Jul 17

Thanks for the massive feedback

By Daniel Announcements View Comments

Since Expono went on everybody lips this last two weeks we have received an enormous amount of feedback! And we really mean huge amount!
The great thing is that most feedback was overly positive. We are thrilled and really thankful for the support we are getting. It is great and we want to assure you that we will deliver on our promises and enhance our platform even more for your precious photos!

We are still in beta, but for us this is no excuse. We keep learning and adjusting the service to cater your needs and the beta stamp is just a reminder for you that everything is changing, improving and growing… and the best thing is that YOUR feedback is our driving factor. We will loose the beta stamp soon…. for now all our efforts and resources are focused on making a great service better, so keep on giving us your feedback.

So on to the good stuff. Here is a list of feedback and some answers addressing them:

- More and better integration with third-party services
Many people have asked for integration with a lot of services, and in integration we trust. That is why we are focusing a lot on our API these days. We encourage all of you to take a look at it and incorporate it on your own services. That is the best way to integrate! We have made our API pretty much like Flickr’s own API, making it easier for people who already support Flickr, support Expono.

We will also focus on making all our integration points more secure and use OAuth whenever possible. We actually implemented support for Twitter before they implemented OAuth support! But we will implement OAuth support soon. Until then, don’t be afraid of using our Twitter integration, it is a great way of sharing photos!

Facebook support have always been something we have struggled with. Mostly because they are so closed, because of their Terms of Use and that we couldn’t enforce your Expono privacy settings on Facebook. That is mainly the reason why we only allowed sharing of public photos to Facebook. But we are now improving the Facebook integration so you can share non-public photos on Facebook too. We will announce it as soon as we can!

- UI improvements & Browsing enhancements
We have been planing a big update soon with a lot of changes and improvements. We are enhancing the browsing of albums and photos, giving you better ways of viewing your photos. More view types, BIGGER photos and improved navigation. Take our word for it!

- Mobile version
We are heavy users of iPhone ourself, so you can guess what is on our wish list right? Yes, we want an iPhone app too! We have a lot of ideas on how it should be and how it should look. But we are focusing all our resources on creating a great API for now. We are sure that someone will use it to create not only a great iPhone app, but also useful uploaders and plugins for all your favorites apps and gadgets! A mobile version of the site is already on our todo list.

- Translations issues
We created Expono in english and then started translating it to different languages. Translation is a work-in-progress and we are improving the translation as we speak. We have a great translation crew working hard to provide Expono in YOUR language, and we will do our best to perfect it for our next releases. You are also more then welcome to help us out!

Oh, since some of you were wondering, the language files are open sourced. All translated strings are open to be used in any project. Check out how far we have come on translating Expono to your language on launchpad.net.

- Misunderstandings and Bugs
We discovered some bugs and we have been busy chasing and killing them, thanks to your feedback. We discovered that some of you did not understand how some of our functionality worked or simply didn’t find it on the site. This is something we are working on day and night, and we are improving the visibility and design to address those issues on our next releases. Be aware though that many features and advanced functionality seems hidden for a reason – because we didn’t want to clutter the interface with too many options. We will certainly try to find a balance there that works for everybody. We are also working on tutorials and better information and labeling.

You will find many good tips and how to’s on http://www.expono.com/tutorials/albums

See tutorials on expono.com/tutorials

See tutorials on expono.com/tutorials

- Basic vs Plus account
As we expected, nobody is ever satisfied with something that is not free or with limitations of any kind. Neither are we! But the reality here is that in order to ensure you that Expono is here for long time and that the platform can support a growing number of people and photos, we simply can not give it away for free. But as the saying goes, the customer is always right. With that in mind, we are addressing the limitations on our accounts to give you a better competitive offering. Expect the changes to be significant! The changes will be retroactive and apply to all of you who already purchased an account.

Thanks again for all the support! Keep on sharing…
The Expono Team

Special thanks to Eirik Solheim on NRKBeta, Ida Aalen on VG and Doug Coleman on ReadWriteWeb for the well written reviews!

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Jul 08

Expono is getting a lot of media attention

By Magnus Announcements View Comments

We were delightfully surprised this week after a very positive article was posted on ReadWriteWeb by Doug Coleman. The article was very detailed and went through a lot of the features that uniquely positions Expono as a photo sharing site to look out for!

This article was quickly followed by articles in New York Times (based on RWW), Verdens Gang and IT Avisen in Norway. In addition many people spread the word virally via Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook.

Truth to be told, we got totally hammered this monday with inbound traffic from multiple websites. We have prepared for this stuff! But because we have been operating in “stealth” mode the last months we didn’t have all servers running. We didn’t have any before hand knowledge about any of the articles except the article posted by Verdens Gang (norwegian) which got published only a few hours after we received their initial phone call.

The good thing though, is that stuff got stress tested, and we’ve managed to make several performance improvements the last couple of days, and everything have been operating smooth in the last two days.

I would like to share some stats today. To get a sense of what’s happened in the last few weeks, and especially the last few days.

We got 223,514 unique identities added by users over the last couple of weeks. 41,764 were added yesterday. Not too shabby for a private beta site, that
only have been opened for a few days. We opened up the signup Saturday evening after we first read about the ReadWriteWeb story!

Well, what can I say.. there is no way going back now. We are OPEN and LIVE!
Come get your username while you can.

We will continue to remain in BETA until we reach a certain level of perfection. Help us build the BEST home for your photos in the world!

A big Thank You to everyone who has sent us feedback via email. We have received over a thousand emails the last couple of days with lots of suggestions and positive criticism. We are replying everyone as fast as we possible can. If you have suggestion or want to report bugs, please use getsatisfaction.com/expono. It will help us tremendously making the right priorities to respond to your questions, requests and ideas.

A few words about what we are working on:

  • Enhanced Photo Browsing.
  • Flickr Import (number one requested feature)
  • Share To Flickr (oh, yes, we want you to have the ability export to Flickr too. It’s your data! Not ours!)
  • Improving our API.
  • Expono Plus! We have a very competitive offering in the works. The changes will be retroactive and apply to all of you who already purchased an account. Stay tuned!

We have released a first public beta of the Expono API which let’s you or anyone else develop support for Expono on any platform. Help us build plugins to iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom, iPhone, Android, or whatever app or platform you want. Let’s get started!

A big welcome from all of us from Expono!
…

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Mar 04

Recent updates on expono.com

By Magnus Development, Release Notes View Comments

Update #11 (2009-03-03)

Useful updates and bug-fixes contain static URL for embedded albums. Which we recommend everybody to update in their albums.

You’ll be happy to know that the character encoding is fixed, so that e-mail subjects now appear correctly.

The system now ignores people without valid e-mail addresses, so photos and albums are not shared to anyone without an e-mail address.


- Static URL fixed for embed-able albums. Please, update your album embed code!
- Fixed character encoding issues in email subjects.
- Shared Items are no longer created for people without a valid email address.
- Layout fixes on share header for Internet Explorer users.
- Settings privacy fixed between new users and users who invited them.
- Fixes issues with email being exposed to followers.
- Changing your primary email now only send alerts to mutual connections (no followers).
- Error while trying to create groups in "Add To Group" dialog has been fixed.
- Photo owners not being able to delete comments from other users. Fixed.
- Sorting by Photo Taken in the Album Editor has been fixed.
- Photo Activities are now forwarded to email by default.
- Announcements are now forwarded to email by default.

Update #10 (2009-02-06)

Updates and bug-fixes help expono products and services grow better, and a continuos feedback from our users is essential to make sure we keep the highest standards and cater to the needs of our users. Please make sure to use the feedback system, which black TAB, you can see on the right side of every expono.com page.

One thing is to send out invitations to friends and family and have them enjoy your photo albums safely here at expono.com, another and sometimes more useful ability is to publish your photos and albums in a blog or a web site where you already have followers and readers.

The new embed-able album code, found in your public album pages, enables your followers to see your albums and to start slideshows from within your blog or web site.

Find what you are looking for. Now searching public photos, photos of you, your own photos, albums, and favorites can now all be searched for in one unified search field.

A great new feature is the ability to show in a map where every one of your photos are geographically shot. Expono can make use of the GPS location stored in the photo’s EXIF data, if available, and expono also enables users to enter places manually.

If you have different groups of people who should see different albums, this is made easier for you to manage. In the address book, a groups tab is now placed on the left of your contacts. Click a group to see members or add a new group.

- New Feedback system. Join us at GetSatisfaction.com to make Expono a better place for you photos.
- Embeddable Album Photo Slide
- Simplified Uploader. Upload directly to albums
- Unified Search. You can now search your photos, album, favorites, photos of you, and all public photos on Expono.
- Unified Menu and Terminology.
- Introduces Places. A world map where you and your friens can browse photos based on location.
- Improved Create Album. Simplified UI.
- You can now create new groups directly from the sidebar in the addressbook

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Feb 06

Your feedback can make Expono a better place for your photos.

By Magnus Release Notes, Using Expono View Comments

When you came to expono.com for the first time perhaps you found something you had been missing or didn’t know you had been missing. Maybe it was a friend or relative wanting to share some photos who invited you. Or maybe you ended up here seeking a safe place for your photos.

Either way we are thrilled.

Now that you are here, we want to enable you to help us make this a better place for you, your friends, your family, and your photos.

You may have seen the abbreviation WYSIWYG which is used by web developers and web software makers and it simply means “what you see is what you get”.

“How does this relate to expono.com?”, you may ask. Well, it does and it doesn’t. You see what we offer, but what you will get in the future, may depend on you.

By introducing a feedback system, we want to enable you and the rest of our users to message us directly and so help us create a better service.

We think we offer the most important features for you to store and share your photos. But as with all new things, experience helps. Your feedback enables us to adjust to the benefit of our users.

We’ll definitely introduce new features, and the quint essence of a priority list is to successfully cover the needs of more users with the efforts we put in. To make sure that happens, we need you to be verbal.

You’ll notice a black Feedback TAB to the right on the web page. Whenever you have ideas or concerns, do click the Feedback TAB. It would mean the world to us.

Happy shooting

Exponosan

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Sep 23

The value of usability testing

By Magnus Development View Comments

Never underestimate the value of usability testing. Last week, we invited 5 people over to the office to do some testing. No one outside the office had tested the system before and only one had (barely) seen it before.

We had prepared an iMac in the office with a usability testing software called Silverback. Great piece of software!

Silverback is pretty simple, it lets you record all actions on the screen, including video and audio of the user. It’s easy to spot interaction, mouse clicks are highlighted beautifully. Very simple, but very powerful.

I didn’t realize how much of value this testing was for us.. We got it served to us, black on white. FAIL!

The advanced uploader? FAIL

The batch operations page? FAIL

The signup? FAIL

Well, not really, but they were definitely broken in a usability sense. Why is it so? Because spending hundreds of hours staring at the same damn page makes you blind! So what did we do? We fixed it of course! :)

Thanks to these testers, we have made some great improvements on usability, but is it enough? I personally think that it is enough now, but in the long run? I believe we have to have another usability evening to answer that one.

We will definitely do usability testing on new features in the future and continue to improve what we have. Please, as soon as we launch beta, help us become better!

Feedback is best given at our getsatisfaction site.

Getsatisfaction is a great place for everyone to vote on features, report bugs, and voice their opinions. You are warmly welcome! :)

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