powersnap.com

Over the years there’s been a lot of buzz on “rich internet applications”. Rightfully so, this movement gave us a lot of what we currently attribute to the Web 2.0 movement. And by rich internet applications, (RIA), one is speaking about web applications that have the features and functionality resembling a conventional desktop application. RIA’s are incredibly rich from a user experience perspective. Among the famous examples are web applications as diverse as the New Yahoo Mail, Google Maps, E*Trade, Google Reader, Odeo, etc.

Since 2003 we’ve begun to see far greater innovation in this realm with focus on intuitiveness, visual perception and discoverability – core issues that have prevented applications from reaching high adoption levels in the past. From an adoption perspective, RIA’s made sense because almost everyone has a browser, which is all a rich internet application needs to render and function.

With the recent release of Apollo, Adobe has taken the RIA concept one step further. While RIA’s are great, there are issues. Despite looking and behaving like a desktop application, the RIA is still enslaved by broadband connectivity. One needs to be connected all the time. For users to have the freedom of offline capability they have to be online. In a recent post, Om Mallik calls this the ‘connectivity conundrum’.

Apollo provides developers with a cross-OS runtime. Geekese for enabling developers to create a richer desktop hybrid, i.e. it allows developers to replicate the innovative online experience with a desktop application using the same languages they used to create their online application.

Om Malik has named this new avatar “Hybrid Desktop Applications”, Rafe Needleman on the other hand has echoed the rise of Desktop 2.0 while reviewing PowerSnap in a recent post. Nomenclature aside, we at PowerSnap are very keen about these new developments, in particular the launch of Apollo.

In a way this has validated out technology strategy all along. Back in 2005 we decided that user experience for applications involving videos and images is most optimal when directed from the desktop in a, sort of, hybrid fashion; where the heavy lifting is local while the application reaches out over the internet for data from a central server/database.

PowerSnap is a hybrid desktop application in the truest sense. The processing is local and can be rendered offline. All changes are stored locally and is synchronized when connectivity is established. There is visual content management where the user can view a collection to realize which pictures are stored/shared in the cloud and which ones are local.

Santosh Jayaram, Founder

Ayush, Supreet, Aparna and our programmers in India are currently testing our new build. Thanks a lot to those users who’ve participated in the forums and the Flickr groups for all their valuable feedback. It’s been tough getting our small team focus on major bugs while leaving other important ones for a later time. We find ourselves prioritizing a lot these days.

Thanks to Madison Shure and Isaac Baum for lending us some programming muscle. Its humbling to have folks offering their time and resources to make things better at PowerSnap.

But rest assured the resultant version has much faster imports - which has been the current version’s Achilles heel. We have a sped it up 7X or more. We are also making some slight changes in the workflow to make the features and functions more discoverable.

We’ve put the word out to friends in the Mac community for similar help. We would love to hookup with testers/programmers on the Mac platform. If anyone would like to participate, do please email me: santosh powersnap dott com. We don’t have a lot to offer right now, besides equity, some free food and a lot of hugs.

Lastly, with the new build it will be evident that PowerSnap is one of the more elegant solution for Flickr users out there, one that helps users manage their photos between Flickr and desktop while being in touch with friends in real time. Over the past months there’s been a lot of talk about Sync. With PowerSnap your collection on Flickr stays sync’ed with your desktop and vice versa. And what’s more you get to automate photo sharing.

Do please continue to send us feedback on the forum: www.powersnap.com/forum. I know we’ve made it hard for a lot of you to do so easily because you need a logon ID (which really is only a two step process). The reason we have that is to primarily dissuade those folks who fill our forums with naughty little links to places that may distract you from the job on hand
Cheers, Santosh Jayaram

The Photo Inbox is the most powerful feature in PowerSnap. To make things easy and discoverable we had randomly chosen 5 of your contacts and ’subscribed’ to their 25 most recent photos. I agree this has been confusing to some people. But overall it helped “find” one of the most powerful features on PowerSnap - Subscriptions.

The other day I went to a party hosted by the Flickr glitterati, a regular feature held at the Crossroads Cafe in San Francisco. A PowerSnap user told me that for the first time he now has a way to get pictures from the Skit trip his family goes to each winter. He gets all the pictures in one place. And all he has to do is subscribe to pictures from Jan 3rd until Jan 7th (the dates of his family’s ski trip) and presto he gets all the pictures as they are uploaded.

I’ve had people say the same thing about weddings they’ve attended together, etc. When we launched PowerSnap our idea was to help you get your friends pictures and your pictures in one place. No more jumping about and going through your email for shared pictures, no more manual uploads, and no more dispersed memories stuck in different sites. But along the way it seems we solved another problem that’s been bothering too many people.

How do I get all the pictures from the _________ (wedding, ski trip, vacation, bachelor party, girl’s night, happy hour, conference, etc.) I recently attended?

For those who haven’t discovered the “subscription” feature yet, click on the “Photo Inbox” tab in PowerSnap and then click on “Subscribe” on the top left. Enter your friend’s email address or Flickr name (or choose a contact from your Flickr contact list). Select the subscription criteria and BOOM! …. you get all your friend’s photos matching that criteria. And anytime in the future when your friend adds a picture matching the subscription criteria, you get the images in your photo inbox automatically.

Enjoy!

Hola! everyone. It’s nice to come up for a breather and let you all in on some of the achievements. It has been more than 6 weeks since we’ve launched, and the responses have been both immense and laudatory. We’ve had thousands of registered, active users come in from far flung corners of the world. We’ve had people say wonderful things about the product in 23 odd languages and we have been covered by CNET and other national publications. Here are some of the links.

Here’s coverage from Webware a CNET company, coverage from Descary, one of the leading Web 2.0 bloggers in France, from Tom Hayes a leading voice in the consumer internet space, from Orli Yakuel - Israel’s Web 2.0 chronicler and Macsimum News a leading MAC news journal
Also this is what Michael Arrington had to say on Techcrunch France about PowerSnap: “..if you want a solution to better organize your photographs on Flickr I recommend PowerSnap to you, a software (a little heavy) but with an exceptional user interface.”
Well, it has been a while since my last post. I’m hoping to keep you abreast of the developments more regularly. We all have had our heads down and have been responding to some of the stellar feedback from our recent launch. Most of our effort is now being channeled to optimizing and fine tuning the product until it purrs like a kitten on a warm sunny day.

Until next time. Cheerio

A lot has been said about streamlining user experience and consolidating processes in the interest of simplicity and seamlessness. I remember an article published in The Economist (regn. required) about the role simplicity and seamlessness play in the way new ideas are conceived and executed. Although a lot of recent developments concur with this new phenomenon - Web 2.0, and all companies associated with that nascent movement seem to have simplistic, yet powerful user interfaces - photo sharing and organization are still encumbered with numerous hurdles.

The photo experience, as I would like to term it, involves all aspects associated with the organization, dissemination and archival of digital photos, or memories as it pertains to the individual. Within the boundaries of such a definition, one expects all images captured by me and those images shared with me by other friends to fall within the realm of my own photo experience. One could thus further define the photo experience as having two constituent parts: The photo experience as owner and guest.

As owner I have numerous viable options to organize and share my own images. I store my images within my file folder or photo organization software and use one of many different photosites to share my images with relative ease. Sites like Yahoo Photos, Flickr, Snapfish, Shutterfly, Kodak, etc. all allow me to host my photos and share it with friends. The disconnect between desktop and photosite notwithstanding, the owner experience is fulfilled with relative ease.

But a significant part of the photo experience is embodied in my experience as a guest, where I’m on the receiving end of photos shared with me by folks within my social network. This is where the photo experience, as it pans out today, breaks down. As mentioned in a previous post, I either receive images in email, or invitations to go to one of 18 different photosites to view pictures from friends. For most of these photosites I need usernames and passwords. There is no product out there that provides me with a cohesive view of all my identities. This is very unfortunate because it curtails sharing and the building of communities using images.

We find ourselves in a time where the marginal cost for image capture and storage is close to zero. This coupled with the meteoric rise of digital camera phones around the world seem to suggest that the problem is set to worsen at an exponential rate and is desperately in need of quick attention.

PowerSnap has addressed this problem by consolidating the photo experience and creating a singular interface for owner and guest. But in order to enjoy such singularity the user has to migrate to PowerSnap and Flickr. Although this isn’t as inclusive a solution, it is a good first step in that direction. PowerSnap is working with half a dozen other photosites to create an ecosystem where the user’s guest experience is photosite independent, yet consolidated from the user’s standpoint.

On the one hand you have the influential bloggers who are shedding text only narratives for a hybrid narrative that includes images (see Jurvetson and Esther Dyson’s image blogs on Flickr) and on the other hand you have images which, in and of itself, form the basis for communication across cultures. One need only look up the nationalities of any given Flickr user’s contacts to prove the fact.

Images are the lingua franca of the day. The world needs a standard to ensure its unfettered movement across systems. A singular photo experience is a step in that direction.

Santosh Jayaram, Founder, PowerSnap

We officially came out of the invitation launch on Christmas eve, 2006! It has been a trying year, full of surprises and a lot of work. The application looks, works and feels wonderful,.. thanks to all the beta testers. The screenshots are attached. We sincerely hope you like the application. It was our mission to create an application that allowed people to manage their photo collection, send and receive photos from the confines of one single application. To that end, we believe we have succeeded.

http://flickr.com/photos/ayush_gupta/sets/72157594467856036/
Please enroll into our forum. Should you have any opinions, or need to log thoughts, please do so at the forum: forum.powersnap.com

Thanks

Santosh

Give the product a spin. We are still in alpha. You can obtain the download and read more at:

http://www.powersnap.com/

Do you feel that you’ve lost track of photos that are on your computer versus those photos that have been uploaded to your photosite? Do you know what among your photo collection has been uploaded or for that matter what among your collection is share-worthy yet still stuck on your PC?

Well, that’s something I battle with each time I decide to update my photosite with new pictures. Here’s the problem: there isn’t really a bridge between my collection on my PC and most photosites. And even if there was one, it really doesn’t do the job when it comes to synchronization. I can never eyeball my pictures on my PC and see what’s made its way to my photosite. Basically, all operations on photos on my PC are divorced from my photo site.

The amount of work it takes an individual to keep track of not one but two environments for their own photos, not to mention the logins to all other photosites where the user’s friends upload their pictures is reason enough for most people to not share in the first place. According to Jeffrey Stoddard, the former GM of Yahoo Photos, the preeminent photosite in terms of users and uploads, only 25% of those who own digital cameras actually use a photosite to share images.

We at PowerSnap have solved this problem, at least for Flickr users. PowerSnap is the bridge between your collection on your desktop and your Flickr account. It has a powerful 2-way sync feature that lets you retrieve your images from Flickr with all the meta-data intact. You can upload individual photos or an entire album with a single click. PowerSnap bridges desktop and photo site giving you a singular view of your photos. Change tag, caption or comments to shared pictures on your PC and the information gets updated at Flickr.

The team at PowerSnap is thrilled to bring to you PowerSnap Alpha 2.0 – Flickr Edition. Behind that long product name is a simple, seamless application that allows each user to manage their collection of pictures (both online and offline) while staying in constant touch with their Flickr friends.

PowerSnap Alpha 2.0 is a free download that satisfies a much relayed request from Flickr users worldwide, that of an offline photo management application smartly integrated with their favorite photo site. PowerSnap is all that and much more. It offers Flickr users a single command center where they can manage their own photos, their photos at Flickr, and the ability to create ad-hoc networks of friends through subscriptions.

Each PowerSnap user can manage all their pictures sitting on their computer the same way they manage their photos on Flickr. And what’s more PowerSnap has a powerful two-way synchronization feature with Flickr. Upload directly to Flickr.com and those pictures popup on PowerSnap. Change captions, tags or permissions on pictures locally and they get updated on Flickr.

With PowerSnap you can subscribe to photos from your Flickr friends using simple criteria like tags, sets, date ranges or recent photos. I can for the first time tell a piece of software that I am only interested in my brother Satish’s family photographs and not any of those boring pictures from his recent visit to the American Manufacturing Association Conference. Any time he ever uploads pictures to a Flickr set I have subscribed to, I will receive those photos in my PowerSnap “Photo Inbox” instantly.

So it’s like Tivo, you subscribe, they upload, you receive!!

Imagine the power of subscription to photo content that puts the onus on the recipient of photos rather than on the sender,… suddenly the recipients see exactly those pictures they wanted to see! Relevance is relegated to the receiver and not the sender. And what’s more, the sender simply publishes their photos instead of consciously sending photos to their friends. Gone are the days where you have to bug your friend for pictures of that vacation you enjoyed together last winter. If you subscribed to your friend’s photos using tags or the specific date range of that trip, then whenever your friend gets around to uploading those pictures you will get them instantly. It’s that simple.

PowerSnap is still in Alpha invitation mode, which means that we’ve got just a small number of features from a long list of features we hope to release in the future. The goal is to make sure the product performs well in its current form, and to get as many users using the application, giving feedback and so directing future improvements. By alpha, we also mean that this is the first time the application has seen a wide audience. We have a link in the application that leads the user to the PowerSnap forum. We would love to hear your comments and feedback.