what 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 by j@ere.my on Apr 26, 2008 in
Computers,
Social Networking,
Twitter,
Web Apps i’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 by j@ere.my on Feb 23, 2008 in
Social Networking,
Twitter,
Web Apps i 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.
Tags: pownce, Social Networking, Twitter, Web Apps
