Natuba is a new photo sharing site that targets iPhone users with an emphasis on mobile uploading. It comes from Richard Yoo, a former CEO of Rackspace and Serverbeach.
iPhone users with Natuba accounts can add their snapshots to the site by emailing them to a special address. Descriptions can be included in the subject line and all photos are injected into a public activity stream. They are also included on one’s profile page and are candidates for the “Surprise Me!” page that randomly displays one photo at a time from the site.
The idea and execution are simple, perhaps a bit too simple. There’s no tagging, not to mention no geotagging (which would be a natural feature for such a service, if only iPhones had GPS already). I’d like to see the site add rating capabilities so the community can surface the best snapshots. After all, highlighting the coolest little encounters from daily life should be the site’s main thrust; no one wants to sift through the mundane.
I’d also like the ability to track my friends’ contributions. And why not throw in a Facebook application for good measure; that way I could display my photos on my social networking page. Oh, and Twitter integration so my contributions automatically get tweeted. Ok, so obviously there’s room for improvement.
Flickr and other photos services, of course, already have mobile upload capabilities via email. And there’s no reason why this site can’t take uploads from non-iPhone devices (you can upload directly to the site anyway). So in the long run it needs to come up with some really cool features or doom itself as just a photo sharing site with marketing spin.
Update: I overlooked a few things here. Natuba does have tagging, an FB app, and ratings. And apparently Twitter integration, too, although I can’t find it anywhere (the Facebook app isn’t mentioned on the site as far as I can tell, either). When I meant “the ability to track my friends’ contributions”, I meant some sort of stream that aggregated all of them. You can check out a particular friend’s profile as things stand, but it doesn’t appear that you view such a stream. (Update 2: surprise surprise, this type of stream is in there, albeit buried quite a bit). Also, the tagging and ratings could be leveraged better, maybe by highlighting them on the homepage.
brightkite.com does this and more for the iphone already. once 2.0 hits they will have an app for full iphone support.
ghetto geotagging already available for that service and it auto-updates your in twitter feed, even sends links to pictures.
Natuba does almost all the things mentioned in the 2nd to last para. Ratings? Check. Twitter? Check. Friends? Check. Facebook? Yup, check again. Hello??
Flickr and other photos services, of course, already have mobile upload capabilities via email. And there’s no reason why this site can’t take uploads from non-iPhone devices
Waiter, i’ll have reservations about this mobile site for 10 please.
Watch out for Simplebucket as well, we are entering this space .. very soon.
Not sure which Natuba you are looking at, but it does have tagging, and to reiterate Rakesh, it has perhaps my favrite facebook app AND twitter integration. The best feature in my opinion is its blog integration. I no longer have to deal with a WP plugin to email photos to my blog. I am fairly addicted to this feature
I would suggest you give it another (closer) look!
I like the interface… Simple usually wins in my book.
Come on!!!! ALL and I do mean ALL the features mentioned as desired are already implemented in Natuba.
It has friends, it has a FaceBook app/integration, it has twitter integration, it will post to your blog and MORE!
Mark,
If you are unsure about those features, here, I’ll throw the glove in and add you as a Natuba friend and I am willing to go over the features one by one and help you see them and enjoy them yourself (and no, I do not work for Hush Labs)
And FYI I do not own an iPhone either, I enjoy Natuba on my ATT 8525.
Interface looks neat and appealing.
@Mark: wow, you really missed the details in the post. I would be glad to walk you through Simplebucket if you want to work up a post about us. We’ve got got reviews so far and I can’t see why you would missed writing up about Simplebucket.
Dpwnloadsquad – http://www.down...-photo-hosting/
Webware – http://www.webw...-9905554-2.html
The Facebook app is already available at http://apps.fac...k.com/mynatuba/ . The Natuba team is also working on several other features that iPhone users will find very cool, especially regarding geotagging. Stay tuned…
My apologies for overlooking some of these features. That said, it’s not a good sign if they’re not easily recognizable.
SnapMyLife by Mobicious also has an iPhone web application at http://snapmylife.com – it’s designed for viewing shared photos on all mobile phones – with a stream of all your and your friends pictures, comments and favorites. We too are working feverishly on an iPhone 2.0 application with some very cool new features ….
I only wonder about support, if necessary. What is the EULA? Will Natuba get ownership of posted photos?
I only wonder about photo ownership. What will Natuba’s position be on this issue?
Brian, see the Terms of Service ( http://www.natu....com/about/tos/ ): “We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Natuba service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours.”
Natuba is a fantastic site that I use with my AT&T Blackjack…great interface and all the features you missed that it does actually have. It is one of the reasons I look forward to one day joining the iPhone clique.
As a side note, I rarely read TechCrunch because so many of the posts here are incomplete conjecture that lack any form of journalistic character. This piece fails to do Natuba justice, although I suspect they’ll take the traffic bump it gets them.
Mark – We think you’re right, we’ll have to make some changes this week to make some of those features more obvious… and re: “the ability to track my friends’ contributions” – we have that as well… Once you’re logged in, click on “profile” in the upper right corner, then “activity” on the left side bar, and make sure the check box in “by my friends” is enabled… and you’ll see what you want. Based on what I just typed there, we definitely need to make that simplier. The good news is that its really simple from the iPhone interface.
Anyhow, we’ll get on it! Thanks for the feedback!
@Josh – “incomplete conjecture that lack any form of journalistic character” – zinnggg
@Yoo – glad to hear it, thanks
By the way, now that I’m aware of the Facebook app, I might actually use this product on a regular basis. I don’t say that about many startups I cover. Simplicity does have its merits.
@Mark: I hate to hijack this thread .. lol .. but “Simplicity does have its merits.”
So when you think you can work up a post about Simplebucket?
This initiative, taken in context, is a huge failure. Considering new social network of iPhone users, the idea is not only poorly original, but boring due to its uses.
@Mark nothing personal; I’ve been on a Buzz Bissinger rant lately. Actually, I feel strongly that TechCrunch and similar sites serve a tremendous service to the startup community…it ain’t the New York Times but that is probably not a bad thing.
Thanks for covering one of Houston’s tech startups…there are plenty more here for you to gloss over…zinnggg
Hey hey mark,
I’m glad you covered this. But we were the first to create our follow up social network to Sabet.tv by creating http://www.pixophone.com
http://www.pixophone.com is the original iphone sharing site, with tagging, photo embedding, blogging and more! We were actually covered in September of 2007 by John Kullman of Mobile Crunch, see here
http://mobilecr...ictures-as-art/
Thanks again, Ali
Hey Mark,
We were the first to do this back in september with http://www.pixophone.com
check out the write up by john kullman here: http://mobilecr...ictures-as-art/
expect more like this – with more – soon
there will be more and more apps focusing on iphone~
@AliSabet – Natuba is the original iPhone Photo Sharing site… its targeted only at iPhone users. We have a very robust iphone experience.
From what I can see, your site is more about mobile phone art – which isn’t what we’re doing. We want all and any iPhone users photos, we’re not being selective.
Hardly art, but one of my favorites from today is: http://www.natu...m/photo/8RcvNZ/
Enjoy!
We consider all photos taken by the iPhone art. You have a nice site Richard, congrats.
Natuba is an interesting app and I like the simplicity of it. On the side note We at MessageDance been doing iPhone photo sharing, integration with Twitter,tagging, blog post using iPhone for a while now along with other things. It is very interesting to see how creatively our users are using iPhone for their different activity streams and we get to learn a lot from them.
Seems like a wonderful site Rajesh. I’ll have to check it out!!
Sounds like Shozu
@Natuba
Nice work guys –the site looks great and keeps getting better.
Interesting idea …. Another app that creates postcards in a similar manner (email image, message in subject line) is called Sodasnap (http://www.sodasnap.com)
beenup2.com has been doing this for a while, and their geotagging is quite intuitive and easy. quite a fun site.
anyother websites related to iPhone…..
Sounds pretty good. I hear the iPhone is coming to New Zealand.
We’ve had an active mobile photo sharing community over at phlog.net since 2002 and we have a number of iPhone users. A complete re-write is currently in progress and will be going live in a couple of months – check phlog.net/user/alan for more details and updates.
Sorry, but I don’t get the big deal on this… You have to upload the photo by emailing it to a special address, a feature that Flickr implemented a long time ago. I have posted many pics from my iPhone directly to my Flickr photostream, complete with tagging, subject, and description. So, what’s the big deal?
Sounds kinda cool. Think I’m gonna check it out, thanks.
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Great article! expect some more. Get more iphone software at http://www.cope...ng.blogspot.com