Entries Tagged 'Photo Sharing Services' ↓

Thanks to the rich and flexible real-time API offered by Instagram earlier this year, developers are able to pull in not only images from the popular photo-sharing service, but also tags, locations, comments and other data.

Since the API was released, we've seen an uptick in third party applications that utilize it, some of them more effectively than others. This brings the service beyond the parameters of its native iPhone app, which was previously the only way to view photographs published on Instagram.

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Instagre.at

For all the buzz and excitement around Instagram, it still doesn't have one seemingly basic thing: an official Website from which one can view its content on more than a one-off basis. Since their API became available, a number of Web-based apps have sprung up. One of the more attractive-looking ones is Instagre.at.

Rather than trying to mimick the full-fledged Instagram viewing experience, Instagre.at simply lets you view your photo streams in a Cover Flow-style horiztonal slideshow, which can be advanced by scrolling sideways or using the arrow keys on your keyboard. It unfortunately doesn't appear to support swipe gestures on the iPad, but it's still viewable from the Web browser on tablets.

Instagre.at also shows which filter was used when composing the image and gives you the option of liking photos.

Gramfeed

Another way to view Instagram photos in the browser is a by using a Web app called Gramfeed, which we reviewed when it was first released. It comes equipped with a really nice UI that displays images laid out in a grid or list and plots them on a map as well. In terms of functionality, it comes much closer to the iPhone with the ability to like photos, comment on them and follow users.

Instagallery

Of all the ways to view Instagram photos on the iPad, Instagallery is perhaps the one that feels the most like an official app from Instgram, but it's not. Its elegant and barebones UI displays photo streams in one of two ways: in a grid that will look familiar to users of the official iPhone app, or in a way that better suites the tablet form factor: as a full-screen slideshow.

Whether its your own photos, a feed of your friends' images, popular photos across Instagram or any custom search for tags, Instagallery will display them as a slideshow that can be swiped through manually or played through automatically.

Instamap

Instamap is another attractive interpretation of Instagram for iPad users. You can view photos in a grid layout, per usual, but instead of the fullscreen slideshow view offered by Instagallery, it lays photos out on - you guessed it - a map.

This is a neat way to view Instagram content in a way that isn't possible in the service's native application. In addition to a large cluster of photos from my friends in Philadelphia and New York, I can see photos from friends and colleagues on the West Coast, as well as from people in my network who happen to be living or traveling abroad at the moment.

Instamap, as its name would suggest, is all about location. In addition to my own photos, friends stream and tag-based searches, I can subscribe to locations around the world, viewing Instagrammed photos from other cities in real time.

Things get really interesting when I subscribe to locations that are more granular than the city level. I can not only view photos taken across my native Philadelphia, but can drill down further to my specific neighborhood, an intersection or a particular business or venue nearby.

Instaframe

If Instagallery and Instamap had a baby, it would be named Instaframe. This stripped-down iPad app combines a sideways-scrolling slideshow layout of photos with a map-based view showing where each photo was taken. That's pretty much it. The functionality is pretty minimal in this one, but it remains a nice way to view Instagram content on tablets.

Flipboard

While it's by no means the app's central purpose, Flipboard does let you plug in your Instagram account and view your photo streams through the much-beloved social magazine application for the iPad. Viewing Instagram photos on Flipboard is exactly what you'd expect: it lays out your photo streams much like a digital magazine, through which you can flip by swiping your finger. It's a nice touch for an app that already does so much and the Flipboard UI is an especially pleasant way to view photos. The integration supports liking, commenting and sharing images via social media and email.

What would you do if Flickr shut down some day? Do you think that photo services like Instagram might be just the beginning of what could be possible in terms of social photo innovation? Is Facebook Photos just a place the share and forget, leaving a big demand remaining for archival storage of all the photos we're taking these days?

Such are the questions being tackled by a new startup called OpenPhoto.me, an open source project being built by long-time photo sharing guy Jaisen Mathai. OpenPhoto.me is a photo sharing app and it's a platform for other apps: it pushes all your photos, tags and comments into cloud storage that you own, on Amazon S3, Rackspace or Dropbox. Then you can grant any photo app access to those photos as you see fit.

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Jaisen Mathai worked last for several years at Yahoo! before leaving to self-fund OpenPhoto.me. He says he plans on following the WordPress model for the service: he'll offer a hosted version, with themes and eventually a mobile app, but for the time being he's focusing on offering the code on Github. He's got a small fundraising campaign running on Kickstarter, but this is something he's been planning on doing for years.

"This is the culmination of many things I've done over the years and it solves many of the problems I've experienced myself," Mathai says. "I haven't wanted to put all my photos and data up on Flickr knowing that someday I won't be using Flickr anymore. I built this, then it turned into a service other people could use, then something that other app developers could build on top of."

"If you look back and see the platforms that proceeded today's silos, those that are still around now are because they are open." Mathai argues. He contrasts that openness with the selective and partial Application Programming Interfaces that photo sharing services like Facebook and likely iCloud offer developers. "In my vision for OpenPhoto.me, every application developer has the same level of access as any other app developer. I'm no different from any other app developer, I don't have more access than others. That's extremely important for the end user because that means they get the best of breed options, not just what independent developers are able to build with partial access to the data in a silo system."

Not everyone agrees that there's a strong need for a service like this. "It seems
like Flickr, SmugMug, 500px, etc. are meeting folks' needs," says photography blogger Aaron Hockley of PicturePundit.

"On the self-hosted side, I don't see a real demand for a self-hosted photo service. What might make more sense and be a better use of money and time would be to build something that could provide real, feature-rich photo hosting and sharing through a CMS such as WordPress. Even amongst the folks that choose to self-host their blogs, they often go with a hosted photo service. I don't see them (myself included) switching to a self-hosted photo service that wasn't part of WordPress."

Hockley might not see this as a desirable service, but I do. I'd love to see cloud storage of photos and their data made easy - and in a way that bakes sharing in. Right now I take most of my photos with Instagram, then push the ones I want to save over to Flickr. Do I really feel like Flickr is a forever kind of solution? No. I'd much rather they be saved on my WordPress install or in bulk cloud storage I pay for monthly - with connections to other services enabled and exercised as I see fit.

Left: The first hosted data locker from the Locker Project went live today. Photos and their data from OpenPhoto.me could live very nicely in just such a system.

Mathai says he's been talking to the people at The Locker Project, a prominent open source project aiming to let everyday people capture and control all their data from around the web, then offer access to that data to apps built to run on top of it. His vision and theirs seem compatible to me, too. Recognizing that what used to be "data exhaust," the data that gets thrown off from our everyday experiences online, is in fact a valuable platform for innovation and ought to be controlled by those of us whose activities it is a consequence of.

Do you want something like that for your photos? I do.

Twitter is getting into the photo-sharing business. This is a natural extension to the Twitter product and its stated goal of giving users a consistent user experience across all of its clients. But how will this affect other photo sharing services that have dominated the space in the Twitter ecosystem?

Social media research company Sysomos looked at all the tweets from May 30 to see what services people were using. Of all tweets that day, Sysomos found that 1.25% of tweets contained a link to a photo sharing service, or about 1/12th of all links shared. That translates into 2.125 million tweets that were pictures from third-party services. It is just one day of Twitter, but it's probably indicative of day-to-day trends. What third party services were the most popular?

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TwitPic, even with its recent terms of service controversy, is the big leader of the group, with 45.7% of all pictures on Twitter that day. YFrog is second with 29.3% and Lockerz (formerly Plixi) third with 17.4%. With all the buzz surrounding Instagram and its devoted user base, it is a bit of a surprise that it only gets 5.2% of the market. If Instagram released an Android application, that would certainly rise. Flickr and MobyPicture round out the services with 2.1% and 0.6%, respectively.

The next on Twitter's list of services to build is probably video sharing. TwitPic unveiled the ability to host and share video in February and there are services like Qik (bought by Skype, which now makes it Microsoft property) that integrate with Twitter. Video hosting and sharing is a bigger and more diverse market to break into with giants YouTube and Vimeo roaming those grounds.

[Source: Sysomos.com]

First it was smartphones integrating cameras. Could we be about to see the inverse - cameras integrating smartphone technology? That's the concept being explored by Seattle design company Artefact. They've come up with an intriguing prototype for a camera that incorporates smartphone technology - a.k.a. a SmartCam. Artefact claims that innovation has stalled in the camera industry, that there hasn't been much new in camera devices over the past 10 years. They're aiming to shake up the camera industry and are already talking to camera companies (and others) about implementing their vision. I spoke to Artefact's founders to learn more.

This is the fifth post in our series looking at how the user experience (UX) of consuming - and producing - media is changing with the increasing popularity of devices other than the PC. So far we've looked at music on smartphones, news apps on the iPad, RSS Readers on smartphones and online radio in cars.

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The camera has been a staple of the technology industry since the 19th century. Nowadays, with the huge popularity of smartphones, more people carry and use a camera than ever before. The latest model iPhone - the iPhone 4 - has a 5 megapixel camera, which is more than sufficient for the casual photographer.

As smartphones integrate ever more powerful cameras, what can the traditional camera companies do to compete? While there will always be a market for high-end cameras - specialist devices used by professional photographers - it's that middle and lower end market which is slipping away from the likes of Kodak, Canon, Olympus, Sony and Nikon.

Artefact has created a concept camera for the smartphone age, called the WVIL. That acronym stands for Wireless Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens. As you can see from the photo on the right, it looks like a normal camera. One obvious difference is that it detaches in two, one part looking very much like a modern day smartphone. Artefact further describes the WVIL as a "new architecture that combines the lens and sensor together into one wireless unit."

The founders of Artefact, Gavin Kelly and Rob Girling, told me that this concept camera gave them "an opportunity to re-think how to interact with our cameras." In the video below, you can see how touchscreen technology is used to provide a new way to interact with your photos. It essentially brings the smartphone user experience to the camera. This isn't entirely unique, because some high-end cameras - such as the Canon SD3500 - have touchscreen controls. Plus newer digital phones often have input sensors (e.g. accelerometers, gyroscopes).

However, Artefact takes these features a step further, for example by adding apps and social functionality.

Artefact is envisaging new types of software and apps for their camera. Such as software that teaches you better photography by giving you real-time coaching tips. This would use the sensors in the camera, so it knows what you're doing and can then guide you to use a certain technique or feature if appropriate.

Artefact's camera is, like the popular smartphones, built on a software platform that uses touchscreen technology. Other types of apps that Artefact foresees include apps that post-process photos, share images and enhance the camera's functionality.

Finally, this concept brings the social media functionality that smartphones famously have and deposits it into a digital camera. According to Artefact, current digital cameras have limited social functionality.

For power users of photography, having the ability to manipulate and share photos direct from the camera does seem like a compelling feature. The general consumer is already well served currently by apps like Instagram and Foodspotting, so this wouldn't be so compelling to them. Arguably smartphones still have the edge in innovation too, for example with an app like Color that mixes social networking and photography in a new and potentially disruptive way. Also see Camera+, a new photo enhancement app for smartphones.

Will Artefact's SmartCam be implemented by a camera company? The founders told me that early discussions are under way, including with companies not currently in the camera market.

Whether or not this concept - or something like it - is implemented, the current digital camera market seems ripe for innovation. It has to innovate, because the newest smartphones have sophisticated cameras which are 'good enough' for the general consumer. What do you think of Artefact's concept, would it fly with you?

We love site-building and story-telling applications, and social webizens love sharing their content - particularly multimedia content - in new and compelling ways.

YouTellYou is a fun and simple tool that allows users to grab, annotate, tag and share their pictures in an online magazine-type format. Users can pull in photos from Smugmug, Facebook, Flickr or one's own computer, then go to town in a frenzy of sequences, captions and true pictorial story-weaving.

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In about 10 minutes, we created this story about SxSW 2009. We were able to get access to all the needed Flickr photos through a simple interface. Pics were then organized into layouts of one or two photos per section with optional captions for most layouts.

When we published, we were pleased to see links with each photo to enlarge it or to find the original URL for each pic. The finished product also has a thorough commenting system and the option to share zines via email and Twitter.

Our wishlist for this app would be a drag-and-drop interface for pulling photos into the magazine, Facebook Connect for easier account creation, some kind of theming for finished zines, the ability to add photos from other users and the ability to reblog or share the content we created in more ways. Finally, the site navigation and overall design needs improvement; however, for a free app with no advertising, we can't complain too much.

We're torn on whether we personally would use the app again - for most on the RWW team, it'd be worth the effort to just build a webpage from scratch. But for end users, this kind of tool is indicative of a trend for amateur content creation and sharing in more polished ways than a simple Flickr slideshow or Facebook set.

What do you think - would you use YouTellYou to tell a story with your photos? Let us know what you think of the app in the comments.

We recently told you about the Flickr App garden and gave a list of five interesting apps we found using this new section of the site.

One app we didn't find - and one that brilliantly appropriates the Flickr API in a delightful, infectious user experience - is Noticings. Part game, part geotagging app, part photoblog, Noticings asks users to upload geotagged photos of interesting artifacts to Flickr. Users tag the photos "noticings;" those photos are then imported, analyzed, and scored, with extra points being awarded for those who post every day in a given week, who post photos of lost objects, or who post the first pic from a certain neighborhood. It is, as the site states, "a game of noticing the world around you."

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"Many of us are moving so fast through the urban landscape we don't take in the things around us," the site reads.

"Noticings is a game you play by going a bit slower and having a look around you. It doesn't require you change your behavior significantly or interrupt your routine. You just take photographs of things that you think are interesting or things you see. You'll get points for just noticing things, and you might get bonuses for interesting coincidences."

We find the concept charming, a less boozy version of Foursquare, a more friendly-competitive version of Flickr or Twitpic.

So, with all the other photo-sharing services out there, why choose Flickr to build a game around? It's question of scale, according to the site. "We know other photo-sharing services are available, but we're on Flickr, so are our friends, and it really does have the best location API for the sort of thing we want to do."

At the moment, the game seems to have a small user base and a largely international one - which means this game is wide open for early-adopting Yankees to go Team America all over the place! Also, anything that gets geeks outside gets our vote. What do our readers think? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to include a link to your Noticings profile if you're playing already.

Flickr, the ever-more-popular photo-sharing service, has a five-year history of apps built on its API. From the interesting to the useful to the pretty to the downright silly, these applications make up a colorful and varied ecosystem around the service itself.

Flickr has organized these third-party apps into a "garden," complete with user favorites, tags, descriptions and screenshots. The App Garden represents a significant evolution from the former "services" section on the user side, and the revamp includes new features for developers, who can now use the Garden as a tool to help users discover their products. Read on for details and a few spotlighted Flickr apps we thought were fun.

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As Flickr software engineer Mikhail Pachenko wrote on the Flickr developer blog, "We've tried to make things as simple and straight-forward as possible" for developers. On a new Apps By Me page, devs will find their apps are kept private until the creator decides to go public with the product.

"When you click on one of your apps," Pachenko continued, "you will be taken to the owner view of your app page. This page is where you tell the world about your app - provide a description, link to a website, set screenshots, and add tags. When you're ready, change the privacy setting to public. That will make your app visible to other users and allow it to show up in searches."

Now, for end users, here are a few apps we picked from the Garden that we think you might like.

Bubblr Makes Comics

Make comic strips from your or others' Flickr photos with this fun, simple application from Barcelona-based shop Pimpampum. The app allows users to search for photos by user or by tag, string the pics into strips, and add captions, thought bubbles and speech bubbles. Creations can be shared via a user's blog, Delicious or email.

Flickr For Busy People Speeds Up Skimming

This delightful time-saver shows a compact grid of photos uploaded from a user's contacts during given time periods between 30 minutes and 8 hours prior to the current time. Below each user's avatar is the number of photos uploaded, and the avatars can be clicked to display (or hide) an array of thumbnails to quick digestion of the day's pics.

Suggestify Geotags Photos

This app lets users geotag other users' Flickr photos by suggesting a location to the photo's owner. That geotag information is stored with Suggestify until the photo owner approves or rejects the suggestion. If approved, the photo is geotagged and the user who suggested the geotag is credited with a special tag on the photo.

Flogr Turns Flickr Pics Into Photo Blogs

Flogr is a PHP/MySQL-powered photoblog interface that displays a main photo page with EXIF data and Flickr comments, a customizable thumbnails page of a user's recent pictures, a slideshow component, a tag cloud and an about page showing the Flickr user's profile. Users can also determine which photos are displayed by telling Flogr to only include images with certain tags.

Flickriver Surfaces Interesting Photos

This app is focused on delivering a seamless, quick viewing experience with minimal visual distraction. Users can choose to check out interesting photos filtered by user or by group. They can search for photos or simply browse to discover the most interesting photos on a given day. Flickriver also includes a keyboard-operated slideshow mode. Better still, Flickriver offers a dynamic badge for bloggers to showcase their images.

According to an announcement today on the Flickr blog, it's open season for image-sharing via Twitter on the gargantuan photo site.

Users can now share posted content on their Twitter accounts using a simple web-based sharing button or via email/mobile using a unique "2Twitter" email address. Although all uploaded content is tweetable, new content uploaded via the web is not auto-tweeted. Mobile uploads are only sent to Twitter if the user's 2Twitter email address is used.

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Also, users can tweet images from accounts other than their own.

Once a Twitter account is added to a Flickr user's account as a blog, the "Blog This" function will allow that user to tweet about any image with a short URL and a 116 character limit. The title of the image is automatically included in the tweet. The "Blog This" icon is located on the Flickr photo page and doesn't appear in a user's photo stream.

Here's what the function and resultant tweet looks liked when I posted a photo from my own account:

And here's a tweet I sent about an image and design from another user, ThisIsStar.

Sadly, the resultant tweet doesn't indicate that the image is from another user; we can see this causing some confusion, especially when users are in a hurry. Hopefully, the generator of the tweet will edit the included text to reflect ownership accurately, e.g., "Check out this awesome design from @thisisstar."

So, what will this mean for other services designed to post images to Twitter? While the new Twitter-posting capabilities at Flickr are exciting, they do present a few conflicts and redundancies. If Flickr wanted to kill other image-tweeting services, they should have allowed users to choose to auto-tweet about new batches of photos without having to select each pic individually after the fact. As it stands, only Flickr's mobile upload function truly replaces services such as Twitpic and yFrog.

With regard to services such as FriendFeed or PixelPipe that have been shuffling links to our newly posted Flickr photos over to our Twitter accounts automatically, the new Flickr function doesn't really help consolidate users' efforts or save their time. Auto-tweets from third-party aggregators such as these are still the only way to tweet new images from the web without taking extra steps.

However, the redundancy issue will rear its ugly head for mobile uploads to the 2Twitter addresses. For example, if I uploaded from my device right now using a 2Twitter address, it would post to Flickr and Twitter first. Then a FriendFeed post would be generated automatically. That FriendFeed note would then get pushed to Twitter. This is clearly too much noise, but Flickr doesn't give me the necessary incentive to completely turn off FriendFeed's Flickr integration.

Although these issues mean, from our point of view, that the feature still needs improvement, it's a great way to share already uploaded content from a wide range of sources.