end is rendered at the client and poor user design decisions like reducing the screen usage area. Flickr screen clutter has increased over the years making it harder to view and use.

Flickr never recovered after the departure of Butterfield, Fake and Henderson.

Read:

How flickr started: "This Story About Slack's Founder Says Everything You Need To Know About Him"

http://www.fastcolabs.com/3026418/open-company/this-story-ab...

Technology behind it: Cal Henderson, "Building Scalable Web Sites"

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596102357.do

Slack: Latest Company by founders:

http://www.fastcolabs.com/3026418/open-company/this-story-ab...

If what you're really after is designing a scalable website - which is very different from system admin stuff - I think the "Building Scalable Websites" book is a great place to start: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596102357.do

Perhaps a bit dated (2006), but most of it would still be relevant.

Yeah, Cal's fish book (hah, scaling...) is better - http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102357

Can anyone speak to how close these books come to this? Or recommend other books?

Building Scalable Web Sites http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102357

The Art of Capacity Planning http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596518585

Web Operations http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920000136

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102357/

Building Scalable Websites by the Flickr guy.

One minor correction to your very helpful post: the scalability book you are referring to is "Building Scalable Web Sites" by Cal Henderson (not Clay Shirky).

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102357/