If you’d like to see a visual demo, check out MacBreak’s video interview with GroupSmarts [QuickTime movie, 93.6MB]. Warning: Merlin Mann present. I don’t mind him but I know that many do…

An especially interesting feature (new in the current version), is the ability to query a photo’s subject via email about some aspect of it. For example, by assigning your brother’s Address Book contact to a photo of your him and his dog you could query him automatically for the dog’s name, or some other forgotten aspect of the photo (see screenshot here). This function appears to be driven via web services, but as incorporated into MemoryMiner, they’re proprietary rather than open-access.

As I mentioned, Facebook already incorporates some of this functionality. MemoryMiner has been able to take the ideas further because of its tight integration with other system services in Mac OS X, but there’s no reason why any photo-sharing/social networking site couldn’t attempt something similar.

One interesting question is how people may export this social/spatial/time-based hybrid information to other similar systems in future. Clearly the value of it is in the linkages between the different types of information on a given entity, e.g. that a certain photo was taken at a certain place at a certain time with a certain group of people. In other words, the context of the photo.

This raises a question common to all social software hybrid applications. Is innovation ahead of the curve when developing standards for these features? Certainly, RSS photostreams including geotagging information can be done at present, but how are we to incorporate people as entities into these systems in such a way as they are transferrable? Can Great Uncle Joe become a URL?

Answers on a postcard please. Or a comment.