Tag Archives: social share

With SteamZoo Closing, Where Will You Share Your iPhone Pics

There is a lot of options to share your photos with the public. Many started up long before Instagram but have not had the buy-in from the masses. And, if they did get great quantities of visitors, they were unable to turn eyes into money to pay for servers. SteamZoo is a recent but amongst many, photo sharing sites to close up shop. When a service shuts down, where do you go?

Recently, many of the services I have used for storing and/or editing photos online have been bought up and shortly there after shut down. A person builds relationships and workflows around services only to have it taken away. I don’t believe it is an easy decision for a small shop to shut down, it always feels like the funding gods are just around the corner. For big corporate buyouts though, it’s a shame they can hide behind their big visitor counts and push through the few folks they have caused to rethink how they do things. On the subject, while sharing photos is fun and builds friendships from far away places, the biggest impact to my life has been Task Managers shutting down and causing work successes to slow as a whole new system has to be learned.

OK, back to StreamZoo. Since they did give warning, most folks posted up what their ID was on other services so folks could rejoin. Lost is the groups that StreamZoo encouraged for the building of like photos within a area (like Views of San Francisco, Black and White, HDR, etc…).

I thought I would toss up a couple screen shots of the UI so months from now we don’t forget how we interacted with others via this service. Perhaps, a lessons learned for other services to use when thinking about how their visitors like to interact with each other’s snap shots of life.

New Fuzel for iOS7 – Collages, Stamps, Text and More

Fuzel has always been a go-to-app for me when I need to get a collage of my iPhone photos put together quickly. Today there was an update to Fuzel, making both Fuzel and Fuzel Pro a ‘legacy’ app. All of the new features and UX has been put into a iOS7 specific Free app.

What makes Fuzel so quick to get going is the feature of choosing the images, then the app creates a template to use all of the photos. Rather than finding a template, then finding and inserting one picture at a time.

The collage can then be tuned using the options across the bottom of the screen, each opening to offer more options and fine tuning.

Each area has a simple pack of options to use without any extra charges. Frames, backgrounds, stamps and even text. Fuzel is almost more of a iPhone scrapbook app than just a collage creation tool.

When the image is as you like, share or save to a full featured list of options.

Fuzel does offer a wide variety of optional upgrades to all of the feature add-ons. I was a bit surprised by the below text box when I went to the ‘Store’ area. It would appear that purchasing more stamps, backgrounds and other enhancements require I give Fuzel access to my Facebook friends. The app mentions that this is required to recover my purchases later. Others just use my iTunes login, I wonder if there is anything more than Fuzel collecting data on me. Watch out, if you choose ‘Yes, I do”, then refuse when you get to Facebook, you will get locked into a loop of Facebook/Fuzel screens bouncing back and forth. To get out, removing Fuzel and Facebook from the multitask area of iOS7.

The Fuzel options list of add-ons are very nice for anyone wanting to do more enhancements than just adding filters to photos. Like I mentioned, these options can be applied for more of a Scrapbooking creation. Below is a very small example of the long list of purchasable bits to use.

Instagram takes the limitations off of video

Both Instagram and Vine have attempted to keep vide posts fresh by keeping the videos to what is recorded through the Apps. People have gotten very creative with the timing of their videos by making stop-motion like movies. Normally, when we hear stop-motion, we think cartoon like animations. But, the process is being used to create videos with many breaks and short action, letting a viewer’s mind fill in the gaps. The limitations where also in place to keep out heavily produced commercial posts. Since people have gotten so creative, Instagram has removed this lock, allowing videos to be imported from the iPhone library as well as edited for size and length. Cut a long video down to the allowed 15 seconds and choose the center of the action to appear in the Instagram square format.

When you choose to take an image or record a video, you will notice a new image square to the right of the screen.

Instead of recording a new video, choose the image square to the right of the video control button. This will give you a view of the videos in your iPhone photo library. Notice the length of the video is shown. If you choose to use a video created outside of the Instagram app, you will be given the option to choose the area of square crop as well which part(s) of the video you wish to use.

An additional feature in the Instagram update is the ability to straighten a photo. On the screen where you would normally add filters and frames, a new button has appeared to the far left. Just select the button to open the rotation feature.

If you choose to straighten the image, you are presented with a number and adjustment dial/slider to make minor tweaks till the photo is turned as you like.

A bit of humor… right when I was attempting to download the update to Instagram through the iTune’s app, the download stalled and I received the below. Of course, I wondered what fun my friends where having with the updates while I waited for the iTunes issue to clear up.

Those ‘cute’ doodles for photos from A Beautiful Mess

A Beautiful Mess for the iPhone and iPad is not one of those apps to put sun glasses on a photo of the dog or hats and beards on party snapshots. Instead, much like the theme of the site by the same name, the additions for photos are a touch more mature, yet still fun for all ages.

Like so many of the new photography editing apps showing up, you have to buy all but the few initial group of simple highlights. Unlike those others though, A Beautiful Mess isn’t initially free though, so there is a charge to use what others would offer for free, making money also on all of the additional goodies.

Start the app with either one of your photos or use one of the included backgrounds. Crop, then dive into the editing area. First up is a small group of filters. Filtering effects on your photos is best left to other apps you may already have, that isn’t what the app is about.

Borders are next, the area starts off with Border groups that can be purchases. Below that are the included options, tap one to apply. The frames can not be moved around, but across the bottom of the screen is a color selector. Either use the ‘x’ to remove and move on or the check to save.

Non of the frames are required, you can just move past those that don’t match the look your going for. Next is the Front/text area to type your message – again starting with upgrades to purchase and s small group included.

The ‘big’ feature that makes the A Beautiful Mess app match up to the Web site is the Doodles. The list of available Doodles is much longer than other bits options in the app. These are doodles drawn by the actual pair of owners for the site. These can be placed, twisted, resized and colored (from a set group of colors picker).

The final options in A Beautiful Mess are a set of words to apply. Again, there are two sets of Phrase bundles to pay extra for. When your all done, you can save the photos to your iOS photo library and share directly from the app too. The finished images are much smaller in size than the original, fine for sharing or posting in your Web site, but wont work well for printing on cards.

Oh yea, the backgrounds included in A Beautiful Mess:

Easy digital Fish Eye photography with the iPhone

I own a variety of lens solutions for my iPhone to get a fish eye view of things around. Sometime though, I am without a lens and a shot should be best suited to have a 170 degree round impact. Most app solutions I have played with will do an acceptable job, generally though their output is rather low resolution. An app, InstaFishEye, is on the ‘simple’ side of impact but gives me a full 2048 x 2048 (using the built in share to Instagram is only 612 x 612) photo in my iPhone photo library.

The view finder of InstaFishEye shows a simple fish-eye effect added so you have an idea what you will have to use/edit later.

After a photo is taken, there are tuning options via buttons on either side of the shutter/next button. On the left is 2 additional fisheye lens effects as well access to the original photo without any effect added.

InstaFishEye offers a variety of simple full image filters to add a bit of age or uniqueness found through retro films.

As I said, save the photo to the iPhone photo roll is 2048 square. Sharing can be done directly through InstaFishEye to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and email.

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.

I’m Here – location text over iPhone photos for fun sharing

Pictures posted to Instagram, Streamzoo, EyeEm… Facebook, Twittter… well, you know, social sites. Can at times have text on the photo saying things like a cute message, the location or the weather at where the photo was snapped. Looking around, I did find a fun little app that automatically adds location, city or county info right on the iPhone snapshot.

Instaplace accepts a photo from the iPhone photo library or one taken through the app. Using the app’s camera, snapping a shot is done through the viewfinder with the text showing. Two buttons will help tell the app to pull data for the photo; My Place and Locate. Swiping across the Instaplace screen, you can view the different text options, notice the ‘Chosen Skin’ and dots showing which option is chosen. The photo can be saved to the iPhone photo library without any text. Then, save/share the photo with the text.

Photos are shared directly through the app to a few of the top photo social sites. Attaching to a email is a fun way of keeping the message personal, not all sharing has to be public through the major player options.

The Instaplace settings allows for turning on/off a few features. Saving the initial photo taken, saving the photo shared and allowing the app to install their logo in the upper right corner… or not. Personally, when I pay for an app, they don’t get to use me to advertise their app.

Mini Mobile Websites – Create, edit, collaborate and share all with the iPhone

There was one, now there are many, options to create mini Web sites all on the iPhone. Initially, these were sites that a person could use to easily add images and text via their iPhones. Now, sites can be text, links, and images – shared or private, and others can be invited to add content too. Sites can quickly be created for an event, trip or just items of interest. Multiple people at a event, like a soccer game can share in the creative work, adding scores, highlights and images. Using the Free Zapd iPhone app, sites created are viewable with any browser across the many devices like iPhones, iPad and desktop computers.

Create as many Web sites you like, all with the iPhone. Name each, add tags, and update as you like. Zapd assigns a URL that is your account ID, Zapd, then the site name. Since each site has a unique URL, you can always have another vanity URL forward to one your create and maintain with your iPhone.

Choose a theme and category for each site. Themes offer different fonts, layouts and coloring. Some may appear slight on the iPhone but may appear more dramatic when viewed with a desktop browser. Zapd does offer a few themes that carry an extra in-app charge.

Adding text, links and photos within the Zapd app to your sites is quick so updates are easy when on-the-go. There are light photo editing tools available.

In the Settings for each site you build with your iPhone, you can choose if the site will be Private or Public viewable. Sharing is built into Zapd so that you can invite others to view or even add to the site.

Zapd recently sent an email mentioning a Holiday Content. Below is an outtake of that email. If you are taking holiday photos, why not post up on a Zapd mini site to share with family and friends? Then let the Zapd staff know about it via the method shown below… good luck!