Archive for January 2007
Turn your computer into a digital picture frame
We just released a Phanfare Windows Screensaver (Mac version coming soon from a Phanfare customer) that turns your computer into a digital picture frame. Here is how it works: You install the screensaver and it appears right along with other Windows Screensavers.
Configure the options for the screensaver and set it up with your Phanfare username and guest password, if you have one, and when your screen goes idle, it displays images from your Phanfare account.
This screensaver is the perfect way for Grandma to keep up with the kids. As you update your albums, your friends and family see your photos on their local computer without having to do anything more than lean back.
You can choose to have it pull your latest images, images at random, or images from a particular album (sorry, it does not serve video yet).
The screensaver was implemented using the Phanfare Public API.
TAGS: phanfare, API, screensavers
Plugin for Apple's Aperture – that was fast!
Only days after we released the Phanfare public API, David Holmes has released his first version of a Plugin for Apple’s Aperture program, allowing you to upload images directly from Aperture to Phanfare. This is just a first version, missing lots of bells and whistles, but even in this version, it works well (I tried it).
Thank you David!
Download the plugin from David’s website.
TAGS: phanfare, apple, digitalphotography
Announcing the Phanfare API
We are proud and happy to announce the birth of a bouncing baby API (Application Programming Interface) for third-party developers to extend Phanfare.
If you are geeky enough to try, you can extend Phanfare to do useful things that we have not thought of or simply have not gotten to yet. We have created some example Phanfare widgets, including a badge that can pull your newest images into a third party website, like a blog, and a little widget that shows your most recently created album on your blog.
We are also working on a Windows screensaver that pulls images from a Phanfare account and there is someone in the community working on an Aperture plugin for pushing images from Apple’s Aperture program to a Phanfare account.
Before you can get started using the API, you will need to request an API key.
We are excited to see what the community comes up with. We have even created a wishlist of widgets that we hope somebody builds.
TAGS: phanfare, API, programming
Downloadable slideshows and other new features
We recently completed a release that includes a bunch of new features.
- Show your slideshows offline, when no network connection is present
Ever want to show a Phanfare slideshow at a party or outdoor event
where no network connection is present? Now you can with our
downloadable slideshows. You will notice that the new album and
image options menu on the web includes a downloadable
slideshow. This slideshow can be played offline and shows images
edge-to-edge on your computer. Music and videos are retained, as are
the Phanfare slideshow controls. Fow now, the slideshow can only be
downloaded and played on a PC. Mac support is coming very soon. - New web album layout
We introduced a new clean album layout that makes starting the
slideshow easier to find, accommodates larger captions, and
consolidates all of the features that were previously below the fold
into one easier-to-see menu on the right. Here are more details on using on
the new layout.For Phanfare purists who don’t want to lose the screen real estate
to the new album option menu, you can opt to have album and image
options appear in a context menu over the imagefor all of your
albums.Regardless of whether you choose to hide the album option menu, this
new album view includes a full screen image mode when you click on
the image; repagination of the thumbs and auto-sizing of the image
if you resize your browser; better looking next and previous
buttons; and the ability to add HTML to your captions. - Bulk download whole albums from the web
Often requested by all of you, you can now download the entire
contents of an album, including original images and archival videos,
as one very big zip file from the web. This option appears on your
website in that album option menu. You can only download the whole
album if downloading of originals is on for the album.The ability to download the whole album from the PC client is coming
soon. - MyPhanfare gets updated
Several new improvements to MyPhanfare, including the ability to
access your Phanfare address book and the ability to play videos
from within MyPhanfare. As a reminder, MyPhanfare is meant as a lightweight control panel
for your Phanfare account when using the Windows or Mac organizer is
not convenient. You can login to MyPhanfare at
my.phanfare.com. - We repaired the Christmas lights
Just in time to put up holiday photos and videos, we fixed the
Christmas style. Previously the lights on the style were not working
(no joke). They should display in most browsers now.For a quick summary, here are the release notes.
TAGS: phanfare, video, multimedia
An Engineer 