Updates Galore!

Hello fellow 72 users! Hope your doing well. It may seem we’ve been lacking in the blogging area lately, but I promise that will profoundly change after this incredible update.

We’ve been working extremely hard on fine-tuning and integrating tons of exciting new features for members over the past few weeks, features that will greatly increase the overall usability of 72photos and encourage communication between users. These features in question have finally materialized and have been released today.

I’ll spare the more technical details and jump right to the list of features/changes included in this months update:

Flickr / Picasa Importing

We’re extremely happy to introduce our long awaiting Flickr and Picasa importing features. The new Flickr importing feature not only allows you to import all your public & private flickr photos, but also has the ability to import your photo sets (automatically creating 72photo galleries for them!). But wait! It gets better. We’ve also included a “Merge” option you can select during import to grab photos from your flickr account that you may have added after your initial import. Picasa importing has also been added. We’re still working on ways to accommodate very large flickr and picasa imports, so if you happen to get timed out, you can re-run the import with the merge option to continue where you left off. Pretty nifty, eh?

Configure 72photos Wizard

We’ve developed a new wizard to help you setup your basic account information in 4 easy steps. For new users, this “Wizard” will popup on your first login and for current members you can access the wizard via the “Configure 72photos” on the left side of your dashboard.

User Messaging

Send personal messages to your friends and other users on 72photos with the new messaging system. Messages support embedded photos so you can show your friends that cool photo you saw on 72. Messages work in “conversation” form to make having a message with multiple people a breeze and to keep your inbox organized.

Find / Invite Friends

Find out if your email contacts are already on 72photos and automatically add them as your friend or invite them if their not with the friend finder feature. Located at the bottom left of every page in your dashboard (Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo currently supported).

Updated Profile Photo Selector

You now have the ability to crop your profile photo in any way. Your original photo is always saved giving you the ability to re-crop at anytime.

There’s much more to these updates then I’ve included in this post, so in order to help everyone maximize their 72photos account, we’ll be posting periodic updates over the next few weeks elaborating on certain areas of the system.

How about that for an update? Let us know what you think!

Official Release of 72Photos

HOT FEATURES – NEW LOOK – IT'S ALL FOR YOU!  

After much anticipation 72Photos is pleased to announce the official first release of 72Photos. First, let us thank all of our users and followers for their support over the past year in "Beta" mode.  We've received lots of inspirational ideas that helped direct our community to it's current status.

So whats in the 72Photos.com official release?

• New look and feel for our image and gallery previous pages
• Ability to leave a member a comment on their profile
• The option to reply to a comment left on a users profile or image
• Advanced RSS feeds that can be used to export your 72Photos data and information
• The option to choose the font and size of photo descriptions and comments
• Updated user interface that streamlines into the main 72Photos.com theme
• Live login! No need to login then find the page you were previously on
• Easy photo viewing with "Next" and "Previous" links
• Multiple software, cascading style sheets and database tweaks to enhance the performance of the site
• Updates to the "Social Networking" aspect of the community
• Small verbiage updates, new icons, things you'll probably never notice

What can we expect in the near future?

• We'll be upgrading our servers and facility over the next few weeks in order to optimize site speed and overall member experience.  The updates are expected to be completed by July 1st.  Please excuse any intermittent issues that arise as it's for the greater good.
  
• Periodic software updates and bug patches will be released as needed.  Notice will be posted prior to any major releases.

Photo Stage for Facebook!

72photos has been secretly integrating Photo Stage into the Facebook application platform. 

Today we've officially launched Photo Stage v1.0 for Facebook.

You now have the ability to design and embed a photo stage with your 72photos OR Facebook images in your Facebook profile right from within facebook. You can also browse photo stages your facebook friends have created and much more.

Install it here: http://apps.facebook.com/photostage/

Don't forget to let us know what you think!

Dashboard Facelift!

A substantial amount of changes that have been worked on in the background for some time now have finally been released, including a shiny new user dashboard and a few other aesthetic goodies.

What has been added? Well, as soon as you login to your account, you'll notice a completely new interface including the new sections: "Recent Friend Activity" and "Announcements". These areas are unobtrusive ways for you to keep up-to-date on your friends activities. You also have the ability to post announcements for yourself for your friends to view and comment on. We've also redesigned the sidebar on the dashboard (and other areas) to enable quick access to all areas of your account. Another little addition is to view the comments you've made on images, you can access this area by clicking "Comments" on your dashboard sidebar.

As with our other social features, you can set who's activity and announcements you see in your friends menu.

Many other areas of the site have been brought up-to-date with fresh content and will be kept updated from this post on.

On a technical note…

We've spent a large amount of time  testing in browsers that have been somewhat neglected in the past. We can officially say IE6/7, Firefox 1.5/2.0, Safari, and Opera are supported.

If you have any issues with the new areas or feel theres room for improvement, post your comment and have your say.

New Gallery Theme and More!

We've been pushing out updates so uncharacteristically periodically here at 72photos lately that I felt compelled to take a moment and highlight some of the substantial and subtle features we've implemented.

For the substantial first…

New Gallery Theme We've added a shiny new gallery theme called "Reflection" which features a clean and impressive way to display your photos. We've also renamed the theme known as "Ajax/Javascript" to "Slider".

New Features for Gallery Viewing When viewing a gallery anyone can now share the gallery to a friend or subscribe to an RSS feed of that gallery.

On to the subtle additions/changes…

Account links in Footer As soon as you signin to 72photos the middle part of our footer bar changes to accommodate useful links back to your backend area and profile.

Selecting images/galleries You may notice in your control panel, when selecting images and galleries to edit/customize/delete, they stay selected. Meaning, clicking an image or gallery selects it and clicking it again unselects it. We found this to be much more effective when working with a large amount of images and in general.

There are several other bug fixes which I rather not bore you with, but as a result of these fixes, I'm sure you'll notice some overall "tightness" in the system.

We've got much more coming for you and we'll attempt to keep this blog up-to-date on all the happenings.

As always, let us know what you think on the new features and in general!

Introducing Uploader 2.0...

Since the release of 72photos, there's always been some gripes about our uploading method. In light of this long overdue update, we finallyhave a re-vamped uploading function for you…

Uploader 2.0

Uploader 2.0 is our new uploading method that accepts multiple file and zip uploads with a handy progress bar. Now you can select any type of image file and zip (even a combination of images and zips) and leave the rest to us. 

Access Uploader 2.0 as you're used to, by clicking the "Upload" button on your images page toolbar.

A few requirements…

This new Uploader requires the latest version of Flash (yeah, we're not to crazy about that either, so if you don't already have it, we suggest your head over to this link to download it.

We're still experimenting with better methods for uploading, however, for the moment, this is a major upgrade to our current system.

if you have any issues with the new uploader please send us in a bug report (we've also kept our basic uploader if you have any immediate problems).

Tell us what you think of the new uploader!

 

Show Off Your Photos in a Stunning Fashion!

It's been a rather long gap between updates here, but, we hope to rectify this by introducing our latest creation: Photo Stage .

Photo Stage is a feature that enables 72photo users to share their photos and galleries in a simple, but feature packed and fully customizable slideshow widget.

This small and unobtrusive widget has been optimized and tweaked to work virtually anywhere, from your myspace profile to your personal website or blog.

To generate your own Photo Stage, all that’s required is you logging in to your 72photos account and visiting the Photo Stage page to customize and retrieve your embeddable code.

Here’s a preview of Photo Stage:

Create yours today!

The Road to Version 1 (part 1)

As we prepare for our official major version 1.0 release, we've decided to chronicle our journey on the XMG Image blog. So, I present to you, the Road to Version 1.0, Part 1.

If you'd had a chance to login to your account today you may or may not have noticed some changes, they are subtle, but fairly major. As we get closer to our v1.0 release (expected January 14th, 2008) we'll be deploying new changes on a daily basis. These changes won't have much effect on the way you use XMG, but will offer more tools and features that will give you the ability to do even more incredible things with your images.

Here are the highlights from our last deployment:

• Image Exif Data – A feature long overdue, you now have the ability to view the exif data for any image you upload.
• Gallery viewing changes – Images in your gallery can now be opened using our custom designed preview box. The gallery owners username and profile picture also has been added.
• Dashboard tweaks – We continue to tweak the user dashboard such as adding and removing elements that members request. In this tweak you'll see mostly subtle visual changes.

Those are just a few of many, we'll continue to update this as more changes are deployed.

Questions? Problems? Leave a comment or contact us .

API and More! (for real this time)

If you're a somewhat regular reader of this blog, you may have caught us on several occasions rambling on about a so called "API" that has been "coming soon" for what has seemed to be months now. However, I'm glad to say we've finally got our act together and released this API.

Perhaps you're unaware of what exactly an API is or what it can do for you. Well, if your not a developer of any kind, you might feel confused about or left out of this coming event, but fear not, in the next paragraph I' ll attempt to devise an explanation that should give you a brief overview of how cool an API is. Don't believe me? Read on.

Basically, an API is like a public gateway to an application (for example XMG Image). Through this gateway a developer can call upon dozens of xmg functions that have been made publicly available, such as getting the latest uploaded images or adding a comment to an image. Having an API allows developers to build basically any kind of desktop application or web application such as widgets, facebook apps, desktop image uploading apps, xmg image plugins for blogs, and much more.

Now for the technical details:

The XMG Image API employs XML-RPC and SOAP protocols for sending and receiving requests. To get started all you'll need is an API key (which you can get from your user control panel).

For all the details on getting started check out our new API page: 

http://xmgimage.com/api/

Along with this release, we've posted in-depth documentation covering the entire API, including all the methods available and other helpful tools resources which can be found here:

http://xmgimage.com/api/documentation/

We've got much more coming apart from the API, but there are simply to many new features for one post.

As always, your comment/suggestions on the API and in general are greatly appreciated.

Happy developing! 

Need a new image? This is the place to be.

 

Following weeks of immense, non-stop, caffeine-induced developing, we've got yet another load of updates for you. This set of updates however, isn't your ordinary set of updates…It's extra special. Don't believe me? Read on.

 

We're proud to announce our "Gamma" release! So, what does this "Gamma" release consist of you may ask? Well, it's not quite a final release, but it's definitely better then a beta release. Here are some highlights:

 

• User Profiles: Every user now has a user profile that offers the ability to display your images in a stunning fashion and share them with other XMG users. Also, you have the ability to browse and search through all XMG users images. All community features have extensive permission options so, if you're not much of a socialite, you can make your entire account private!
• User Friends: Make new friends or invite current ones to XMG. Friends can view images that other users set viewable only to their friends and more. Stay tuned for user groups and other exciting features.
• Image Pagination: Have tons of images that take forever to load in your account? Paginate them with the new pagination option featuring slick ajaxy goodness. Even choose how many images per page you'd like to see!
• Image Interface Enhancements: Experience much faster speeds when working with your images due to dozens of system optimizations.
• Image Comments: Have discussions on your images, and limit who can comment on them with an array of permissions.
• Find New Images:  Browse images by tag, date, popularity and much more in our new "Explore" section!
  

 

Current Users,  If you want the run-down, the skinny, or the basics of the new system, pay attention to this next few paragraphs as I will attempt to provide all three at the same time.

 

The new system doesn't affect current members in any obtrusive way, no changes to your images have occurred. All your images have been set as "Private" and therefore, will not be available on the XMG Image site to be searched or viewed in your profile, only viewable by you. This also goes for your galleries. If you'd like to set some or all your images/galleries as "Public" (where, anyone can view them), login to your account, click images, simply select the desired images/galleries and click the "Permissions" button. A window will pop up with several options for you to set.

 

As for your profile, by default, the permission will be set public, this can be changed in your "Preferences" section of "My Account". As we've mentioned before, there are extensive permissions settings not only for your images, but profiles and galleries, allowing you to set exactly who can see what.

 

In the next few days we'll be expanding on this setup, adding user groups and much more exciting and "different" features. If you haven't already, there really isn't a better time to signup .

 

Enjoy!

More Ways to Share!

It's been a few weeks since we've blogged about the latest new features (and there's been alot of them) so I'll take a moment here to list a few new things you'll stumble upon in the system:

• Flickr Importing. Easily get flickr photos to XMG by using our Flickr importing function located in the "Upload" window of your control panel.
  
• Myspace, Friendster and Facebook Sharing. Post a blog with images you select straight to Myspace or Friendster from XMG image. Also, easily post a Facebook link to your image.
• Better "Get Code" layout. We've made it a bit easier to get code for your images by redesigning the layout of the "Code" function.

We've also sharpened up the layouts in a few other places that we hope will help to simplify things.

As for the Myspace and Friendster sharing option, since it's what I believe, to be the first integration of Myspace and definitely the first of Friendster functionality in a Ruby on Rails application, there may be some bugs and performance issues, but rest assured, we'll get these fixed soon. We also hope to expand on where you can post within Myspace, including different sections of your profiles, bulletins, etc…

Keep your eye out for more sharing options coming to XMG, as we hope to continue to facilitate the sharing of your images on social networking sites and wherever else you may want them. 

 

Quick Feeds and Tools Update

We've noticed some problems with user RSS feeds and our Wordpress Plugin. So, i've went ahead and re-coded the entire RSS feeds option and the WP Plugin.

Now your User Feed contains tons of useful info for pulling images from your account. You can now access image links, published dates, thumbnail links and more!

I've also updated the WP Plugin to allow users to edit the style of the images and more in your WP admin area.

Head over to the tools page and grab the Wordpress plugin today! 

Loads of updates

To go along with our recent re-vamp of the galleries interface, we've thrown in an array of bug fixes and some new features.

Here's a short list of the updates:

• Fixed a crippling thumbnail bug, where long images would break the images interface resulting in lots of white space and an unorganized layout.
  
• Constrain and Sepia effects now work seamlessly.
• Changed the look of a "selected" image to make it a bit easier to tell what images you have selected.
• Added a handy "Report Bug" feature, where you can quickly send us a bug report if you stumble upon one.

More features to come in the next week including a real-time pagination feature for the images interface.

Stay Tuned! 

New Galleries are Here!

As promised, we've just completed and deployed a massive re-work of our gallery section/functions. This updates includes an insane amount of usability enhancements as well as a ton of new features.

A full overview of the changes

We've completely redesigned the gallery "editing" interface, which has been renamed to the "customization" interface. A few things you may notice at first is some small changes in the initial "New" gallery window, where we've removed a few useless options and simplified it.

On to the"customization" interface…

To get started, as usual, select a gallery you wish to add images to and/or customize then click the "customize" button on the menu bar or click "C" on your keyboard. You'll be taken to our new customization interface which features a real-time preview of the gallery you're currently customizing on the right and the customization options to the left.

• The first panel on the left is entitled "details". In this panel you'll be able to change the title, description and enable/disable the slideshow feature (pro customers only) for this gallery.
  
• The next panel, entitled "add images", is fairly self explanatory.
  
• The final panel, "customize", is where the magic happens…We've added a myriad of customization options enabling you to completely change the look and feel of your gallery. We've also added the "Themes" option where we'll be periodically adding themes into the system.

Now for the presentation…

Once you're done customizing, head back to the main galleries page and click on a gallery name to view the actual gallery as normal viewers would see. As a bonus we've enabled all images in your gallery to open up in a lightbox. Here's a demo.

The dirty details

With this magnitude of updates to the galleries section we spent a lot of time focusing on what to keep and what to eliminate from the old system. In the end, we've decided that it was time to let the "Standard HTML" and "CSS" galleries go. They had a great run, but just couldn't keep up with cross-browser compliancies and other complexities. If you're a user of one of these gallery types, you've been automatically converted to our new "Custom" theme where you'll find you have a load of new options to explore. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused to current customers, but we definitely believe you'll have a much better experience using the new themes.

There are a myriad of new features I haven't mentioned that came with these latest updates, but I'll save that for another post. 

We'll be deploying bug fixes for the next few days, but, if you happen to spot one before us, feel free to report it using our new bug reporting feature located on the bottom left of every page in your client area.

As always, feel free to post feedback/comments/suggestions on the new interface! Happy Gallerizing!

Gallery updates coming soon!

As some may already know, the current gallery system is a bit lame, lacking some much needed features and functionality. This however, is something that will be drastically improved on following our next set of updates (roughly in a few days). We've been working non-stop on a new re-worked gallery section for both free and pro members.

New Functionality will include:

• Much more intuitive way to add/organize/remove images from a gallery.
• Tons more customization options, including the ability to tweak all aspects of the galleries looks as well as new layout options.
• Live preview of gallery when customizing, you'll have the ability to see your changes in real-time.

There are lots of other User Interface enhancements we're looking to release in the coming week, look out for those.

We appreciate your continual feedback in our Beta polls as well as feedback on our community forums. Keep the suggestions coming!

We'll leave you with this sneak peak at the new gallery sections:

 

 

Feeds, Polls and more...

After a week of intense development here at XMG, an update on our recent progress is definitely overdue. Here goes:

• New User RSS feeds have been added. You can access your personal feed by logging into your XMG Image account and clicking the 'Support' tab. You feed info will be located under the 'API & Feeds' section of that page.
• Beta polls have been implemented. When you login to your account you will see a little light-box poll popup (which you may have already noticed). As these polls may be slightly annoying, it really helps the development process for XMG Image for the fact that this system is based completely on the features that you (yes you!) the user needs. We're looking to have a new poll each week, so start voting!
• Image view additions. A few handy additions have been made when viewing an image. You can now change the background color of the page on the top left side of the page (try it!). Another feature is the "share image" feature which allows you to post the image to digg, delicious, or yahoo.

Lots more to come as always, keep your eye on this blog

New Tip: Shortcut Keys!

Get around your control panel even easier, XMG Image offers keyboard shortcuts for basic functionalities:

Images Interface: 

• N … Upload (New)
• E … Edit
  
• S … Share
• C … Code
• I … Details (Info)
  
• L … Download
• D … Delete

Galleries Interface

• N … Upload (New)
• E … Edit
  
• S … Share
• C … Code
• D … Delete

Enjoy!