A few weeks ago I had a play with Tumblr. My “scrapbook” is still there, and getting automatically generated by my adding links to del.icio.us or finding new Plazes… but I haven’t done a great deal more with it.
Today I was reading Tara Hunt’s excellent HorsePigCow marketing uncommon blog and learned about Scrapblog, a new startup with yet more interactive web candy for us to play with. Except… this time, it’s really about building scrapbooks. It’s a very rich Flash-based application (possibly soon to run on Apollo) which allows you to build galleries and screenshows in a scrapbook style. You can upload photos directly or pull them from Flickr, Yahoo, Photobucket or Webshots; you can add “stickers” (logos and patterns), change backgrounds, add frames and text. Once you’ve done all that, you can publish your Flash-based Scrapblog on their site, or share the static images on Flickr, where you could create a photoset and run a slideshow in a similar way.
I liked it – very easy to use, with an “iLife” feel to it, and of course it just runs out of the browser. I don’t generally build these kind of slideshows, but this was fun to play with. You can take a look at the results.
Once you’ve uploaded the scrapblog, the site offers tagging, profiles, comments, and feeds – everything that we’d expect these days.
I’m not keen on the name, simply because I’m wary of all of the attempts to brand things as blogs when they are not. Other than that, a very cool site to play around with.
Scrapblog hasn’t formally launched yet, but if you read to the end of Tara’s post, you’ll discover a way in to try out the preview version.
gee, thanks,Andy. Like I didn’t have enough web 2.0 candy to play with already! 🙂
You know this was just for you, of course.
Here’s a thought, then – don’t play with it 😛
seems its closed for entry at the moment;
“we’re taking the bubblewrap off Scrapog – The new Scrapblog is only days away and we assure you we’re just as excited as you are. Sit tight while we put on the finishing touches :)”
I think you’re right.. it’s about as blog like as a a powerpoint presentation.. or maybe I missed something… I wouldn’t consider it a blog by any means.. neat idea? maybe.. It’s definately iLife like.. but hows it different to what you can produce from iLife at the moment (maybe the tagging etc but..)
See, that’s why I said to read to the end of Tara’s post, there’s a link to get access to the preview version… unless they just shut that off too, in which case, I apologise.
How’s it different to iLife? Well, it integrates with existing services, and generates Flash and uploads to Flickr and your blog (not your .Mac account).
As with all things, I’m willing to be an early adopter and give it a try, but I’ve yet to be convinced that it will be a significant part of my online life. We’ll see.
@Andy yes sorry.. missed that and yes the preview in tara post does still work!! apologies! Might give it a whirl and see how it works..
Your post prompted me to check out scrapblog again…I have an old account but I hadn’t done much with it.
It fascinates me a little bit because I don’t have the time or money for real scrapbooking, even though I’ve always been interested in it. I have always liked how Scrapblog integrates with Flickr too. I’ve looked at a lot of similar sites and Scrapblog seems easiest to use.
Glad you like it, Andy! Sigh…all these new addictive things. 🙂
Personally, it makes me feel like I have actual design skills. LOL.
That’s one of the coolest things I’ve seen today. No more wasting paper for me! hehe