Here’s another reason to use a client-side Web gallery generator that you don’t hear about much: upload time.

Because Shozam optimizes images within the program (making them Web friendly), and the entire gallery is uploaded at once, I knew uploading a Shozam gallery was a lot faster than uploading photos to an online service. But I wanted to find out exactly how much faster, so I did a test.

I created a gallery with 547 images, which took me 30 minutes (10 minutes to import images into the gallery and 20 minutes to generate the gallery).

A quick aside: For the record, there are no inherent limitations on how many images you can import into Shozam. We’ve received a couple of emails from people saying they received an error message that “Too many files were selected. Please select fewer files.” This is a Windows Operating System limitation, which generates the error message if you select more than 200 files. To bring more pictures into your Shozam albums, just make sure you bring them in batches of no more than 200 each.

Back to my test gallery. The 547 source images in this gallery were originally generated by a 7.2 Mega Pixel camera (Casio Exilim EX-2750) totaling 2 GB. Shozam took these images and created an optimized gallery of 60 MB – a 40x reduction in size. It took an hour to upload the Shozam gallery using Qwest DSL that we have in our corporate offices. Uploading the original images to the same Web host would have taken 40 times longer, or almost two days and nights of continuous uploading! And that is assuming the connection remains active without any glitches during the upload process.

The actual gallery I created, with stats, is on the Examples page of our Web site:
http://www.shozam.com/examples/index.htm

The net result: Shozam galleries upload 40 times faster. To me, this is a significant time savings. Let me know some of the other advantages you see using a Web gallery generator vs. a photo sharing service.

Tucows is the oldest and most respected download provider of high quality shareware software in the world. Tucow's Shareware Spotlight is authored by Michael Callahan, known as "Dr. File Finder." He is regarded as the world's leading expert on shareware. We are pleased he has chosen to feature Shozam in his Shareware Spotlight.

Check out our nice write-up on Tucows:
http://www.tucows.com/solutions_detail.html?article_id=1667

If you've been happy with Shozam, give us a "Thumbs Up" User Rating. They do require a log-in before you can post comments, but we hope you do it anyway.

It’s been a tough summer for photo sharing services. I sympathize with people who have to contend with the demise of their online photo service. Not only are precious images at stake, but it can be a huge hassle to recreate galleries with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of photos. Whenever a Photosite or a Yahoo Photos goes out of business, it really highlights the importance of user control.

If the thought of going to yet another photo sharing service makes you cringe, try an alternative: Shozam Web Gallery Generator. Anyone can create a top-notch gallery – HTML knowledge is not required. Because the gallery is generated on your computer, you are in complete control. If you want to change Web hosts, it's easy to just move your gallery to a new host. Uploading an optimized Shozam gallery is 40 times faster than uploading photos to a Web host (more about this later). And, if the Web host goes down, you have a copy of all your work residing safely on your own computer.

Download Shozam and try it out for free. As an extra nudge, we’ll give you 15% off the Shozam Express Edition, the fastest, easiest way to create your own Web gallery. Just enter this coupon code on the order form: SHOZ-L644-REF

Welcome to Shozam. Photosite and Yahoo Photos, R.I.P.

Many members of the Shozam Community are power users of the software. They explore all the features, delve into all the program’s capabilities and push against its limits. But many users don’t want all that detail. They just want a software program that does what they need it to do, simply, quickly and reliably.

At the end of the day, for power and casual users alike, no one wants to spend a lot of time working their way up the learning curve. So, the challenge is to design software that is simple enough for everyone and powerful enough for those who want a richer experience. So how are these two seemingly opposing goals brought together in Shozam?

A research paper published in 1956 hypothesized that human working memory can hold up to seven bits of information, plus or minus two, at once. Referred to as “Miller’s Magic 7,” this theory was the basis for the seven-digit phone number, the recommended maximum of menu items on a Web page, among other things (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, anyone?). Even Apple’s iPod has no more than seven user input options.

So what about top Web sites like Amazon and Ebay that have significantly more than seven points of interaction? Most people find these sites very logical and easy to navigate. Why? Categorization – grouping related items. More recent research indicates that people are quite good at filtering out details that are not important to them: the modern mind has become acclimated to information overload.

When designing the Shozam program, we used both Magic 7 and categorization. The Shozam user interface has six “Steps” based on gallery hierarchy, and typically no more than seven decision points per screen. Perhaps even more important for usability is the compartmentalization of related actions. The “Image” tab holds all functions related to a specific image, the “Sell” tab to shopping cart functionality, and so on. It may not seem difficult to create a usability experience with these factors taken into account, but it is.

For Shozam, all this theory boils down to a program that is as simple, or as advanced, as the user needs it to be. A Shozam user can literally create a gallery using just the first tabs of each of the 5 Steps (in Step 6: Upload Gallery, a user needs to venture into the secondary “Presets” tab to enter upload information). Creating a Shozam gallery can be as easy as adding images, choosing a theme and hitting “Generate.” Done. Power users will find enough customization options in the program to create a gallery uniquely their own. And most everyone finds their path through Shozam Web Gallery Generator to be intuitive, logical, easy – and fun!

I am a passionate believer in users owning their own content.  Shozam!, and Web Gallery Wizard before it, were a direct result of this belief. Because of it, sometimes people are surprised that I am also an advocate of making it easy – and free – to share the Web version of images. Some believe this equates to giving up control of your images and worse, letting others steal your creativity and hard work.

Owning your content also means you control how it is used. So, we’ve put protections in place to prevent unauthorized copying of a Shozam! user’s images including watermarking, right-click disable and the ability to hide certain gallery pages (like the “Enlarge” page, for example). However, we still get comments from people who are concerned that it’s not enough (a recent exchange in one of the Forums prompted this blog post).

I believe that the best (fail-safe) image protection is watermarking (at the expense of marring the user’s images). Watermarking is the “best practice” method used by stock image agencies like Getty Images and Corbis. All other protections have workarounds which allow persistent infringers to circumvent them. The obstacles may make it harder, but not insurmountable, for users to grab images, one way or another.

However, for all practical purposes, I personally consider the trade-offs of protection on the Web not worthwhile. Web images are too low resolution to present much value since the print quality is not usable. I advocate this approach to music files as well; music label companies would be better off selling MP3s without DRM (digital rights management) and align their interests with their users, rather than criminalize their customer base.

Here is how I “protect” my own images:

1.  I do not use right-click disable since, like many DRM technologies, it can be circumvented by a savvy user, and it provides annoyances to legitimate users. I do not use watermarks that detract from viewing the image. At the most, I add a signature text or logo in the lower right, specifying name/copyright.
2.  I add a Creative Commons (CC) license notification in the footer of the gallery.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that is building a new system of enabling users to share their creations with others, while continuing to provide certain protections. Creative Commons has released several copyright licenses, known as Creative Commons (CC) licenses. Users mark their content with the (CC) license to make Web versions of their content “free” and available to download as long as the recipient attributes that content to the rightful owner. That fact that other viewers are exposed to the image owner through a (CC) copyright notice can be more valuable than a few dollars from someone who has purchased the rights to use the Web version of that image.

The idea is to make it easy to share – and promote – the Web version of images, and charge only if the recipient wants to upgrade to print resolution images. It is a win-win for everyone: the content owner gets exposure and the recipient can use the image on the Web at no charge. And higher visibility will likely lead to a higher monetary return in the long run.

In my experience, the promotional benefits of making the Web version of the image freely available under the (CC) license, which requires users to give you attribution, more than offset any drawbacks.

Razvan Neagu
CEO/Founder
KOMOTION, Inc.

"Get Naked," the title of the latest edition of Wired, with an actress from "The Office" (one of my Tivo'd shows) on the cover, was very timely. The cover article talks about companies who put it all out there -- baring it all -- for competitors and customers alike. With the launch of our Shozam! Community Web Site a few weeks ago, we've had this experience first hand; the good and the bad. The article called it, "Radical Transparency."

Transparency has always been important to us. Shozam!, like Web Gallery Wizard (our first product line) has always been “for the users,” and user feedback is a critical part of our product development process. This was brought home to me recently when we were discussing internally about whether or not to create a “Wish List Forum” in this Community site. The question arose as to whether it was a good idea, since “rivals” could see -- as easily as we could -- what users are clamoring for. There actually wasn’t much of a discussion: I have never sacrificed user interaction for competitive fears.

I spent some time late last night going through the Forums to take the pulse of Members; to see if there were any recurring issues and to ensure no one was left hanging. I am elated at the positive, enthusiastic response from the Community about Shozam!; but be assured, any issues raised in the Forums are being read and addressed, even if we don’t directly respond to each post.

One question that came up more than once was some confusion over the test account 2MB upload limit in Step 6. Because of this restriction, some Members thought some of the Shozam! Beta features were disabled. They asked to buy the “fully functional” Beta program, right now, before the release date. To clarify, the Beta is fully functional. The test account is just meant to show people how quickly they can have their Shozam! galleries online. We've also had a few posts from people who haven't been happy with our level of customer support during this Beta phase, which I addressed in the Forum. We realize that this has been frustrating for some Members, and as a user myself, I know customer support is one of the most important aspects in the end-user experience. It has always been, and will continue to be, a priority for us. Bear with us; things are moving fast, and once the product is released, customer support will be back to our top-notch standards.

Thanks again to all of you in our Community. Keep posting! And we will continue to provide you with as much "behind the curtain" information as we can. Transparency is the name of the game. It helps us see more clearly the problems and issues that need to be resolved in order to make Shozam! the best solution for sharing, showcasing and selling images online. We appreciate your help.

Sincerely,

Razvan Neagu
CEO/Founder
KOMOTION, Inc.