Tag Archives: photo sharing

Photo social sharing services – here yesterday, gone today

When Kevin Rose sold Digg and started his own social sharing service under the company name of Milk, we all watched with anticipation for what was possible from someone who has had a close relationship with the public for a very long time. His company’s app had us sharing photos and experiences, instead of being locked into an overall location. All was fun till Google offered Kevin a job and he pulled the plug.

The key to many photo as well as document apps, is the cloud backend that is needed for others to see your creations. When the provider pulls the plug on the hosting, the app on your iPhone generally becomes useless. Some still allow creation and editing, but the method to get the resulting item out of the app has been removed. And, with that, so is the social groups a person had built up.

With so many options, it is easy to miss going to one when another is getting a lot of attention from others so there are things to comment on. You know, the social side of social media.

Last week I visited two apps that I thought I had more recently used, but discovered it must have been months… oh how time flies by!

For a few months, everyone was getting into the Gif sharing. Apps to create and apps to share where everywhere a person looked on Photography sites. Perhaps Vine with it’s sharing of a 6 second movie helped lighten the visits to the many Gif sharing solutions. One that had a nice selection of short moving images that appeared to be from some very creative people was Gifture.

When I launched the app, there was non of my posts or other people’s posts available anymore. In this case though, perhaps it will return some day, the developer’s promise. When it returns, will the users return… since they already got burned once.

Another photo sharing app that actually got a lot of attention in tech groups of folks was Hipster. Their idea was that a person created ‘digital postcards’ via snapping a photo and having a frame applied with location text. Find friends and share ‘postcards’ within Hipster for others to enjoy. I didn’t really dive into the app’s social pond very deeply as there was almost no posts by folks close to me and those far away where not posting very regularly. Yet, the app continued to get press as being the place to be.

Launching the app now results in all areas and pages being blank. The Hipster Web site tells a bit of the story:

“Hipster says goodbye.

There’s an old saying that says that “all good things must come to an end”, and its with a mixture of a lot of emotions – gratitude, sadness, and excitement for the future – that we’re letting you know that Hipster will be shutting down as of February 16th, 2013.

You’ll have until that date to save whatever postcards you’d like to keep – after that, all of the postcards you’ve sent through Hipster, and the accounts you’ve created will be deleted.

The decision to shut down Hipster was not an easy one. Over the last 18 months, over 500,000 people have joined our community, sent some amazing postcards, and made some real friendships. However, given the combination of many things – the state of today’s photosharing landscape, financial considerations, and speed of the growth of the community – we decided that now was the appropriate time to end the great experiment that is Hipster.”

So, what is the responsibility to your customers? Gone are the days of the little corner photo processing booth going out of business and the neighborhood having to drive a bit further. Social services effect people globally, both in their time as well as relationships that were created and now lost. Generally, there is no other way to contact someone outside of the provider’s solution. Will people start to be more cautious about joining in on the promise of fun amongst new friends when the relationship connection requires an outside party with only the hopes of an income stream in the game?

Does Albumatic have the friends photo album share figured out?

The iPhone has a camera, it has social solutions to post photos to and it many options to group photos and friends. The trick has been how to get all of the bits to come together in a way that is actually usable. Recently I was reminded of a early solution that allowed photos to be grouped by an event, it had it’s limitations around friend grouping along with a few other layout issues. In the world of apps, it was several years ago so the name has gone from my memory.

It seems everyone has made an attempt at providing a solution. Apps like Flock have ‘smarts’ built in around how and who should see the photos so there is less burden on the users. Other apps try gain usage through a unique interface for adding, sorting and viewing. It’s a huge challenge to find the magic sauce which will pull people in to use.

Albumatic is an app that has risen to being noticed not by setting new records in the number of our friends using it. Rather, in the area of the types and amount of investors that have jumped onboard to help the app grow. It’s strengths are the ability to build an album that others can be alerted to. They can then view and add their own images… which pretty much sounds like the marketing behind all of the other iPhone photo album sharing apps.

It appears from my first testing that if the album is location based, others can’t add photos without being close by. Other options are location based only by name and I ended up with pictures from other events. ‘Friends’ don’t have to be at the event to enjoy the photos, only to post (I like that). Those that are viewing (joined) the album are available via the app to the Album creator so it is easy to see who is watching along and who isn’t. Time will tell if Albumatic becomes the location photo album solution of choice. Once again, a free app that will have to pay the bills somehow once the VC money runs out, will it be location based ads?

Photo Timeline sharing service Memolane is shutting down

Just received this email:

Here at Memolane, we’ve had an amazing two years helping people see, search and share all of their social media content from across the web. Our goal was to make it exciting to relive great adventures with friends. We are proud that we could bring joy to people’s lives by sending out daily emails with fun memories from the past. As well, it has been a thrill to share in the excitement when one of our fans rediscovers a precious moment that was once lost.

Today we want to share the exciting news that our team is joining another company that will utilize the Memolane features in an expanded way, adding more value to all the great memories captured on social media.

Unfortunately this also means that we will be shutting down the memolane.com service. Your account with Memolane and all its content will be deleted on Friday Feb. 22th. Please note that Memolane only aggregates content so all of your social media memories will still be available on the existing social media services you use.

As well, if you love receiving your daily MemoMail, there are other services which you can use, such as Timehop. JoliCloud also offers a service for accessing all of your social media. Check it out!

Feel free to send us a message on Twitter or Facebook.

Finally, we would like to share a word of heartfelt thanks with our loyal users, partners and our incredible team. We cannot thank you enough for all of your support, feedback, and warm wishes over the years.

And as always…

Keep making great memories, thanks for being part of ours!

Eric, Nikolaj and the Memolane Team

–No need to unsubscribe, this is the final email you will receive from us.

PhotoJojo is going to school you on better iPhone Photography

This just in… PhotoJojo wants to go beyond cool iPhone photography gadgets and fun books. Now, they are offering their own ‘University’ on ‘Phoneography 101‘.

For $5 (introductory price), you will receive two emails a week for four weeks covering; Camera Basics, Composition, Lighting, Experimental, Creative Effects, Tools, Editing and Sharing. The emails are reported to be ‘bite-sized’ and formatted to view on the iPhone screen. Each lesson taking minutes instead of hours. While there is no homework or surprise quizzes, each lesson does end with a challenge to strength your photography skills. All taught by Professor Pancake, Professor PJ and a Basket of Kittens… yea, they have s sense of humor over at PhotoJojo.

What do I think? Well, I have yet to receive my first lesson but below are some screen shots they offer on the site. It looks interesting and may prove to be a great gift for the new iPhone (no Android version available!!) owner that found they now have a camera everywhere they go.

For the love of EyeEm iPhone photo share, updates and Ambassadors

Many times, services and apps are reviewed by how they do against another solution. Feature lists, support, accessibility and user interfaces of a new app have get compared to another that people think set the standard.

In the world of iPhone photo sharing, many compare others against Instagram. While I agree, the solution is very well done, there are others with a different take on the sharing problem that are equally well designed, but they are different. EyeEm is one that is a service and an app where iPhone photo sharing is at the center. Photos on the service are generally quality over quantity. People post up fewer photos, seemingly picking only their better shots. Each photo is tagged with what the photographer was doing and where they were. The location being an item they choose from a list of nearby business options or enter their own instead of being locked to a Geolocator.

A recent update to EyeEm made the application of the included filters and frames easier. While I do almost all of my tuning outside of the app, the ease of selecting an additional filter is nice. Swipe side-to-side to move through the available filters (14), seeing each one being applied, reaching the end moves you back to the start. Swiping up/down takes you through the frame options (12) to outline the photo your uploading.

You can still use the buttons along the bottom to show the filters and frames which can be manually picked. Across the top of the ‘edit’ area of EyeEm is a ‘clarify’ like enhancement tool and crop.

To get the word of EyeEm out to more possible users and to gather with people to exchange set up and usage stories, EyeEm is now offering the opportunity to be an Ambassador.

While looking at the Ambassador information, you may want to look around a bit at EyeEm’s very nice tutorial pages. Full of instructions and inspirational photos.

Scout Camera for the iPhone where taking the photo is the fun

Photography with the iPhone for most people is about editing the photo afterwards. Take photos, then try to make them fit in a Instagram square or experiment with filters to enhance the theme. There are a couple camera apps I have covered before that let you see how the photo will appear with a filter added prior to taking the picture. Usually, these apps have a ton of features that need to be set, taking away from the fun of snapping a quick shot.

The folks that developed Scout Camera seem to have the fun of photography in mind, knowing that a iPhone taken photo will need to fit into a world outside of the iPhone. It is easier to know what things will fit together later when limits are thought of when snapping the actual photo.

Launching the app offers a the ability to start shooting right away. Tap the screen to adjust the camera exposure reference point. Scout Camera places all of the feature ‘on/off’ options along the bottom: apps photo storage, flash control, shutter, filters and cropped view.

Second from the right in the lower area is the Filters built into Scout Camera. Sweep left/right to view the option, tapping one will change the camera viewer to show how the picture will appear if taken. A quick tool for taking retro or black and white photos.

Choosing the ‘crop’ button on the lower right corner will frame the photo being taken within the limits of the crop. 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 and 1:1 are supported. No concerns later when a crop may cut off part of the picture’s story. Scout Camera outputs in full resolution, for example the 1:1 is 2448 x 2448. After the photo is taken, it is saved to the app’s internal viewer with location and notes included. Export to the iPhone photo library, Open With… for editing in other apps, Instagram, email, Facebook and Twitter are all options.

Was Google’s graphical update to Google+ for the iPhone enough for you to jump in?

Google has been trying, trying very hard, to get you to jump on board with their Google+ social sharing. A lot of the big names in just about every industry have dipped a toe into the Google+ waters. A quick search will result in names you will know. Digging a bit deeper, you may find very little quantity of posts behind that quality of names.

The biggest change to the iPhone app for Google+ was making the string of posts from folks in your ‘Circles’ more graphical. Gone is the headline text, small icon, and teaser text on a plain white background. Now, the posting person’s name and image appear larger, with the headline or teaser text over the top of the key image of the post. This means that searching visually for text your interested in is more difficult, but swiping through the posts and seeing related images is quicker. It’s a interesting path change from a company that has the simplest of Search starting and listing pages to now a almost completely graphical UI in their mobile social app.

In the update prior to this one, a occasional issue was introduced where uploading photos in a post wasn’t always successful. Photos can also be uploaded to libraries on Google+ that you create. A feature that was introduced between the last and this update was the ability to have photos automatically saved from your iPhone to Google as a cloud storage option. This feature is similar to Apple’s Photo Steam, except with Photo Stream the photos sync back to your desktop while with Google they stay on their storage… a couple gigs are provided at no charge, adding more carries charges.

When viewing your photo libraries on Google through Google+, you can choose a single photo to look at comments others have made (those you chose to share). Swiping a photo takes you to the next in the series.

Photos are grouped by Google+ into areas that are similar to what you would see on other social share services. Multiple photos can be attached a post, which you can make viewable to no one, your friend’s circles or the general ‘public’.

Big news happening in the world of iPhone Photo Social Sharing

It’s been a busy last few days in the world of iPhone Photos social sharing technologies.

Three come to mind, the first was getting all kinds of press over the last 24 hours. Milk has decided to discontinue Oink, the ranking/share iPhone app. The app and it’s services jumped onto the scenes last November from a Kevin Rose start up company. It gained a lot of popularity pretty quickly as an app to rank a thing rather than a place. So, you liked/disliked a sandwich, not the business proving it. I had mixed emotions using the app as it was relatively fast and easy to share but viewing what other was sharing as a single ranking in a list took up most of the screen. You built ‘Cred’ from your rankings in groups like Breakfast, Coffee, Toys, etc…

People are either happy that the service provider was smart enough to kill another iPhone Social Service if it wasn’t going anywhere before we all invested a year in it’s content. Others feel like the service should have gone on as a service since they feel their hard work in building it up will be lost. Folks, services like this start viral but take energy and MONEY to keep them growing so if it wasn’t going along the path, Milk saved us even bigger lost of time investment later. Personally, I think it was another app like Bump where the technology is free but it’s core will find it’s way into other services as a licensed core engine.

EyeEm, the social share service I call ‘more professional’, updated a few items throughout their app. The app now provides frames for your photos… a group that can be applied to any photo/filter rather than like some systems where the frame is locked to a filter effect. There is also a nice update to the Filters in EyeEm, with a new look to the picker and the filters themselves appear enhanced. Behind the scenes, the camera has been ‘updated’. As a reminder, with EyeEm, you can apply the filter and frame effect while taking the picture so you know what your going to get before you snap.

Last is Instagram… last for no particular reason… the app was updated last night too. There was an occasional issue with sharing out through the app via email, fixed. As well, the big one for us heavy users, the Instagram app has been updated to launch quicker. I can say, it really does get going faster now. Not sure if that is due to caching of photos or smaller initial loads, doesn’t mater to me, it works. Have a great day sharing!!