A New 72photos On The Way
It's been seemingly quiet here at 72photos lately, but I assure you, thats quite the contrary. Development has been heating up lately as the 72photos team has been working diligently on bringing you a new version of 72photos.
Yes, you've read correctly, there is a shiny new version of 72photos on the way containing an innumerable amount of new features and fixes. Keep in mind this "new version" is a complete rebuild of 72photos (code wise) from the ground up.
Without further adieu, I offer some highlights of what's to come:
- A smoother user-experience – Exploring photos will become much more enjoyable with new explore sections.
- Social Improvements - A tremendous amount of "Social" improvements and additions will been implemented to improve the way you track and interact with cool photos you see.
- Better backend - A more "fine-tuned" user backend including refined organization and editing features is coming.
- Better company - A ton of changes are planned for how we operate internally as well, but surely, I won’t bore you with those. However, you will be experiencing a much faster bug fixing turn-around time as well as more periodic updates and feature additions.
Now if that seemed anticlimactic in anyway, fear not! I have left out A LOT of things, as I don’t want to ruin all the surprises quite yet.
Check back often as changes will be released at any moment! (but more realistically, about 1-2 weeks 
)
NOTE: If you have any in mind or changes that you'd like to see…post a comment with your ideas.
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:
XMGImage.com is now 72photos.com
As our public beta is coming to an end (official release slated for January 14th, 2008) XMGImage.com has been renamed 72photos.com as of Monday, December 10th, 2007. 72photos remains a subsidary of XMG Networks, Inc. and has not been sold, aquired or merged. We intend this transition to be as smooth as possible and assure you that no account information has been altered or deleted. The list below details the changes that have taken place.
- Our Homepage will be http://72photos.com
- Your URL will now be http://username.72photos.com
- Someone visiting your page at username.xmgimage.com will be redirected to your new profile URL at username.72photos.com.
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:
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!
Is this thing on?
It's been way to long since our last post and we greatly apologize for that, but we've been wrapped up in developing a new API for XMG Image and loads of new features.
In the next release of XMG Image (slated for the end of the month) we expect to add not only a new API for users to build neat XMG applications and integrations, but also tons of tweaks and enhancements to make working with your images online much more efficient (and fun!).
We've been experiencing massive growth over the past 2 months, we've also been featured on popular sites such as Emily Chang (check it out here).
We once again would like to send a thank you out to all the users and supporters of XMG Image and we plan to bring more amazing stuff to you soon.
P.S. If you have any suggestions or ideas for XMG, please let us know, after all, XMG is simply a product of all your feedback. You have the power, just speak up. We're listening.
Talk soon…
XMG In The Media
Check out XMG featured on sites around the web:
Killer Startups – XMG Image: Beautiful Image Hosting
Mashables Photography Toolbox (#2)
AppScout: XMG Image: Power Image Hosting
And many, many more. Keep spreading the word!
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!
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!
Pro accounts have arrived!
After much anticipation, Pro accounts have finally been released! Current members can upgrade in their account control panel under 'My Account' > 'Upgrade'.
A short list of the benefits you recieve when you go pro:
- 5GB Web Space & Unlimited Bandwidth
- Image backups, revert back to your original image at any time.
- Slideshow gallery type, create rich, ajax slideshows for your images.
- Ad-free browsing, no ads or links to xmg will be displayed when viewing images or galleries, sending emails, or on any part of your account control panel.
- 24/7 Support ticket system from the XMG Staff for quick support with any issues you're having.
- Much more!
We're still considering this release beta as this is only the beginning for Pro accounts. We have an abundance of features we have yet to implement that will be popping up over the next few weeks.
Get yourself a pro account today!
As always, if you experience any bugs or issues, feel free to contact support@xmgimage.com.
UPDATE: If you're a current user and wish to purchase a pro plan, the upgrade is instant and your images nor account settings will not be deleted!
XMG Image featured on Webware!
Hours into our public beta release, XMG Image has been featured in a Hands-On review article by C-Net's partner site Webware. The article is a basic overview of XMG Image's features and first impressions.
Check out the full article here:
http://webware.com/8301-1_109-9685958-2.html?tag=blog
