Today starts the task of revisiting products and websites in the same space as Tidepool and Storymill. We did some extensive competitive analysis a year ago during the initial design phase, but we've taken a blank page approach since then, not wanting to get into a feature war mindset as we finished things up.

Now it's time to revisit iPhoto and Picasa and Flickr and Webshots and Photoshop Album and the rest, then boil it all down to a new website that compares everything with a feature grid, some reviews, and lots of discussion forums.

The trick is to do this all without any bias on our part. We've made the decision to praise similiar products where they deserve it, which on the surface is a risky thing for a business to do in public, as we can lose business because of it.

The deeper truth is that we're trying to really learn what features people want most, so stimulating free discussion toward that end can only help us. This market is big enough, and we're small enough, that we can afford to think out loud.

All we gotta do is get in the list.