Update Partially Done. What’s new?

Most of the update is done. We still have some issues that have to be resolved in order for us to release all goodies. What goodies? One of them is better facebook integration, the other is an Expono Downloader application for Windows, Mac, and Linux. We aim to release it as beta tomorrow on getsatisfaction. If all goes well, it will be released as non-beta within a week.

Why did it take so long for you to release an update?

Well, 2.5 months is not THAT long, but it’s longer than we want it to be. We did some heavy architectural changes, which will improve things for us in the future. However, we are going to aim at pushing a new release monthly. We are also going to “Open Up” the development process much more than before. So you know what’s coming and have the power to influence priorities. More about that in a separate blog post.

Why did this “maintenace” take several hours?

This was not only a software update, but we hade a complete server overhaul. New servers, with new updated operating system and software. New environments, updated configurations. Added support for SSL certificates (Finally!). We ran some heavy database upgrade scripts. The database upgrade itself took 2 hours. Converting million of activities. We did prepare and test a lot of stuff on our test environment, but some things just had to be tested on the production environment.

So what’s new?

We now have over 500,000 identities in the database. Identities? That’s people who have access to view custom privacy photos. People who are friends, family or colleagues to our users. These people can now comment, rate, and favorite photos without having to signup. That means, that we have converted all comments, ratings, and favorites to use identities instead of users_ids. The same way that Photo Privacy (ACL) works today. There is a lot of technical mumbo jumbo behind this, but what it really means is that Expono gets much better for you as a user. When you share and albums or photos to friends, you want them to have to possiblity comment without having them to commit to something like signing up etc. Removing these obstacles and annoying things will make the service much better. Also, the work around identities opens up for some really nice things to come, such as custom privacy sharing to Facebook and Twitter. When do you plan to fix that? It’s already in progress.

Translation & Localization

Thanks a lot to all our translators who does an excellent job at making sure the translations are up to date. The latest language to be production “complete” is Simplified Chinese. Thanks to Hong Shen!

ChangeLog Expono v0.9.2-4364

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed buggy uploader for certain translations
• Fixed missing width and height in new templates
• Fixed photos taken date earlier then 1970 makes photo inaccessible.
• Can’t edit titles in “detailed” mode if no title already exists. Now fixed.
• Fixed Share to Facebook “small whitebox with close button” issue
• And lots more…

Improved Features:

• New Footer. Easier to find pages.
• Translation page and guidelines improved. Translator credits! Thank you everyone!
• Album Title is bigger and have better contrast. No breadcrumb.
• Shared albums and photos improved. Better views. Signup to comments etc no longer required.

New Features:

• Single Sign-On from Facebook, Google, Windows Live ID, Twitter, Flickr
• Comments doesn’t require signup. Comments support identities.
• Favorites doesn’t require signup. Favorites support identities.
• Ratings doesn’t require signup. Ratings support identities.
• Identities (viewers / non-registered expono users) have their own activities and profiles.
• New Language: Simplified Chinese! Thanks to Hong Shen!
• The Wall. Simply a wall of square images for you to explore.
• Twitter OAuth support implemented.
• Gravatar images automatically fetched during signup.
• You can now have your Friendfeed feed on your user page
• Explore public activities such as photos, albums, people, comments, tags

Expono API Updates:

• expono.photosets.create: If no privacy parameter was supplied we used the user default album privacy, but it will from now on be private. We will introduce a new parameter in future update for this e .g “use_default” that will be used for uploads aswell.
• Fixed error that wouldn’t validate OAuth requests that used Authorization header for oauth parameters.
• oauth_callback to custom URL schemes will now work, useful for e.g iPhone Apps.
• JSON format added as optional response format.
• Empty fields e.g description wont return a whitespace character anymore
• expono.photos.getInfo, comment count is now shown even if count is 0
• expono.people.getUploadStatus, no more negative values for storage/bandwith remaining (999999999 is used for people with unlimited)
• More info about the JSON format can be found here

News from the Cave: Update on Tuesday!

The last two months we have been hiding in a cave that we call “The Dev Cave”. This cave cuts off all external communication. We have to physically go outside to answer support requests, write blog posts etc. That is why it has been rather quiet on the blog. Some of you have probably seen an update or two on Twitter, but even more so on Getsatisfaction, our support home, where we try to be quite active.

Ok, so what has been going on? We have been building some great stuff! Here are some highlights:

• 700M+ people around the globe can log right in. No signup necessary. We support Google Account, Windows Live ID, Facebook, Twitter among others.
• Improved Sharing (we are not done here, but it’s still an improvement). People you share to can browse around better, download photos, and most importantly they can comment, rate, and favorite photos without having to signup at all!
• Open Profiles. Everyone has a profile (not only users), featuring comments, favorites, photos of…
• Twitter OAuth Support. We talked about it. Now it’s implemented.
• New language: Simplified Chinese
• Slightly improved user profile pages.
• API Updates. Please, check the dev pages.
• Security improvements.
• General tweaks here and there (better album titles)
• Bugfixes (date bug fixed)

Stay put for a more detailed blog post about what this “under the hood” update means for the future.

The Update / Server Downtime

We are going to have a rather big update on Tuesday. It’s been a while since last time. Last update was in mid September. This update requires server re-configuration which means that Expono will be down for a short period of time on Tuesday, login will also be disabled for a couple of hours while we run a few tests. We are truly sorry for any inconvenience this may cause for you.

“Thanksgiving Sale” 40% Discount on Expono PLUS Accounts. Ends in less than 24 Hours!
We want to remind you that today is the last day you can purchase an Expono PLUS account with a 40% discount.

Unlimited Storage – “the limit-less update”

Unlimited storage, online image editor, improved geo-tagging, multiple layouts & browsing with focus on photos, BIGGER photos!

We are a company who believe in users’ rights to their own content. We believe we have a great service where our primary mission is to give as much power to the user as possible. We are competing with other services on features, but more importantly on our users’ rights to their own data, privacy, data portability and censorship (we don’t censor stuff like flickr). That is all good you say, but what about storage?

Today we are making Expono even better by introducing Unlimited Storage for all our Expono Plus users. Click here to learn more about Expono Plus.

This change is retroactive which means that our existing Expono Plus users will automatically be upgraded to unlimited storage. Expono Plus users who have purchased extra storage will have their account upgraded to unlimited bandwidth and their subscription extended to match the amount paid.

Online Image Editor

Edit your photos online

We also added support for one of the best online image editors available! Thanks to Pixlr, you now have a tool which is as close to Photoshop online as you can get, seamlessly integrated with Expono.

Bigger Photos

Multiple layouts for your enjoyment

Talking about BIGGER photos – we have introduced support for multiple layouts on photos and album browsing. We have added a couple on this release and more layouts will be released in future updates. We hope you will enjoy them.

Activity Feed Revamp

Improved layout on recent activities

We have also improved the visualization of recent activities on your userpage. Including filtering options so you can distinguish on album activities, comments or newly uploaded photos. Not only that, we have also increased the photo sizes so you can enjoy them even more! We also changed your dashboard and introduced recent friend activities with even more filtering options. You can even drill it down to groups and if you wish, see all recent uploaded photos by only your family or your poker buddies – as long as you fall into their privacy settings that is…

Improved GEO Tagging

We have enhanced Geo-tagging of photos, including the option of custom naming locations and we have also added drag-pin support. So now you can really pinpoint exactly where you took that beautiful photo near your summerhouse.

Other important fixes:

• Default colorspace for thumbnails changed to sRGB
• PNG thumbnails filesize bug fixed.
• Correct language is now supported on mail and notifications
• Fixed rare bug on missing tags and wrong tag proportions in your tag cloud
• External contacts from Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed are periodically synchronized so your addressbook stays fresh!

Oh! We have also added Norwegian (nynorsk) translation. Thanks to Bjørn Svindseth for all the help! We hope to have more and better translations soon…

That’s all for now folks! Stay tuned for more!

For more on the account options and features, see http://www.expono.com/go/learn_more

Thanks for the massive feedback

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

- 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!

Expono is getting a lot of media attention

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!
…

How to control Downloads in Expono PLUS

A great feature, PLUS users will learn to appreciate, is the option to make custom groups for contacts in Expono.

By planning, you can make the Expono PLUS account useful for restricting who can download, for both control and commercial purposes.

Download original files
Some are vary about who can download original photos and by utilizing custom groups and generic groups cleverly, users get a very flexible system.

Rules
1. Never set any photo- or album access right to the generic groups “friends” or “family”.
2. Make new custom groups for your friends.
- you may only have one group of friends, still call that group “My friends”.
- if not, make a useful name for each group of friends for easy recognition later.
3. Make new custom groups for your family
- if you treat all family the same just call it “My family”
- if you treat them differently, then make more groups ie “My family”, “Close family”, etc.
4. Now, you’ll only put people you want to download photos, in original format, in the generic groups “friends” or “family”, and at the same time put them in the appropriate custom friend/family groups.

At this point you’ll have full control over who can download and who can not. If you don’t want a person to download your original photos any more, then remove him/her from the generic group and leave them in the custom group.

You can set which group can download your originals in Me/Edit settings/Privacy,
or click here if you are logged in.

New: Custom location in maps

Expono users can now manually place and custom name locations for their photos. Simply drag the PIN and place it in the map where photos are taken, then give that location a name for easy access.

This is, for instance, great news for businesses attracting tourists.

Simply upload photos of your area and place the PIN.

Expono is now available in Spanish! Help us translate it to your language.

Spanish translation of Expono

Want expono in YOUR language? You can help us and yourself out by joining our Translation Team! Sharing is our mantra and that’s why we like to thank the team for collaborating and helping us reach out to so many all over the world. It is the likes of you that makes the internet a great place!

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

• Spanish: Edgar Alberto Urias, Pablo Lara, Alcubilla de Nogales, Carlos Cabanillas, Carlos Barbudo, Diego Romero Lopez, Juani Paccapelo
• Danish: Marte Muan Sæther
• Simplified Chinese: Hong Shen, Mole Zhang
• Traditional Chinese: Tino Chang
• French: Grosquick, Mathieu Pasquet, Pierre Slamich, Clement Grimal, Niicolas.com,
• Russian: Nick Gorbunov, Egor Bushemlyov
• Czech: Martin Jurica
• Italian: Thomas Bellotti
• Turkish: Zeugma
• Hebrew: Moshe

Here is the list of the top contributers: https://launchpad.net/expono/+topcontributors

Wanna join the team?

Qué es Expono?

You will have access to the latest features before anyone else and a Plus account free of charge!
http://www.expono.com/go/contact

Translations guidelines:
http://www.expono.com/go/translation

Expono launches full quality photo sharing on Facebook

With the launch of our Facebook Connect integration, we believe it will be easier to share photos and photo activities with your friends and family. First you will need to connect your Facebook account with your Expono account through Facebook’s very own Facebook Connect. Simply go to Facebook Settings on Edit Services menu, press the “Connect with Facebook” button and follow the instructions. It takes 10-30 seconds!

After your accounts have been connected, you will be able to tag your Facebook friends on your photos like any other contacts you already have in your address book. With your Facebook friends now on Expono, you can add them to your contact groups, give them access to the photos you want them to see and tag them on your photos.

Expono photo activities on Facebook

Sharing with your audience
Sharing is a big part of our lifes, and now it is even easier to share your photos and albums with the people you know. By connecting your Facebook account with Expono you can post stories to your wall when you favorite a photo, comment or tag a Facebook friend on Expono! Giving them access to view your full quality photos with just 1 click. You can also share individual albums and photos to Facebook right from the Share menu. This way you get more out of both services!

Sharing an album to Facebook

Start sharing now with the link below:
http://www.expono.com/go/features/facebook

Become a fan of Expono on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=82608916654

Expono introduces face tagging and sharing to FriendFeed & Twitter

Sharing on Expono

We have extended the integration with FriendFeed and Twitter on Expono to allow for more interaction and fun between the users of these services. Earlier we had automatic photo uploads announcements to Friendfeed and Twitter everytime you uploaded new photos to Expono. The functionality allowed our users to inform their followers and subscribers about newly uploaded photos in a innovative way. Now we have extended that to include direct sharing of public album and photos. Right from the Share menu. Giving your subscribers and followers access to view your full quality photos with just 1 click.

Album shared on FriendFeed

Face tagging
We also made it fun to tag your FriendFeed and Twitter friends on your photos. Just connect your Expono account with FriendFeed or Twitter and you will be able to tag your friends on your photos, add them to your contact groups and give them access to the photos you want them to see. Like any other contacts you already have in your address book!

Face tagging of Twitter friends

Get started now by connecting your accounts on Expono:
FriendFeed
http://www.expono.com/go/features/friendfeed

Twitter
http://www.expono.com/go/features/twitter

Subscribe to Expono on Friendfeed:
http://friendfeed.com/expono

Follow Expono on Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/expono