The Real Scrapblog is Here… Finally
Nick Gonzalez
39 comments »
Scrapbook maker Scrapblog strutted its stuff at the We Media conference last month, went off the grid, and finally came back online today.
Scrapblogs are Flash-based slide shows made up of pages of photo or video layouts you can jazz up with a myriad of designs and effects. Transitions can be added between each page and you can set the mood with some background music as your show plays. You can publish a Scrapblog publicly or by invite only and embed it as well. If you choose, viewers can leave Flickr like embedded comments on key spots of the show.
Scrapblog’s editor is a flash application, which may make a lot of you cringe, but not for good cause. Scrapblog, as we’ve mentioned before, has one of the most natural feels of any online application out there. It’s full screen and closely mimics the design of a Windows desktop application.
Creating a Scrapblog starts with a creation wizard that lets you pick one of 19 different design themes to frame your pages of photos. You can then cover this canvas with by dragging and dropping in photos, clipart, shapes, text, and even videos. Each of these media objects can be hyperlinked, overlayed, resized, rotated, and edited along several parameters.
Photos are given special treatment and support frames, shadows, as well as that quintessential web 2.0 effect, reflections. Photos can be pulled from your computer, Photobucket, Yahoo Photos, Flickr, and WebShots. Video, on the other hand, is drawn solely from YouTube. After you’ve laid out the pages, you can choose from 12 different transitions between them and from 22 different songs to play along with the show.
Photo slide shows are a crowded space which includes the 38 million user giant, Photobucket, along with two newer players, RockYou and Slide, bringing in tens of millions in financing. Like FlipTrack, however, Scrapblog keeps a distinct niche by offering a more richly designed presentation less like a series photos and more like a hipper version of Powerpoint.
Yeah its tough creating a solid app based on Flash but when done correctly, can be a great user experience. Allows for great visuals and functionality.
Nick it’s still not up - there’s a holding page. When’s it supposed to go live?
Chocksaway - I guess it’s still on their preview page, but i changed the links to the preview. Try them again.
The correct URL is http://www.scrapblog.com/preview
dwayne - it’s tough creating a solid app on any platform — difference is it’s easy to create a crumby app in flash
Evan I agree, it’s often more apparent using Flash as the possibilities vs results usually has a wider gap.
go live?
I think the concept is there, but the execution is lacking. It truly is powerpoint with music.
Wow the end of photoshop???
wow. this is awesome, i started playing with this yesterday actually (go Miami startups!!) and have been blown away. the scrapblog guys are big supporters of the local community too.
Seems much too complicated for the people shallow enough to get REALLY excited about the results it produces.
This is terrific - by todays standards; created a Scrapbook and uploaded and customized pics in less than 10 minutes…..
Lets hope this one flourishes…..there are so many new jewels debuting daily in the Web 2.0 universe.
Oh-snap.
This thing is freaking awesome. It’s mind boggling. I don’t even have to think when I started using it, I just starting click on what I wanted to do. It’s exactly as any application should be. Bravo. One not I must touch on though, is that the music, well… hahaha.
Surprisingly, it’s really cool
Please add a comma (,) after the third word on this post.
Thanks!
Hmmm…Sounds nifty. Utterly amazing though the variety of similar products coming out right now. There are already so many products of this type - just not called scrapblog.
Some problem with the presentation. It would NEVER stop playing the song. If paused it would just reduce volume. Too frustrating. I had to close the webpage and restart it just to stop the song!
ditto - david mackey.
It’s Rocking!
I posted about this application on RIApedia a while back. Their application is actually based on the Flex framework. You can learn more about it at http://www.flex.org/
Mike
Congrats to Carlos and team on reaching this milestone!
Longworth Venture Partners recently led a Series A round of funding in Scrapblog, and we’re very excited that Techcrunchers are reacting so positively to the rollout.
I tried playing the - powerpoint / scrapblog etc ..
- waited 4 minutes on my High speed - umm not so much
- Rbowles
Flash based tools are something to watch out for.
I didnt like the service, I tried to upload some pics and it stopped half way and nothing came out. I wasnt impressed and will probably not use it again.
Looks like the Scrapblog’s CDN, Limelight, is having technical issues on their end. Their blog has more details:
http://blog.scrapblog.com
So much for buying into the Limelight IPO…
Wow It’s really cool. I am astonished.
I had trouble uploading, too. Seemed to get stuck. Tried again, this time I closed my Google toolbar and the magic buttons appeared at the bottom of the upload popup.
Don’t try it without a full 1024×768 browser window!
Can’t Flex do scrollbars?
It’s a shame Nick didn’t list Flip.com, which seems to have gotten into this space with a similar flash app (actually a little _TOO_ similar) a few months back.