Expono and authenticated Media RSS

Did you ever wonder how you to view your digital photos without having to sit in front of the PC, or how you could let other people see some of your photos without having to log in to their PCs or their Expono account.

The answer is simple: Authenticated Media RSS

After signing up with Expono, you can do the obvious and upload some photos. But we give you another opportunity to use Expono.

Go into your Settings “Me” Arrow down and then look towards the bottom (in this page: My » Settings » Privacy). You’ll find “Authenticated Feeds Settings”.

You’ll find a Key and a URL example.
Copy this sequence from the URL:
/rss?ak=”Your key”

What to do with it
Find any album on Expono (while logged in) which seems to be available to you. It can be a friend’s or family member’s album or a public one. Paste the copied part of the URL including the key at the end of the album URL. Then copy the whole “new and longer” URL.

Then what?
Paste the whole copied URL into the Screensaver URL field, into your internet connected digital photo frame’s URL setting. Or if you are really good at it, enter the URL into your Wii Opera Browser URL field, run it fullscreen, et voilà, your TV becomes a huge photo frame with circulating photos.

This works on any expono user photo stream and album.

NB! You may see photos using this method, that are solely meant for your private viewing.

The value of usability testing

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!