The first, and probably most in depth section is the Friend’s Manager. This area allows you to talk with friends in the form of “Gabs”. You can assign Gabs to your friends and enable whether or not you wish to allow them to invite others to the Gab. It’s more or less of a simple flash messaging system. There’s also a “Email Alerts” option which will automatically inform you by email if: you get a new friend request, someone accepts your friend invitation, you’re included in a Gab, or if someone replies to an existing Gab. You get your usual User Profile to edit; name, birthday, picture, hobbies, location, etc. Additionally, they have added a section called “Exchange” which categorizes all types of hobbies and interests: Auto, Finance, Books, Games, Jobs and many others. In these categories, you can create mini threads so that you can share all your favorites interests with your friends. A five star rating system has been implemented so that you and your friends can vote on what things are cool, and what things are not. You can sort them by name, date, friend or rating, as well as add “Opinions”, which are just comments on your Exchange items. If you want to, they’ve also added a print feature for the User Opinions. It reminded me of Delicious Library, a simple application for Mac users to categorize their interests in their own libraries.

SnapPages also includes a Photo Manager application allowing you to organize your screen shots and miscellaneous pictures. To start, you can create an “Album” to import your photos and other pictures. Each album can be set to public, private, secure, or friend-only. Secure requires for you to input a password to access it, the others have permission according to their name. You can add tags to the photos to help organize them for later use. While in your albums area, you can enlarge your photos by using the slider found in the upper right corner. They have included a mild photo editing section in the Photo Manager where you can rotate, crop, and/or adjust brightness. They have a few others setting to revise the lighting and other effects, but there isn’t many option currently right now. If you’re looking for some more in-depth online flash photo editing, head over to Picnik. You able to share your photo galleries with friends by selecting the particular album that you want to share and adding recipients along with an optional message. Lastly, there’s the download feature that simply let’s you download any of the photos you have in any of your albums.

The last section of SnapPages is the Calendar Manager. Each calendar that you create acts identical to the Photo Manager’s Albums in regards to their property settings: private, public, secure, and friends-only. You can color coordinate new calendars when you create them as well as changing their format from the normal month calendar, to a weekly or daily calendar format. You can add events to your calendars which will require you to specify a time, a place, and any further details you need for the events. They also give you the option to input a URL to an online map if you find it necessary for the event. You also can define whether your event is a repeating affair. If so, you can input the time span it repeats: day, week, month, or year. You can also add notifications to each event, which sends you a reminder prior to the actual event. They also give you the ability to add tasks to your calendars and set exact due dates for each project. Like I mentioned, they have the Share option just like the Photo Manager if you desire to collaborate or share certain calendars with friends. They’ve included a nice RSS feature which allows you to subscribe to your friend’s calendars and see their past and upcoming events. Overall, the Calendar Manager is a nice simple way of helping to keep yourself on track for things you need to get done. It’s not nearly as in-depth as something like Google’s Calendar, however for the average person, it’ll suffice just fine.

To be honest, I liked SnapPages. Though it didn’t bring anything incredibly new to the table, it laid out all the old stuff neatly and thoroughly. Since it was created in Flash, the animation helped give it a nice touch of fluency. Give it a try, it was fun to play around in it. They plan on continuously adding new features to SnapPages, so we can only hope for the best.

Looking deeper under the surface you’ll find everything you’re used to. You have your own homepage that you’ll be able to edit at will. It’s split up into sections including, Photos, Tasks, Projects, Friends, the Wall, etc. Each section does essentially what you’d think it would do. Photos allows you to upload pictures from your computer. Your main profile holds all the necessary personal information identifying you, age, relationship status, location, email, even spiritual and political preferences. You have your own inbox on MyQuire that you can send and receive messages from other users. Also on your main page you have the “Wall” which simply allows you to post random comments and ideas that may come to your mind.

You have a projects area where you can create projects and assign members to. In the free plan, I felt it would’ve been nice to allow users to create more than one project to play around with. To add members to a project, simply drag the people you want working on the project from your friends list, onto the desired project. Also, each project is logged into a folder in the “My Hard Drive” section of the website also. This area allows you to manage each of your projects folders. You can open up and revise the files within each of these folders in a WYSIWYG. Easy enough. You can create new files in the hard drive sections and they’ll be stored there and displayed under the “My Files” section on your profile’s front page as well.

The calendar part of MyQuire is probably one of my favorites. It sets you up with a calendar that you are able to add tasks to by day and time. It works very nicely for keeping track of numerous events if your life is a little hectic. You can display them by day, week or month and you can also use the “Subscribe” button to synchronize your MyQuire calendar up with some of the more popular offline calendar applications, including Microsoft Outlook, iCal, and Mozilla Sunbird. The tasks section of the site also has this synchronization feature. Not much to really say about the tasks section though. You create tasks and assign them to a specific due date, if applicable.

While MyQuire doesn’t do anything wrong, it doesn’t do anything really new. We’ve been seeing these networks emerge like dandelions on the internet. One sprouts and soon its ideas fly through the virtual wind and attract others to try and make something similar. I have nothing against MyQuire, it functions, it’s very easy to learn and use, and it covers all the necessary aspects to help people keep themselves organized. Would it be worth upgrading to the Premium plan? I personal wouldn’t, but if it’s your cup of tea, go for it.

So let’s roll. Like I mentioned previously, Picnik is able to snag images from numerous sources. When you import your photos from Flickr it organizes them and allows you to sort them by date taken/posted and interestingness in ascending and descending order. One of the other neat ways it gets images is its ability to capture them from other websites. Simply input a befitting website of your choice and Picnik will then grab all the images from that designated website. It will retrieve and list all the images that it found on that website and allow you to edit, email to a friend, or download any of them. Unfortunately, you can only have one site’s image listing open at a given time, but this small downfall is adequately compensated by the amount of photo editing features at your disposal for each image.

Once in the Edit portion of the website, you’ll be introduced to your tool palette. Simplified as it might look for all you design gurus, it bears favorable results. The main tool set consists of the following: Auto-fix, Rotate, Crop, Exposure, Colors, Sharpen and Red-Eye. Clicking each tool brings up a sub menu that will assist you further in editing. The Auto-fix function repairs color quality if you come across an images with less-than-par color characteristics to it. In the Rotate menu you’ll be able to adjust any noticeable uneven horizons in photos using the Fine Rotate tool. Additionally, you can freely rotate the image left or right 90 degrees. The Crop tool allows you to, obviously, crop your image to the proportions you wish. They have default preset dimensions of cropping for you to choose from, or you can choose to custom crop by inputting the measurements you want.

Moving on, the Exposure tool allows you to adjust the brightness and contrast in your photo. An Auto-fix function is found in the Exposure menu as well, for those who just want the quickest fix for exposure problems. This menu also has an Advanced setting attached to it displaying a graph of color tone changes to the users as they edit their photo in real-time. Next, the Color option enables users to manage the color balance of their images. Saturation helps add emphasis on primary colors in a photo when increased and will, adversely, strip all colors from your image and eventually gray scale it if fully reduced. As can be implied, the temperature slider helps add or subtract warmth to a photo. For those who have studied and understand camera lighting and filming, know that the warm feeling in video and still images is portrayed as an orange hue, while on the contrary, cold is depicted as a blueish shade. The temperature control is similar to that. Excuse the brief lighting lesson, I digress. Again, you’ll find an auto function for the color tool if you so desire to use it. There is a Neutral Picker which is similar to what people in the film industry may refer to as white balancing, which generally speaking is, the act of identifying what is the true white color of a photo or piece of film while taking into account environmental lighting and natural shadows. Picnik’s Neutral Picker compares closely to this term.

Next on the list is Sharpening. Nothing too substantial in this menu, the slider adjusts how sharp an image is and can naturally come in handy to counteract slightly blurred photos. Last on the palette is the Red Eye tool for all those photos of yours that were marred by the infamous red eye defect. Click on the center of each affected eye to help restore proper color to infected areas. Of course like all editing software, you’re able to undo any unwanted mistakes that might happen while editing, or redo admired effects if that’s the case.

Picnik currently has a limited amount of features in the Special Effects category, however still respectively consists of general filter distortion such as: Sepia, Matte, Black and White, Vignette, Soften and Boost effects. Zooming in and out is also easy via a small slider at the bottom right hand corner of your project while you’re in the Edit and Creative Tools modes. Though you are able to resize a photo once you’re ready to save it to your computer, it would’ve been nice to have a real-time resize function within the interface. Nevertheless, combined with the site’s other components, you should should be able to find an outcome that you can pleasantly appreciate.

After all your tweaking is finished and you’re satisfied with the results, you can save your work to either: your computer, your normal Flickr gallery, your Flickr slide show, or even save to a website. Websites that you are able to save directly to include: Image Shack, Photo Bucket, Live Journal, and Walmart Photos, just to name a few. Furthermore, you can also print out your work and email it to a friend. Pertaining to their printing function, you have the option to print in a full page format or half page format. As for saving to your Flickr slide show, it’s easy and straight forward. Simply authenticate that you agree that Picnik will directly connect to your Flickr account and you’re done! The embedded HTML code and direct link to your Flickr slide show will be displayed for you in Picnik. You’re also able to change the background color and size of your slide show through Picnik. Prior to saving the image directly to your own computer, you’re brought to a settings page that includes the dimensions of the image, desired format (.jpg, .gif, .png, .bmp, .pdf, .tiff), and a slider that controls image quality.

On a personal note, I believe they presented Picnik clearly and I think it will appeal to a large audience. The site design is clean, as well as being constructed and organized in a focused manner. Think Apple’s iPhoto, but online. Granted, Picnik isn’t Photoshop by far, or close to most other image editing and manipulation programs out there. It doesn’t include freehand tools like brushes, cloning, or fills. It’s not meant to. It’s meant to simply enhance the decency of already taken photos, not totally give them an extensive make-over. However for being strictly online, being entirely generated by Flash, being flexible enough to obtain images from literally anywhere, and above all, being free, it unquestionably earns my vote as being one of the best values for a near instantaneous, presentable, online photo editor. Looking for examples of what Picnik can do? Visit the Picnik tag or Picnik group on Flickr, both hosting a nice inventory of work using Picnik. And hey, it’s still in beta. Only good things await on the horizon for this credible application. I tip my hat you Picnik.

Update: Picnik now supports image resizing. (Thanks Darrin!)

It’s clear people like these kind of sites and Popurls has seemed to start a chain or a class of these sites carrying on the concept. I’m not exactly sure what to call these sites as they are basically one page feed aggregators, but I suppose it’s safe to say they present the links, media, and search in a portal like fashion. So, I am going to call these sites “portals” throughout the post rather then saying, “Single Page Aggregator.” Please, if you know of a better name to call these sites, feel free to add your input.

There are two portals that I check up on numerous times a day: Popurls and Digg View. Popurls for the latest buzz and Digg View for an easy to read overview of activity at Digg. Just recently a new portal popped up called Original Signal and Steve Rubel had mentioned in a post on the new portal, “There seems to be a new emerging class of sites like these that aggregate feeds for you.” I started thinking about it and agree that there are quite a bit of these sites now, some covering buzz and others specific topics, and so I decided to take a look around and see what I can find.

After compiling a list of portals, I grouped them into categories and decided to share them with you. Hopefully there will be at least one that will be of interest to you. You can find in my list of portals: Tracking Buzz and News (Digg, Del.icio.us, etc.), Tracking Web 2.0, Specialty Topics (Gaming, Tech Deals, Apple, etc.), Design Related News and Showcase, Media Aggregators, Build Your Own, and lastly, Tag Search Engines.

My Two Top Picks

Popurls: Most of you are probably familiar with this one. Popurls has the goal of bringing you the latest buzz around the web aggregating popular social services and websites and display them all on one page. Viewers can view popular headlines from sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Newsvine, and TailRank as well as keep up on media from Flickr, Youtube, Odeo, iFilm, and more. If your trying to find what’s new and buzzing on the web, Popurls is the place to be and most definitely takes place on my Firefox toolbar.

Digg View: I’m a big fan of Digg and try to keep up with the latest popular headlines as much as possible. I come across many helpful articles because of Digg relating to Web 2.0, web programming, database optimization, and other tech related topics, but I also use Digg to keep up with videos and gaming. However, rather then using Digg’s website to track popular headlines, I use Digg View. Digg View offers a one page overview of the seven Digg categories showing popular headlines during different time-frames of the day. The site makes it very easy to keep up with what’s popular on Digg and also marks stories that you haven’t seen in orange. I love it. I sit here all day refreshing the page over and over waiting for new orange headlines to appear so I can view the latest popular story on Digg.

Tracking Buzz (What’s Hot) and News

The following portals include the latest popular links and news from various social bookmarking sites, blogs, and news sources. You can expect to see these portals aggregating sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit. Personally, I’ll be sticking with Popurls, but maybe you prefer different.

• TheWebList: “A digest of the latest links other web users are visiting right now!” It’s basically the same thing as Popurls, but without the media. It provides bookmarking and search options and summaries when hovering headlines.
• popfeeds: popfeeds is a very clean and simple overview of popular feeds. If it weren’t for Popurls, this would probably be the one I would use because it’s very fast loading and gets straight to the point.
• ViralBabble: Although it isn’t all that pretty, one feature that I like about ViralBabble is archiving. Navigating to the bottom of the page will be a link to an archive section where you can actually view snapshots of previous days. So if you were out of the house yesterday and wanted to see what was buzzing, you can easily do so with ViralBabble.
• PopFeedo: By the makers of Feedo Style and powered by Feedo Style, PopFeedo aggregates and displays six popular feeds including Digg, Del.icio.us, Wired Technology, Reddit, Slashdot, and Yahoo’s Top News.
• 01b (Source): I probably shouldn’t be mentioning this one as it will probably be shutting down any day now, but 01b is Thomas Marben’s first creation that aggregates sites similar to his now popular, Popurls. Except this one aggregates a whole lot more sources, some in German.

Specialty Topics

You may be thinking, “Alright, why are you writing a post about these portals? Don’t they all show the same thing?” No! There are actually portals built for specific topics, such as gaming and photography. If you have an interest in a certain topic, maybe one of these can help you stay on top of relating news. If not, head down to the “Build Your Own,” area of this post.

• WiiNintendo: Nintendo fans, this one is for you. Excited about the new Nintendo Wii? If so, bookmark WiiNintendo to keep up with the latest news from Nintendo, The Wiire, Joystiq, and 1UP as well as videos on Wii from YouTube.
• Mashfot: Mashfot is all about photography. With Mashfot, users can find the latest news and popular links relating to photography and view the latest photographs from various photo sharing websites. View photos from Flickr and 23, news from Digg and Blogs, and links from Del.icious and Blinklist.
• PopDeal: Here is one for all of you tech-savvy individuals that want to save a buck or two on tech hardware. PopDeals brings you the latest tech deals from around the web by aggregating numerous websites specifically meant for deals on products, including DealNews, TechBargains, DealCatcher, and more.
• Don’t Meet Your Heroes: “Compilation of CSS and Web Standards related resources and news feeds from sources around the net.” The site claims to aggregate CSS and Web Standard sites only, although you will see a mix of other sources relating to Web 2.0, programming, Ajax, and more. Nice and simple page.
• xmlhttprequest: If you are a web developer, you can probably guess what this portal is about. Yes, Ajax. Find links to websites and news relating to developing with Ajax, keep up with sites like Ajaxian and ThinkVitamin, and keep up with Google’s JavaScript Newsgroup.
• MacScour: By the makers of Don’t Meet Your Heroes, MacScour scours the web for Apple news and Mac software updates. Keep up with latest news, software updates, rumors, reviews, and more.
• BozPages: Alex Bosworth of SourceLabs has created a neat site that basically allows you to make your own Popurls like page, or as he calls them, “simple one-off pages of RSS feeds.” He also provides some that he has created that aggregates feeds relating to Gaming, Web 2.0, Movies, Ajax, Google, and more. Only problem is that the pages seem to run a bit slow at times.
• Update: Original Signal Gadgets: Just as I published this post, Original Signal has created another site built to aggregate gadget related sites. The site includes Gizmondo, Engadget, CNET’s Gadget Blog, CrunchGear, and more.

Tracking Web 2.0

You’ve probably guessed this category was coming. The following portals aggregate blogs covering Web 2.0. If you like keeping up with all the new startups and products but don’t like subscribing to so many feeds, you may want to keep track of one of these sites. My personal favorite is Original Signal.

• Original Signal: Launched this month, Original Signal aggregates 15 Web 2.0 blogs showing recent posts and summaries. What’s also neat is that if you have visited the site before, new posts will stand out in bold the next time you visit. Original Signal is also by the makers of Digg View.
• Web 2.0 Workgroup: The Web 2.0 Workgroup is a small network of sites covering Web 2.0, which thankfully Solution Watch is a part of, and has a main page that displays each site aggregating three latest posts.
• Web 2.0 Reference: Web 2.0 Reference aggregates feeds relating to Web 2.0 and organizes them neatly on one page where you can sort them by Source or Category.

Design Related News and Showcase

Even though I am a web programmer, I’m definitely a sucker for anything design. I’ve known about a couple of these portals, but I grabbed my brother, Tim Benzinger, who is a graphic designer (also designed this blog), and had him help me gather some more for you.

• Most Inspired: Need inspiration? Check out Most Inspired, a portal that aggregates design galleries and showcases designs by hovering over each headline. I can spend my whole day on this site looking through all of the excellent design work.
• Enure Feeds: Enure includes feeds from popular design sites including k10k, lounge72, australian INfront, News Today, and more. Enure does not necessarily aggregate its sources but includes them using iframes. Nevertheless, it’s a nice portal that has some high profile design sources.
• Design Feeds: Design Feeds is a new one to me and I love it. It has many sources displayed in iframes, some that are galleries with visuals, others that are news relating to design and web development. The owner did a nice job at aggregating each source in individual frames styled to the sources appearance. I’m sure any designer can appreciate this site.
• Linkgrab: Linkgrab is a simple site that allows you to pick three design related websites and retrieve links from each. You can change the feeds at anytime and keep checking back. It would be nice if it allowed you to display more then three on a page.

Media Aggregators

For those of you that are interested in keeping up with popular videos, these portals may be for you. They are one page sites that display popular videos, with thumbnails, from video sharing sites. Warning, it is easy to waste hours of your free time watching videos ;-).

• The Internet TV Charts: “The Internet TV charts tracks the most popular online video clips each week from four leading Internet TV sites. All the best video clips, on one page.” Simple site showing popular Google and YouTube videos as well as links to Digg (video topic) and Videosift.
• vdiddy: Neat site that allows you to view videos from 12 different video sources. You can select a site and then watch the videos directly in vdiddy.
• Magg: Created with recently launched Dapper, Magg aggregates the latest and greatest movies from various video sharing sites. You can also search through the aggregated sites for videos.

Build Your Own!

Haven’t found any portals that caught your interest? Then build your own! I have three methods for you. You can use services offering one page aggregators, use your favorite start page site (ie: Netvibes), or use a simple Tag Search site and bookmark it for later reference.

• One Page Aggregators: I know of two services that can help you make your own portal in a matter of minutes. The first is SpeedyFeed (Example: Popular) and it basically allows you to import your favorite feeds and have them all displayed on one page in a similar format to Popurls. The second option is BozPages, which I had mentioned earlier. Simply head over to the website and add your favorite feeds to get a one page aggregator.
• Start Pages: You can also make your own by using a start page. I personally like to use Netvibes, but any start page will do. 3spots has an extensive list of start pages worth checking out. Also, if you are a Netvibes user, don’t forget about the Netvibes Ecosystem. You can add tabs on various topics to your account in a single click.
• Tag Search: The last method I am aware of is by using tag search sites. Now, it can’t be just any tag search site (well, it can if you want), but one that allows you to bookmark and retrieve results from multiple sources, preferably blog searches and social services. My favorite one is Newzpile. You can also use TagJag and the recently released, TagFetch. Just make a search, bookmark the page, and check back later for more recent headlines.

That concludes my findings! Hope you have found a portal that interests you. If you know of any other similar sites, feel free to comment below. And again, my two top picks are: Popurls and Digg View. Popurls provides me with more then enough of the latest buzz around the web and Digg View compliments Digg so well making it easy to keep up with popular headlines. If I had to choose a third, I would have to go with Most Inspired because it provides tons of inspirational work to browse through.

Like this article? Digg it!

Above is an example portfolio. The portfolio has the default style for Carbonmade portfolios selected, which is a very simple style presenting all your work in a clean format. The other style is just the opposite color scheme, but same layout. It would be nice to have more templates, but I’m satisfied with what has been given. Each account gets their own sub-domain address (you.carbonmade.com) in which you can begin adding projects and content to. If you take a look at the above screenshot, you will see that it actually works much like a photo gallery service. You select a project and then you can view each image in the project using next and previous navigation. You also can view more information about a project by clicking on the bar above the image being shown. Lastly, when on the main page, you will see categories on the right that you can select to narrow the selection of projects to what you are looking for. Very basic, simple, and straight to the point (your work).

Carbonmade has made it very easy for you to get in and start working on a portfolio in a matter of seconds. When you first signup, you will need to click on the button, “Add a Project.” (Note: at the time of writing this, only six projects are allowed to be added because Carbonmade is still working out some things. But the service will eventually take away the limit once they are done working on it.) Once you start a project, you will be asked to upload a first image. After this, you will then be able to fill in information about the project and additional images for the slideshow. The project management area was very well done and uses Ajax to help speed up the saving process. You will also see that you can actually drag each image in the project to change the order of each image. Fill in the basic information and that is all to it for that project. Continue and start another!

You have added a few projects, descriptions, and images. Now you may want to change some of the portfolios appearance. The first thing that you may want to do is to navigate to the main page and change the order of your projects. You will notice that all the project boxes are draggable and you can actually place them where you want. Now that you’ve got that set, lets change the actual look of the portfolio. Unfortunately, you are not given that much freedom for the appearance, but you can select a color scheme and font face (with only two options each). To change the appearance, make your way to the settings page and change the options available. Now that you’ve got the appearance set, you may want to write some information about yourself for your visitors. Next to the Projects tab, you will see “About.” Select this and you will then see some fields that you can enter your basic contact information, a bio, and photo of yourself.

That’s all to it! I have created a project in a matter of minutes with one project, an about page, descriptions for my project, and selected the white color scheme with serif typeface. Quick, easy, and looks great. I think Carbonmade is a great solution for many seeking a quick and easy portfolio. Whether your a designer, programmer, fashion designer, architect, identity designer, or whatever your profession may be. I do wish it allowed for more customization of the overall look, but it works. I didn’t run into any problems as I tested the service and am quite satisfied with its output. If you make a portfolio, let me know. I am interested in seeing how it works for you and of course viewing your work.

View Carbonmade: Show off your work.

Above is a screenshot of the JellyBarn interface in which you will be using for your photo communities (note: the screenshot was compressed in filesize resulting in worse quality, but the main format is there). The first page you are directed to when logging in is your profile page that you will find your photos, albums, your profile, and of course, tagging for the photos. One thing that you will notice is that the interface isn’t only Flash, but also HTML, which allows for a more flexible environment. Even though a technology like Ajax isn’t used, the functionality is very much similar when combining Flash with a little Javascript resulting in the same, real-time, type of feeling. To interact with your photo community, you can upload photos, save contacts and create groups, email photos, create projects, manage events, and even maintain an online journal.

The first thing that I wanted to do was to upload some of my photos that I have taken. I went into the photos section and went to upload. I was expecting a basic form that you can upload multiple photos with, but I was definitely wrong, in a good way. I was very impressed with all of the uploading options that you are given. You can upload using a basic form, Java Applet (above screenshot), JellyBarn Uploader application (Windows/Mac), and according to the profile page, you can send photos via email and even through your cell phone if you enter your phone number. As you can tell, there are plenty of options are available. I used the basic upload form first which went through nicely and allowed me to tag and add descriptions to all the photos I uploaded. I also tested the Java uploader which actually makes an open dialog, much like how your computer works, that also has a drag and drop upload functionality.

Now that I have some photos uploaded, it is time to have some fun with some of JellyBarn’s features. My favorite section of JellyBarn is the projects section. The projects section lets you actually create small projects with your photos, such as DVD Movies (actually slideshows), Fun Cards (postcards), and photo books. This is where the Flash approach to the service really comes in handy. In the above screenshot, you will see a Photo Book Project. You can create a cover page, add as many pages as you want, add photos using drag and drop, resize photos, add text, and change colors. It also uses a nice page turning transition when going through the pages. Another project that I liked was the DVD project, which is really a more advanced slideshow. Much like Microsoft PowerPoint, you create slides and organize them. You can create slides with titles, smooth zoom in/out motions, durations (time on an individual slide), and even background music from their music collection (including rock, classical, r&b, jazz, etc.). Once you are done creating your projects, you can then share them with your community and send them via email.

JellyBarn is an excellent service to create a private photo sharing community. To get a community started, you need to go to the people section, add some contacts. You will then be able to see the profiles of your contacts as well as recent photos from each contact. You will also now see recent photos from your community along with community tags in the photos section of JellyBarn, much like other photo sharing services. But my favorite feature is sharing with contacts. When you choose to share with a contact, you will get directed to a page with your library and your contacts library. You can then drag and drop your contacts photos into your library and your photos into your contacts library. So, for example, if your friend had a party and knows you have some photos from it, you can then add your photos of the party into your friends party album in a matter of seconds. Love the sharing feature.

Overall, JellyBarn works excellent for creating your own photo sharing communities for friends and family. You can manage photos, contacts, projects, events, and even journals. JellyBarn still has some ways to go and is currently in invite only beta, but from what I can see, it is a great addition to the growing list of photo sharing services.

View JellyBarn – Building Photo Sharing Communities.

Platial has a very nicely designed user interface making it very easy to use. Platial involves the use of Google Maps for plotting of landmarks and they use these nice looking pointers to show them on the maps. When clicking on a point, the center of the map will slide to it and use Ajax to show a description, tags, and a picture of the place. It is just as simple when adding a place to Platial. You simply find the location on the map and pin-point it. If you want to be more exact though, you can also search for a location and plot it on the map. Also in the above screenshot, you will notice that there are multiple points being shown on the map. This is because Platial also uses longitude and latitude to calculate other places that are near to the current location. It will show these other locations when you click on the “More interesting places” link on the top right of the map. But enough about the map itself because that is not what sparked my interest. What sparked my interest were the details for each landmark created.

Each place created gets its own permanent page that includes collaborative features that make the service a whole lot more informative and useful. Many services like Platial that allow you to mark a location on the map just lets you see the map along with a description and tags. Platial steps it up a bit by allowing any user to include tags, comments, and my favorite, images. I love the imaging functionality built into Platial because users can add photos of the landmark to the landmarks page so viewers can actually see the location. Users may be talking about a specific location in a park and may want to show a specific statue, for example. They can then add the landmark along with a photo of the statue giving the viewers a visual on the location rather then just a map. Hovering over a photos thumbnail will show a larger version of the photo. As of right now, images can only be added by inputting an URL, but according to their FAQ section, they are working on upload functionality. Aside from the images, I mentioned that users can add their own tags and comments as well making it an even stronger collaborative atlas.

Platial also has some other features that makes it stand out including maps and friends. Users are able to save multiple places to a single map for anyone to view. You may know of a lot of coffee shops or golf courses, so why not create a map of them so you can easily find all these locations? That is what Platial allows you to do and easily. Even as you browse through Platial and come through a place that you would like in your map, you can simply click on the “Add to a map” link letting you add the place to any of your maps. I also mentioned that you can make friends using Platial. Platial gives each user their own profile page that includes all their published places, maps, tags, and buddies that have added the user as their buddy. Come across someone that mentions a lot of great places in your area that you may want to keep up on? Just click on the “Add as Buddy” link in a profile and the user will be added as a buddy to your profile. Platial also has a people section where you can search for a user and find the most active users of Platial.

I feel that Platial is one of the more impressive of mapping services on the web because its excellent collaboritive functionality. To me, the strong point was how images could be added to each location allowing locations to be a lot more visual then just a map. I also found searching Platial to be very well done in that it allows you to search for what you are looking for, where you are looking for it, or just one of them. Helps narrowing down on locations. I also liked how Platial allows you to publish a location to your blog, as seen on the Platial Blog, although I couldn’t find the option to publish it as mentioned on their blog. I also recommend viewing the Platial Blog if you are interested in finding more tips and information about Platial.

View Platial – Your Collaborative Atlas.

Everything that you store in Zurpy can be either shared or private. You can store bookmarks, notes, photos, feeds, friends, and you can even send and receive messages. All items can be added from your Zurpy profile or through the two Zurpy buttons (bookmarklets) that they provide for saving bookmarks and notes from any website. What I like about Zurpy is that you can tag and share everything! Don’t worry if you don’t want to share because you can make anything private as well. Another feature that I liked was that you do not have to be a member of Zurpy to view profiles. This is great because you can now easily send your photos, notes, and anything else to anyone.

You can also build a network of friends with Zurpy. When viewing a profile or simply coming across a bookmark, you may want to keep note of the person or make friends with them. To do this, all you have to do is add the member to your friends list and they will then appear in your friends section. You can now view your friends recent activity and even send and receive messages, sort of like a forums Private Messaging system. When receiving a message, it will appear in the Inbox section of Zurpy where you can view, remove, and reply to your messages. Another area that I felt Zurpy has done a great job on is the feeds section. It shows the last four posts from each feed that you add and when adding a feed, you can also tag them for better organization.

The last area that I want to mention is the community page. This is the page that you view to see what people are linking to using Zurpy. It is your basic social bookmarking, except with a few extra features. You can view any links info page that allows you to view popular tags used for the link as well as rate and comment on the link. But, one thing that I couldn’t find is where the ratings are put to use. I don’t see any ratings when viewing links and I also can’t find anything to sort links by rating. Zurpy is still in the works though, so maybe they are working on this. I am also hoping to see more in the community, such as viewing of recent photos and being able to view feeds from a tag cloud, like the links.

Overall, Zurpy is an excellent social service. It makes it very easy to manage everything you collect, the design is clean and simple, and being able to keep a list of friends to keep up with is also a very nice touch. There are a few suggestions that I feel would make the service even better though. For one, you are only able to upload JPG and JPEG photos. If possible, a few other image formats would be great. The feeds area also two features that I feel are important that Zurpy did not. First, importing of OPML files and secondly, an easy way to add feeds without having to be in your profile. Maybe it would be possible to integrage a feed detection when using the bookmark button? Other then that, everything was great. I’m going to be using this to share photos and links with my family. Great work to the Zurpy team.

Remember – First 100 visitor signups are up for grabs when using the signup code, tr74657374696e675f73.

View Zurpy – Organize and share your life online.

The screenshot above is the FilmLoop’s main interface. When it starts up, it will load the bar with all loops that you are subscribed to and that you set to be shown. Now, you may be asking, what exactly is a loop? You can think of a loop as a string of photos that moves across the users screen (scrolls left or right) that can be a private or public loop or a loop you have been invited to. Users can then “communicate” with the loop by subscribing, commenting, and even adding to the loop. The interface for displaying the loops is a small and uncluttered strip using gray, black, and blue colors which actually seems to help keep the focus of the strip the photos. At the bottom of the strip are the options, loop controls, and a slider so you can quickly scan through all your loops. One thing that I would like to see for the interface would be a way to control the speed of the scrolling. At times I feel it is too slow or too fast. You also can skip directly to the next or previous loop by click on the next and previous buttons that look much like an media player. I do feel that when going pressing the next and previous buttons, it skips too fast to the loop and brings on a little confusion. I feel that if they can integrate a smooth sliding inertia type effect to the loop, it would make it a whole better.

Creating your own loop is extremely simple. Open FilmLoop and click on the “create” button located at the bottom left of the strip. You will then be asked to name your loop and when you click, “OK,” it will then skip to your new loop with a graphic saying to click and drag the photos you want in the loop onto the graphic (inside your loop, in other words). You can also click on it to bring up an open dialog. In the screenshot above, you can see that I opened a folder of photos. I can then simply drag one at a time into the loop or even select multiple and drag them all in at once. Once you drag them in you will notice each one appearing one after another. When you put a photo in a loop, it is actually storing the photo onto a secure FilmLoop server, explaining why they do not appear immediately. Once the photos are in you can start setting actions to each photo and even share your loop. Just a note about sharing: If you invite others to use your loop, they can also click and drag photos into your loop and it will update the loop, which is an excellent feature and really livens the social aspect of FilmLoop. Inviting is also very easy. You simply click on the “invite” button at the bottom of FilmLoop, select a loop from the list, fill in some email addresses, add a message, and send. They will receive the invite by email and can then subscribe to your loop and download FilmLoop if they haven’t yet.

Now lets talk about something even more interesting, the loops and loop actions. Each photo in a loop has what FilmLoop calls, actions. You can set an action to show more details of a photo, go to a website, open another loop, bring up a comment area, and more. At default, when you create your own loop, photos will use the Zoom View, which is how you can view details on a photo, view descriptions, comments, and other options. But if you were to subscribe to, lets say, a news loop. The loop will most likely show photos based on the news and on clicking a photo, it would direct you to the news article in relation to the photo.

(View Larger Screenshot)

When you click on a photo that has the action set to, Zoom View, a window will open that looks similar to the above (Larger Screenshot). A Zoom View window will show you the photo at a bigger size, descriptions, tags for the loop, comments, and options for printing, saving, rotating and deleting. If you are the creator of the loop, you will also be able to change descriptions and manage the comments. The comment system is very basic but gets the job done. Comments will be shown on the top right and along with the name of the commenter. You can also click on the fullscreen option that will show the photo in full screen and allow you to browse through the photos in the loop like a slideshow.

I have explained the basics of the FilmLoop interface, what loops are, and how to create your own loops. But you cannot fully experience FilmLoop until you view the broadcast network. To view the network, open FilmLoop and select, “Network,” which is located at the bottom of the strip. It will then open a new window called the “Loop Organizer.” On the left column, you will see a list with selection for the network, your library, now playing, and other folders or playlists if you rather. If you clicked on the network button on the FilmLoop strip, you should see the network selected on the left and on the right a page that is your method of finding loops. On the top of the page are a list of categories that you can select to view, such as public, humor, news, places, sports, etc.. Below this you will see a nicely layed out page with photos about various hot topics and news. When you click on the any of these photos, it will subscribe you to the loop and show all the photos in the FilmLoop strip. If you don’t like it, you can easily ubsubscribe by right clicking and choosing unsubscribe. I want to look for specific loops though and at the time, I was interesting in humor. So, I selected the Humor tab at the top. It then directs you to a page that lists all of the loops in the humor category. Selecting a loop will subscribe you to it and load it into the strip. If there are a large amount of loops, it will split them up into pages, which you can select at the bottom of the page. I feel that this method of showing all the loops is rather hard to search through and even though they are placed in the specific categories. They need to incorporate some type of search bar at the top that you can search through all loops. They also allow you to add tags to your loops that you create, but I do not see any way of searching by tags anywhere. I would really like to see a page for a tag cloud. Other than that, the only other issue I saw was that the cartoon, Dilbert, was nowhere to be found and I could not even make a search for it.

Now that you know how to subscribe to loops, lets take a look at unsubscribing, organizing, and hiding loops. Simply open up the network window again and as stated above, you can select to see your library on the left. Click on, “My Library” will show everything you have created, been invited to, or subscribed to. Each loop that is listed will show if the loop is playing, what the loop is called, who the creator is, and the last time it has been updated. If you do not want to show a loop on FilmLoop but still wish to subscribe to it, click on the loop and then select, “Stop Playing,” at the bottom of the window. You will now see that the loop will not be shown anymore in the strip, but still visible your library. You can also right click on a loop to easily invite people, unsubcribe from it, or set it to play again. The “Now Playing” folder will show all loops that you have allowed to be shown on your loop. If you decide to hide one, it will not show that loop in this folder. You can also see loop that you have created or loops that you have subscribed to two by selecting their folders. If you do not like to view all of the loops this way, you can create your own folders and click and drag loops inside of them. The only thing that I have been doing really is just subscribing and unsubscribing.

Another thing that I want to mention is that you can link to your loops from your website. If you go the “What Is FilmLoop?” section from the FilmLoop website, you will see on the left three scrolling loops. You can actually make those for your own loops as well and insert them on your site, which I find is really great. Perfect if you own a photography website. To do this, go to your loop in FilmLoop and right click it. Then select, “Web/Blog Link.” You will then see a button that says, “Copy HTML.” Click on that and then just paste the code in your site. That’s all to it!

Overall, FilmLoop is great. It is feature packed, you can subscribe to your favorite loops, create your own, and even collaboratively work on a loop. I haven’t run into any bugs yet and the performance is surprisingly well with a memory usage much less then many other applications I have running. I hope for the best of luck for FilmLoop and feel that it will be very successful. FilmLoop has already raised $5.6 million in from two Silicon Valley Venture Capital firms: GlobeSpan Capital Partners and Garage Technology Ventures and it seems that the company has some high expectations. Hope they meet them. Great work, FilmLoop.

View FilmLoop – Are you in the loop?

BubbleShare had mentioned that they wanted to make it as simple as possible for you to share your photos. Well, they certainly have. The first page you are presented with actually is the upload page where you select your photos and add them to the list for it to use for your album. You will see a button, “Add Photo.” When you click on this it will bring up your computers Open file window so you can select a photo. As you can see in the screenshot, in Windows, I have selected to view thumnail view so I can view the photos and then add them. When you select a photo it will add it to the list and the “Create Album” button will then allow you to select it. Make sure you have added all the photos you want before you click on the button. Once you do it will load them up and process your album. Also note that if you wanted to selected multiple photos at once, you can try to use the Enhanced Uploader that they provide a link for below the buttons.

When you click on the “Create Album” button, it will bring you to a page that looks like the above. You will see a progress bar starting at 0% and will actually upload and process each photo you have selected as you fill out the form below. Once it reaches 100%, submit the form and you will then be directed to the Slideshow Editor. This is really neat because the progress indicator actually is real-time and does not require the page to reload because I am assuming the use of Ajax. You will also receive two emails (I would prefer only one though). One that gives you the link to a page that you can manage your album and another email for the address you can share with your friends so they can view it. Now lets look at the Slideshow Editor.

The Slideshow Editor allows you to change the order or the slideshow, remove photos, change the name and descriptions, add/remove comments, and the part that got me excited was audio caption recording, which I will mention below. In the screenshot above, you see a row of thumbnails. You can take these thumnails and drag them left or right to organize the album the way you want it. You can also click on the little x’s to delete them. To manage a photo, just click on the thumnail and you will then be able to change the caption, add comments, and what I find really cool, the Audio Caption feature. But there is one thing that is missing . You cannot add photos once the album has been created. This means that when you create it for the first time, make sure you have all the photos. I’d hope that BubbleShare is working on this because it would definitely be good to have. Other than that, everything worked great.

Above, I mentioned that there is a feature in the Slideshow Editor called, “Audio Caption.” What you do is select the photo that you want to add a caption for and then click on the button on the left menu that says, “Audio Caption.” It will then bring up a box that will tell you that you can record your voice for up to 30 seconds starting once you click “record.” If you clicked on the record button for the first time, Macromedia Flash may come up with a setting box asking if you want to allow for recording. Select yes and then the recording will begin! You can describe your photo, talk about your story, or whatever it may be. When you are done, click on the “Stop” button. You can then select to record again, play what you have already made, save it for the photo, or cancel it if you decide not to use an audio caption. If you decided to save the recording, it will add a play button next to a speaker icon on the bottom right of the photo. Works great and is definitely a great feature.

Now the only thing left to do is to share your album! Here is one I made for when I was testing it out (and yes, they are my own photos). When you are the creator of the album, BubbleShare will remember that it is you and will not ask for your name or email when commenting, but if you aren’t the creator, you will see a comment text area. When you click on “Comment,” it will then slide down and give you two more fields for your name and email. The album uses Ajax and also allows you to play the slideshow instead of doing next and previous. You can also subscribe to comment feeds or subscribe to receive an email for comments from a photo you have commented on. You may also be wondering how you can get a permanent link to a photo. Simply go to the thumbnail view and copy the location of a thumbnail. I do feel that they should provide this link on the photos page itself though to make it easier to grab it.

Mac OS X users! You can even download a plugin for iPhoto that will allow you to actually create an album by using your existing photos in iPhoto! I would imagine that this would make it a whole lot simpler for you if you already use iPhoto.

If you want to keep up on news and updates with BubbleShare, you can read the BubbleShare Weblog.

View Bubble Share Photo-sharing.

Update: The BubbleShare Weblog seems to be down right now. I will keep the links active in the meantime incase it gets back up again.