Archive for the 'Online Photo Sharing' Category
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008
Snapact Photo Manager 1.1 Changes
As promised in my previous announcement on the Snapact Photo Manager 1.1, here is a list of changes and additions to our software product:
- In the Browser mode, press ‘F10‘ to display the Preview window. You can use this for multiple monitor viewing of your photos.
- In the Viewer mode, press ‘F‘ to see the current photo full screen. (To get into the viewer mode from the Browser mode, double click or press ‘Enter’ on a thumbnail.)
- In the Viewer mode, press ‘S‘ to start (and the same key to stop) a slideshow in full screen viewing. You can use the contents of the mini-basket, a folder or an album.
- Normalized and added many other shortcut keys (see the Interactive Help for more details)
- Initial support for RAW files.
- GUI redesign:
- improved visibility of panes
- icons for albums (indicating published state, etc.)
- simplified layout of Browser toolbar
- made the Snapact Sync button stand out more
- album and mini-basket pane have a new drop down menu for ease of use
- added toolbar buttons to switch from Browser to Viewer and Viewer to Browser more easily
- Improved Help functionality (click the arrow beside the Browser toolbar’s Help button):
- updated the Interactive Help with shortcut keys and new features
- added a Contact Us menu entry to easily get to our feedback webpage
- added an About Snapact menu entry to list the version number of the Snapact Photo Browser
- Small improvements in uploading speed.
There are a number of improvements that are desired for upcoming releases as well. Most notably among them is improving the product’s editing functionality.
Spread the word about Snapact - our objectives are to continue to improve the product and sharing community, while keeping them simple and easy to use, for everyone. In fact, we would love for parents and grandparents to discover Snapact and how it can help them share memories with others!
Friday, October 31st, 2008
After a Busy Week, a New Top 10 List
- United States
- Japan
- Canada
- Brazil
- South Korea
- United Kingdom
- China
- India
- Germany
- Sweden
Some fairly big changes in the Top 10 Countries List this week, thanks to recent reviews of Snapact. The US is on top, with Japan following and Canada is now third! The Czech Republic, France and Italy have all move down below 10th spot and China, South Korea and India now have taken their current placements.
It’s incredible to see the demographics changing in such short periods of time. We’re more than happy to welcome worldwide users - sign in to Snapact and share Snapact with your friends! Don’t forget that you can search for users and add them to your friend list once you’re logged in too. We will be adding more community features to the website in the coming weeks and months.
Lately, we’ve been busy implementing Snapact Photo Manager feature requests that make sense and fixing defects/issues that both we as well as our users have found. A big thanks goes out to Samer from Freewaregenius.com for posting his review of Snapact; it has generated a lot of great feedback, which is mostly making its way into the super-fantastic next release of the Snapact Photo Manager.
We even managed to get a comment comparing the Snapact Photo Manager to ACDSee Pro! We’re a ways off from that level of functionality - and I don’t believe that we intend to “go there” at all. We will add what our users need, as long as it keeps the product simple and easy to use.
Be excited - we are! The next release of the Snapact Photo Manager is only a few short days away!
Sunday, October 26th, 2008
A Snapact Review - This Time in Korean
It’s a shame that Google’s translation tool isn’t perfect. I’m not an expert when it comes to languages, but really, automated language translation must be a hard task to perfect, if perfection is even possible.
With that being said, I’m happy to say that Snapact has received a favorable review from the Korean technology website ChoboWeb. Google’s translation from Korean to English is a bit sketchy, so I will refrain from putting any quotations here for now. If you happen to be a bilingual Korean/English speaker, feel free to add a comment with some of the key points translated for us. It would be greatly appreciated.
ChoboWeb’s review translated to English
Friday, October 24th, 2008
Another Snapact Review - This Time, in English!
We’ve had some growth in English-speaking countries the last couple of days - particularly the United States. A new review of Snapact has been posted over at Freewaregenius covering both the photo manager and photo sharing parts of the free offering.
The review is quite positive and yet still manages to give us some great feedback for improvement - thank you to Samer, the review’s author, for digging into the photo management and sharing aspects of Snapact so well.
I’d like quote a couple of sections of the review:
“What also needs to be said about Snapact is that it is very much a desktop front-end to the free Snapact image sharing service; which is to say that it is designed for seamless integration with your online Snapact account.”
Towards the end of the review, Samer mentions the following point - which subjectively tells me that Snapact provided a good impression overall:
“I will confess that at first I did not intend to review this software, but the main draw for me was the good user experience that it provides. If you are looking for a stylish image viewer with good features that does not hog your system you should check out Snapact…” - Freewaregenius.com
Thank you again, Samer and Freewaregenius.com.
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
This Week’s Snapact Top 10 Countries
After a bit of a busy time period, the Snapact Top 10 Countries list is back:
1. Canada
2. Japan
3. Brazil
4. United States
5. Sweden
6. United Kingdom
7. Germany
8. Czech Republic
9. France
10. Italy
The only changes are with the Czech Republic overtaking France and Italy unseating Spain for 10th position. With the soon-to-be-released update of the Snapact Photo Manager, I think we’ll see a shift in numbers - I expect a larger interest from the US to be prevalent in upcoming reports. We will be announcing Snapact on larger-scale product review websites shortly after the launch of the update.
A bit of feedback on how the above list is generated: straight from Google Analytics, where the default time period is one month, ending with more or less the current day. So, the list above is based on a 1-month, rolling report - a sliding window of time.
That’s all for now - stay tuned for the Snapact Photo Manager product update!
Saturday, October 11th, 2008
Upcoming Snapact Photo Manager Update
We’ve analyzed the workflow of the Snapact Photo Manager 1.0 based on user feedback (thank you, everyone!) and have decided to make some changes to make using the product easier in a general sense, but with a focus on introducing album/organizing features to you culminating with the photo sharing experience that we’ve delivered.
We intend to make album creation, populating albums with photos and the simple synchronization process the focal points of our changes, but you will see other minor improvements as well. When the update is actually released, you can do one of two things: open the Snapact Photo Manager on your computer - it will tell you that an update is available. The updating process is simple. Otherwise, you can dowload the Snapact Photo Manager again (or for the first time!) - our download location will never change and will always have the latest version.
We promised many blog postings ago that we’re always interested in your feedback. This hasn’t changed, and never will. Most of our feedback so far has been via email from the people that we’ve directly introduced to Snapact (friends/family, friends of friends/family), but we do get input from the Snapact Contact form (currently available for logged in users only; this will be changing) occasionally. We really hope to start getting GetSatisfaction.com related feedback - but then again,we understand that typical GetSatisfaction usage is based on complaints and issues that users have that aren’t being addressed by the company. We don’t want to be that company!
So, be suitably excited for the upcoming release of the Snapact Photo Manager - it should make a few things easier. We’re excited!
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
Snapact Top 10 Countries
Just a short post this week, to give an update on the Snapact Top 10 Countries:
- Canada
- Japan
- Brazil
- United States
- Sweden
- United Kingdom
- Germany
- France
- Czech Republic
- Spain
There’s been some reshuffling of the players in the list compared to the last report - Brazil’s internet revolution has powered them ahead of the US. India has fallen off the Top 10, allowing Spain to gain the 10th spot. Welcome Spain! Bienvenido!
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
Snapact Product and Photo Sharing Review
As indicated in a previous blog posting on world-wide demographic interest in Snapact, a part of the rush of interest in Snapact is (thankfully!) due to a couple of product/website reviews. One is Japanese, the other Brazilian; as the Japanese review of Snapact (although positive in nature) had a bit of explicit content in it, I won’t be speaking of it here - although we’re grateful for the feedback and exposure!
The Brazilian review is fairly domestic in content, yet revealing in the user viewpoint. It demonstrates that we have done a great job in putting out a first version of the Snapact Photo Manager and the Photo Sharing website - even as it (almost) silently says that there are still refinements to be made. We take this type of feedback well - it means that we’re on the right path; that we have done some really good things and also that we have a good chunk of work ahead of us to improve the service. We’re on it! Now… for the review.
Here’s a (translated) excerpt from the Brazilian review of the Snapact Photo Manager:
“Snapact is without any doubt, a complete solution for organizing and managing images. With powerful tools and easy use, this program has advanced features that make life easier for anyone who has many photos on their computer. Snapact is lightweight, stable, and visually pleasing. It is an excellent program that is really worth having installed on your computer”
“… [One of the objectives of] Snapact is the sharing online. Anyone can register on the site [and] then share your images with other users. The site acts as a sort of social network, where you can add friends, edit your profile, create albums and publish your photos [through] the program directly… To send pictures from Snapact, click the “Sync images with your online albums.” - Team Baixaki (URL: http://baixaki.ig.com.br/download/Snapact.htm)
This was translated via Google Translate. View the English translation by clicking here.
Thanks Baixaki, for the kind words! The review correctly asserts that the Snapact Photo Sharing website is intended to be a community - a social network. We know that there are many features missing from the website in order for it to function as a full-on social network, but believe us, it’s coming. We want to enable - and be a part of - further photography-related social interaction!
We would really like to encourage feedback from our current and future users. You can do so in a non-hostile, generic feedback environment at GetSatisfaction.com, where we have “claimed” ownership of the Snapact product and server and will be listening attentively for your feedback.
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
Google Analytics Report
As discussed in the first report on world-wide Snapact interest, there were a couple of surprises. Additionally, as originally thought, these numbers were largely coincidental and not expected to remain consistent throughout future reports.
The one anomaly that remains is the Japanese market, which maintains a strong interest - of course, we’re not complaining. Of course, we would welcome the Swedish if they maintained a high level interest in Snapact photo management and photo sharing… 
Here are this week’s numbers:
- Canada
- Japan
- United States
- Brazil
- Sweden
- Germany
- United Kingdom
- France
- Czech Republic
- India
Surprise! Japan overtakes the US in terms of visits to Snapact web pages. I wasn’t expecting this, but we’ve apparently had a glowing review of the Snapact Photo Manager 1.0 on a Japanese website. We’ve also had a really good review on a Brazilian website, which explains the rocketing rise of Brazil to #4 this week on the Top 10 Snapact Countries. More on that in a followup posting.
Thank you to all new Snapact-ers! I urge you to speak to your fellow citizens to convince them to raise your country in the Snapact Top 10 Countries!
Thursday, September 25th, 2008
All Aboard!
It’s been about a week and a half since we made ourselves open to the public, and we’ve had some modest user growth. This blog has helped immensely in getting the word out but I’d have to say that it’s been the user’s word of mouth that’s helped the most.
We’ve had traffic from 48 different countries so far, with a couple of surprises: Sweden has a fairly large amount of interest in sharing photos with Snapact but the real surprise to me was Japan’s interest. Realistically, these are probably just early spikes in traffic. Regardless, user interest from the US and Canada far outstrips Japan and Sweden - but still, thank you to everyone for stopping by - and do come again!
Here is the ordered list of traffic sources by country in descending order of number of visits:
- Canada
- US
- Japan
- Sweden
- Germany
- France
- India
- Czech Republic
- Australia
I’m confident that user growth rates will continue to rise, so be sure to sign up for Snapact now to ensure you get you unique account name! If you have any questions or concerns, please do head over to our Snapact Get Satisfaction discussion forum. Post a question, concern, feature request, bug, or perhaps even a thank you… we’ll be sure to follow up!
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