Posted on December 24th, 2008 at 10:54pm in
Business -
No commentsIf you’ve been following my blog, Twitter, Facebook or just know me in person, you’ve probably heard rumblings of a project I’ve been working on: foto:blip
foto:blip is a photo-based microblog. What the heck is that, you might ask? Well, combine Flickr and Twitter, and that’s what you get.
foto:blip is designed for those of us who use our mobile devices or cameras to capture the events of the day. The images are small and the captions are limited. Blips are designed to be quick and to share the moment with your followers and friends.
Some features include:
Connections- add users to your connections and all of their posts show up on your homepage when you log in
Facebook sharing- any public post on foto:blip can be shared to your Facebook profile, allowing all your Facebook friends to see and comment on your post
Twitter integration- save your Twitter account information and your blips can be automatically posted to Twitter
Browser-based foto:booth- this is cool for all users who have built in webcams. Use the
Flash-based foto:booth to take a quick picture without uploading any files
More.. you’ll have to check it out to see.
Well, primetime is almost here. The site is about 95 percent complete, and I’d like to open it up to a few more people to test it out and get some feedback. Please feel free to visit the pre-release version of the site at: http://staging.fotoblip.com and sign up for an account.
Any feedback, questions or problems you have, send them on over to help (at) fotoblip.com
Posted on April 28th, 2008 at 8:57pm in
Business,
Web -
No commentswhat happens when you have a great idea and somebody else comes up with the same idea at approximately the same time? frustrating..
so today, in an ironic feat of web-searchification, while working on my very own foto:blip, i discovered a lovely little app that does nearly the same thing as foto:blip. note, nearly.
clearly i’ve been beaten to the punch in providing a way to use photos instead of words to share the play by play of your life.
so what to do now? beat them with sticks!
the key differentiation that i see right now is that TwitPic (what a silly name) is a bolt-on application. it connects with the Twitter API and (sortof) extends the functionality of Twitter. not a bad idea at all. Twitter has a large and growing userbase. but, i believe that what is really needed to take the next step with microbloggery is to have a completely new application which is built from the ground up to work with images. while two Twitter add-on clients support TwitPic, allowing the posted photo to be viewed directly in the client, other venues such as the Twitter web site and the all-important Twitter Facebook application merely show a link to your photo posted via TwitPic. degrades nicely for those clients, but how will it bode for the visually-inclined user? not so well.
foto:blip has, from the very beginning, been designed to use photos as the users’ primary means of communication. to emphasize that point, photo captions are limited to a short 50 characters. we want users to communicate with their images. to do this, it is a necessity that every viewer can see the posted images alongside the caption.
i’ll be having a closer look at TwitPic shortly as I continue working on foto:blip. perhaps it will inspire me even more.
Posted on April 26th, 2008 at 9:22pm in
Business,
Web -
No commentsi’m about 80 percent done my new social site, foto:blip.
the concept is pretty simple. we live in a visual world, not a textual one. though words can describe many things, a picture still captures so much more.
tools like twitter are cool. it allows you to update from a variety of places, most commonly the web site, a facebook application and from a registered mobile device. it’s really cool to be able to share your day as it happens with your followers and see what your friends are doing with their days.
it’s time to take the next step. foto:blip merges the quick-posting ease of use of applications like twitter with the increased level of communication that can take place with a photograph.
some of the features include:
- built in flash-powered foto:booth. you don’t even need to save a photo to your computer first, simply take a picture with your webcam and upload it immediately, all from within your browser window
- mobile uploads. using your cell phone provider’s sms to e-mail gateway or e-mail account, you can send messages with picture attachments that will be posted to your account when received
- no-login-required access to your foto:blip profile
- rss feeds for foto:blip profiles
- more coming..
stay tuned for launch information.
Posted on February 23rd, 2008 at 10:15pm in
Web -
No commentsi wish these two would merge into one supercool app.
i setup pownce the other day. it’s gotta really cool interface and a great desktop application. unfortunately it doesn’t have the same integration options as twitter, which include a Facebook application that actually works as well as SMS and various flavors of instant messages.
so the bug got me, and i setup a twitter account today. i installed the Facebook app and a plugin for my blog. now we’re all connected.
my dream would be to have the same connectivity options in addition to a desktop application. now that’d be cool.
