SOMEWHAT FRANK

PicLens Offers 3D Browsing Now For YouTube

Now here is an interesting and innovative way to explore videos! Leveraging the CoolIris 3D browsing technology, PicLens is able to explore videos and photos via a wall of videos. PicLens allows users to search Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook and recently added the ability to search YouTube in this same 3D fashion - among others.

So next time you get bored with traditional search metaphors for videos or images you might want to install PicLens and search in 3D.

Aviary: Powerful Online Tools For Artists

There are a number of desktop tools for designers and artists but it seems an online version of those tools is something that is lacking. From a photo editing perspective picnik and Adobe Photoshop Express offer easy to use tools for editing images. But they are fairly simple tools and do not offer vector image creation or editing. Aviary is looking to change this by offering a number of tools for  the creative to do everything including image editing, typography, music and video. Aviary is a website for artists of all genres to create, edit and share their works directly in their favorite browser. This collaboration is something that similar desktop applications do not offer.

iPhone Social Network Pondering, Facebook Fatigue, Oscar Updates, IE8 Beta Coming, Mixx Updates, imagine it! & Olympic Bloggers

Photo of the Week: I visited the skinnyCorp office with TECH cocktail co-founder Eric Olson this past week and snapped this photo of the their workspace. Those threadless folks are pretty rad! The space kind of reminded me of a cross between Pee Wee's Playhouse, without the talking chair of course, and MAKE Magazine.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.24.2008

Picnik Launches Development API

Picnik, the solid suite of photo editing tools, has just announced the release of "Picnik-in-a-Box," its  development API. Now any web site can integrate with Picnik free for charge. According to Picnik, the new Picnik-in-a-Box API should enable anyone with knowledge of HTML or server-side scripting to quickly integrate photo editing int0 their website with some custom design aspects.

Personally, I find myself leveraging Picnik more and more these days as its tools have been integrated into Flickr. Picnik has also integrated with Box.net and Webs (formerly Freewebs). If you are interested obtain a software key which gives them instant, free access to the Picnik API.

Welcome to Flickr Library of Congress

The Library of Congress just informed me of a new project they have undertaken with, Web 2.0 photo community, Flickr. In addition to posting photos on its own the Library of Congress website they have decided to also start putting historic photo sets on Flickr for all the world to see. The Library of Congress is looking to show off its photos to a larger photo centric community. With some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on Flickr. Wow!

Rememble For Social Digital Timelines

Are you interested in plotting your life on a digital timeline? If so, Rememble might be a good option. Taking a page out of the circaVie playbook, Rememble makes it easy to tell the story in a memory timeline and share it with your friends in a number of ways. However, Rememble appears to take digital timelines a step further by integrating social sharing features.

Animoto: Video Trailers From Photos

Animoto, a New York-based startup, offers an application that generates movie trailer-like videos from your photos. Simply upload or pull in some of your favorite photos, add music and Animoto does the rest.

Animoto leverages innovate Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and motion design to add life to your customized photo montage. Created with Ruby on Rails, Animoto produces fully-customized videos depending on what music you choose. Additionally, no two videos will be the same even if you use the same photos and music selection.

circaVie For Memorable Photo Timelines

Looking to plot your photos in a memorable timeline? circaVie could be just what you are looking for. With circaVie you can easily create a flashy photo timeline.

Simply sign-up, start uploading or pointing to your photo links, associating a photo date and circaVie plots them on a scrollable timeline. It sort of reminds me of a scrapbook in a timeline format. Timeline is interactive as users can interact with each photo on the timeline as well as leave comments. circaVie offers the ability to change the color of the timeline and it can be snagged for embedding into your favorite web site or blog. You can also pass your timeline via AIM Share or by passing around an RSS feed. I have included a timeline below from a fabulous time spent exploring San Francisco last weekend.

Similar to Ficlets, circaVie was created by AOL's AIM Network, it was done using a nimble and agile development team which at times was up to six people but has since been reduced to just two. circaVie offers OpenID and also makes it easy to select a site specific username and pull in your buddy icon from AOL, AIM, Flickr or Twitter. circaVie is a fun and useful application for anyone looking for a way to tell your photo explorations in a memorable fashion.

Give FeedBack With Review Basics

Do you ever need to gather feedback on a photo, document, web site or video? While email and wikis and products like Basecamp and Adobe Acrobat might meet some of your needs, ReviewsBasics as it aims to help by offering a feedback gathering platform which allows users to exchange ideas, gather thoughts, and review various types of content.

This free, feature-rich, product offers a number of annotation options on web sites, images, documents or videos. If these options do not suit your needs then you can also get some custom work done as ReviewBasics offers customized solutions that fit your specific needs. Review Basics are organized by authors who can set up reviews and send them to reviewers to give feedback. A screen-shot of the application while performing a web site review of a familiar blog is shown below.

 

Digital Railroad's Photo Marketplace

Evan Nisselson has leveraged his photo obsession and turned it into a full fledged business, Digital Railroad, that strives to help pro-photographers solve workflow issues and connect with a broader audience of viewers - and now buyers.

The marketplace allows you to search and browse, select, download and license images from an impressive roster of pro's. With DRR it is easy to lose yourself in the site browsing and searching the thousands of amazing images by global photographers like Aric Mayer, Jeremy Horner, Ann Howley, Mark Garfinkel and so many others.

DRR has long provided members with the ability to create their own customizable photo archive, offering tools for easy uploading, managing and displaying their work. but now they have taken the site to a new level. As an early beta tester of the site, I was thrilled to see the addition of syndication in the form of RSS feeds. Users can select a feed they've created or create your own custom feed based on keywords you enter. For mac users, they're now offering a plug-in for Apple Aperture, making it easy to transfer images directly from Aperture 1.5 to your DRR archive.

Along with the photo feeds, I also subscribed to both blogs - member showcase and marketplace - which, like the channels and what's new areas, expertly curate the site with delightful photos, like the photo below.

(c)Michele Westmorland/drr.net - Photo Details: Young village children playing and swimming in a beautiful lagoon. Near Morovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands

Congrats to the entire DRR team for launching the Digital Railroad Marketplace beta! Nisselson believes that technology is the catalyst for change and evolution in the stock photo industry. Though I have limited experience inside the stock photo industry, it is exciting to see how technology both challenges the industry (e.g., copyright) and creates innovative new opportunities like the Digital Railroad Marketplace that serves both sellers and buyers alike.   

Editor's Note: Special thanks to Jen Consalvo for  leveraging her photography expertise to contribute this article to Somewhat Frank. Thank you.

Annotate Your Photos With Graphita

Graphita, a San Rafael, California-based startup, offers an online photo annotation product that will be launching in mid-May. Graphita is a Flash-based application that makes it easy for anyone to take a photo and add some bling to it via a WYSIWYG application with a toolbar that resembles a customized and simplified version of the Adobe Photoshop toolbar.

Overall, the product was easy to use and offered some creative enjoyment to an otherwise hectic day. I recently got a live demo of the service at Web 2.0 Expo and decided to write up a quick post for TechCrunch.

Desktop RSS Readers Die, RSS Addiction, LinkedIn Resumes, Farecast Insures, Babelgum TV & MyBlogLog Gets Flickr'ed

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 01.28.07

My Kinda Town Lit Up With Photo Effects

I stopped in Chicago this weekend after TECH cocktail 3 to catch-up with friends and relatives and so when I found the above photo I thought it made sense to showcase it. It was taken by Trey Ratcliff from Stuck In Customs. The unique technique he used to stylize his Chicago skyline photo is explained in great detail in this tutorial.

The Decline of Desktop RSS Readers

Read/Write Web pulled together an interesting piece discussing the decline of the desktop RSS feed reader. The article is concluded with a poll which upon voting showed that web-based RSS feed readers were the most preferred by about 55% of voters.

My Life As An RSS Junkie

Can you be addicted to RSS? After reading this article you will definitely think so. Check out this article for more information on technology addictions.

LinkedIn Creates 9 Million hResumes

9 million resumes in a microformat - that is pretty amazing. I wonder if sites like Careerbuilder and Monster.com are feeling the heat as LinkedIn moves in for the kill.

Farecast offers insurance on their Air Ticket predictions

Farecast, the travel fare forcasting startup, is now backing up its fare predictions are accurate by offering insurance to users for $9.95. I wonder how many users jump on the offer?

The Next Generation TV Over the Internet

Babelgum is a desktop client that allows their users to watch videos on their computer in a very TV-like experience. You can browse through the channels and choose your favorites show. You can rate the movies, add them to your favorites and watch them later on the video channel.

MyBlogLog picture feature improved by Flickr

Just as I reported back in December as MyBlogLog added a pictures feature they have since taken on Flickr as well. I think this is a great move as MyBlogLog further positions itself to connect faces with names as a social network built around other web sites, blogs and social network profile pages. Brilliant!

2000 Faces of the Blogosphere

What happens when you place the faces of 2000 bloggers in one huge collage? See for yourself below, in this recent project by Tino Buntic called 2000 bloggers.

Can you find my ugly mug among the sea of bloggers? Also, how many other faces do you recognize?

Woohoo Brings Sexy To Photo Slideshows

Woohoo, an AOL Pictures by-product, recently upgraded to offer a more robust Flash-based snaggable photo slideshow widget. The previous widget offered the ability to show images in a clickable stack called the photo collage as shown below or by visiting this link.

The upgraded version of woohoo offers not only the photo collage layout but five additional layouts or "woohoos" which could add interesting Flash effects to any photo slideshow. Users can customize the size, color and layout of the various widgets. By publishing the widget users  receive a link to share with friends and family or HTML code which can be embedded into a blog, web site or social network page like MySpace or AIM Pages.

I would urge you to play around with each "woohoo" as all 6 are interesting visual presentation options. If you are not happy with those options woohoo offers developers the ability to customize even more of the widget. I created a custom sized woohoo slideshow with one of my favorite woohoo effect called Ken Burns. The Ken Burns effect refers to a technique of embedding still photographs in motion pictures made popular in Ken's award winning documentaries such as The Civil War and Baseball. The effect is characterized by slow zooming and panning effects, and fading transitions between images. Check it out below or visit it directly.

Bottom-line: Woohoo offers a great way to organize your AOL Picture photo in a sexy slideshow which can be shared via email or by displaying it on your blog, social network page or another web site. Woohoo!

MyBlogLog Slips In Pictures Feature?

MyBlogLog, the product focused on creating a connected  blogosphere community, appears to have slipped a new pictures feature into the product. MyBlogLog users can now upload images to their account to be on displayed for the rest of the community to view. The picture functionality (shown below) is a very primitive single photo upload which hinders the number of images I would upload to the service. Additionally, all items posted are public as it does not appear to offer security levels.

I am a big fan of MyBlogLog as explained previously on Somewhat Frank. MyBlogLog was also recently acquired by Yahoo. It will be interesting to see how the picture feature evolves.  MyBlogLog asks you for various acquaintance levels (friend, family or admirer) when adding a contact to your profile similar to the way Flickr, another Yahoo property, handles photo privacy so it may make sense for them to lean on Flickr for advice. Or is an integration with Flickr already in the works?