BubbleShare adds Ajax Zoom feature

The ability to add audio to Bubbleshare photos is also a really clever idea.

Sorry for going a little off-topic here, but relating to photo sites…for those looking for more of a permanent full featured photo site, one I’ve started relying heavily on that doesn’t seem to have as much notoriety is Fotki. I’ve written up something explaining some of the sites primary benefits in their journaling feature (similar to a blog I guess) to see how it all worked, etc. You can check it out here:
The Nets Best Kept Secret #2

Note that I’m no consistent/real blogger, I just started trying out that journal functionality and posted to it when I found something overly impressive.

There are some real AJAX zoom functions around; I remember I saw one recently that expanded a photo onclick; then zoomed out of it when the image was clicked again.
The BubbleShare feature looks strange and quite confusing. I hope better implementations will come around

I’d like Bubbleshare a lot more if it didn’t do silly things like open stuff in new windows for no good reason.

Looks great, but Flickr still gets the basic right, which Bubbleshare lacks.

What is the benefit of doing this with “ajax” ?

http://valid.tjp.hu/zoom/index_en.html

Simple DOM scripting and CSS

The zoom takes a while to load… otherwise, it’s a very cool feature!

I really like this feature but “zoom” is misleading. Magnify is the correct metaphor.

Calin illustrates the anticipated functionality by pointing to a java based zoom feature which increases the size of the whole image.

The slow loading time is a bit annoying, and if you use your scroll wheel while hovering over a single point, the magification area doesn’t update until you move your mouse. This may be a browser/os issue though.

Overall I hope this feature is rapidly copies across all photo sharing sites.

-Ian

BubbleShare is great. Every complaint I see above sounds trivial compared to the free feature set they have produced. I can only imagine what they’ll be launching next.

This feature epitomizes mentality of all these “Web 2.0″ companies: features show up because they are “cool” not because they are useful.

In the context of software like Aperture, the magnifying glass is very useful because you are likely to use it while in the process of re-touching the finer details of your photos.

BubbleShare, on the other hand, is not a photo editor. Think about it, how often do you really want to look at the tiniest details of a photo when you’re just browsing? If I ever did, I’d definitely prefer to enlarge the entire photo, not squint into a tiny circle.

Michael, I’m just as impressed as you are with the “coolness” of this feature, but a little more scrutiny of the usability angle might benefit your readers here.

The only problem I have is in their demonstration, the pause button seems ineffective and once I pressed “Play” again, it returned to the beginning of the segment’s loop. I realize this service is still in beta and has kinks to work out so aside from that, it does show enormous potential.

may be the best photo sharing site on the web???
Nah! the resolution of the pictures is not the original! They save the pic with a lower resolution…

it’s nice to see at least one toronto-based web 2.0 company making some waves. i still find it puzzling there is so little activity up here. with plenty of software developers and high broadband penetration, toronto should be web 2.0 north.

Flickr’s content, features, flexibility and highly accessible API makes it by far the most superior photo sharing service on the Internet.

No others come close.

BubbleShare will certainly evolve into something more than it is today, but to use words like “wonderful” and phrases like “may be the best photo sharing site on the web” makes one wonder if advertising money plays into the utterance of such accolades.

For what its worth guys, the zoom feature was a experiment that came out of our R&D time that is (in theory) allocated every Friday afternoon (free pizza for those that want to stay late to hack away).

I try really hard to stay away from dictating what features we should do R&D experiments on, and many of the cooler things like the flash uploader and the magnifier are all developed from the bottom up. Randomly brainstorming and free flowing experimentation. When we find something that is really cool, we productize it as quickly as we can and try to get feedback on it and iterate.

I think out of the 19 comments above, the one really got my attention was 19. Buddy, I wish we had the money to pay for an ad on TechCrunch. And you’re right, Flickr kicks ass. I love Flickr, but honestly, we not trying to out Flickr Flickr. We’re just trying to solve the problem of helping average people share photos more easily and rapidly. People like my mom and other computer novices. Yeah, we have a few advanced features, but those are reasonable well hidden, and we’d like to think are fun to use and implemented in such a way that doesn’t clutter the user experience.

I hope you guys have fun with the new tool/toy, if you have any further ideas as to how we might be able to improve it… please send us a note at feedback AT Bubbleshare.com

Thanks,
Albert Lai
CEO
BubblesShare

Yes, its cool, but not especially useful.
I keep remembering the days of weird plugins for Netscape 4 created by startups — the time of VRML and all that.
I currently favor zooomr.com and have to wonder if that service will feel obliged, by dint of their name, to offer this.
FWIW, Yahoo’s ownership of flickr worries me since they can gather so much info about us.

I doubt this will be the first time I’ll say this… but, guys, PLEASE STOP COMPARING US to Flickr! =)

Comparing Flickr and BubbleShare is like comparing a Boat and a Car. We both transport people and things, but we each solve a different problem.

Flickr is great, we all love it at BubbleShare for what it does. Its a great tool for bloggers, advanced users, geeks, and enthusiast.

BubbleShare, hopefully, will be more successful with first time photo sharing folks, young parents that are buying digital cameras for the first time for example that have little time, and just wants to share photos quickly and privately with their friends and family.

Also, what the heck happened to having fun? Can’t we release a feature for entertainment sake?

FWIW, this new release also fixes a ton of usability items and minor details… we’re working hard to make things better and more useful/usable (and not just more fun ;). But damnit, lifes too short not to do create fun features just for kicks. =)

Anyways, if anyone has any ideas on fun feature ideas for our R&D time at the BubbleLabs, please drop us a line! (feedback (AT) bubbleshare.com)

Well it would be a truly cool if it did a real zoom instead of a digital zoom! As far as I can tell the loupe in Bubble doesn’t actually display any more information.

Yeah, it looks like a good thing. They’re not the first to have it though. Smugmug has had it for a while now.
I wasn’t much impressed with Bubbleshare. I couldn’t get the slideshow to slide the photos on their homepage let alone turn off that annoying voice. If I can’t get the homepage to work properly, a little feature like the zoom isn’t going to help me use their services.

Dart has a general purpose Zoom control for ASP.NET that does real zooming. It has a magnifier for strict digital enlargement, but the zooming feature actually re-renders the image on the fly and delivers visible portions as needed using ajax while you pan around. Check it out: http://www.dart.com/powerweb/zoom.asp