megsjargon

Last week Blog Talk Radio featured an episode about photography and kids with “Taking Better Pictures of Your Kids”. The show featured Tracey Clark and Kate Inglis from the newly launched site Shutter Sisters, a photo blog full of passion and beauty in imagery and words, giving away their tips and tricks in photography. Inevitably, a question from a listener came up about online privacy and the security of posting pictures of your children online. The show’s host, Kristen Chase, refers to Kinzin as a great choice if you’re looking for a private, niche network, to securely post photos of your kids, saying:

“… there are a bunch of really great private websites out there… called Kinzin.com and they are invitation-only access”.

Kate goes on to mention some of Michael Fergusson’s thoughts on online safety in photography: to say the internet is inherently bad is the same to say that kissing is inherently bad because it can spread disease. True enough. You can listen to the show on Blog Talk Radio in its entirety. (The Kinzin mention comes at about the 22:00 minute mark of the show.)

It’s a pretty good show and has a lot of useful content to share from both the experts in the community, the host and from participating listeners around the Internet.

Websites like Shutter Sisters and Kinzin are those special, niche networks that people are gravitating toward more and more. I’m not tired of Flickr (far from it) or Facebook (god forbid) but quality on the Internet has become more and more apparent and absolutely essential, and these specific spaces online thankfully provide me with a rich user experience.
(xposted from Kinzin Blog, with some add-ons)

Mail my online social network to my non-computer dad? Every month? For 3 bucks?? Sign me up!

Kinzin is transforming how families share the most important little people in their lives with the latest launch of Kinzin.com.

Privacy and security online is important to many of us, especially to parents. Kinzin understands this better than anyone and has created an online space for you to share your kids’ photos safely and as private as you deem: you control who gets to see your content. Inviting people to your social network, or rather, subscribing any of your friends or family members into your space, is one of the features that puts Kinzin ahead of other photo-sharing networks.

There is another quality that is probably the most exciting new feature in this launch: social networks in the mail! For Grandma, who doesn’t have a computer or doesn’t know the first thing about social networks or “online communities”, is now able to be a part of your life online. In just a few clicks (and a truly unbelievable low cost), your family members can receive prints of your top 10 images each month, chosen by you, VIA THE MAIL! All of those headaches or concerns over certain family member’s dial-up, download times and those phone calls we all inevitably receive, “How do I login again?” are out the window. There’s something to be said about “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. Kinzin has created a really easy way for anyone you choose to receive the cutest, up-to-date images of your kids through the postal service. I’ve given up trying to teach some of the folks in my parent’s generation (and up) how to enter a URL or surf and search. Sign me up for monthly prints!!

There are some other really neat features that help to create that perfect snapshot in time of your kids. You can add status messages, photo titles and descriptions and the family can comment on photos as well. All of these features are available for each and every image so that every memory can easily be captured and each moment can be put into precise context, not just uploaded as part of an album in a bank of photos.

We all need special tools to be able to share the kinds of private information and experiences about our kids - Kinzin provides this for you in the most perfect package - whether you use Facebook, Flickr, or like Grandma, good ol’ fashioned mail! And let it be known: I ain’t got no kids yet, but I’ve already signed up that non-computer dad of mine to receive my hottest 10 shots every month of my dog - he’ll LOVE it!

Check out Kinzin.com
mostly xposted from the Kinzin blog

xposted from Bridging Media

It’s the day after Bridging Media both Erica and I are thrilled how it all came together and that the day was received so well. About 150 people turned out, a mix of digital media professionals, Producers, Broadcasters and a few newbies as well. While my photos are coming soon (Flickr Tag “bridgingmedia” please), and more posts to be written on the summary and the all important future growth this beast, you can listen to all of the sessions, courtesy of Robert Ouimet, and can read the Live Blog of all four sessions from Rebecca Bollwitt - thank you for putting in the time, energy and efforts capturing the day. (And thanks to John as well, for snapping some pics!)

There were a LOT of people who helped out to pull this off. Sponsors, organizers, speakers, participants, attendees, all of those people that just randomly stepped in to help out where needs: Thanks to ALL of you!

You ask and you shall receive

These Are My Kids launched about a month ago, and there isn’t a day that goes by when the team on the back end of things, the crafty Kinzin coders, are not looking for more ways to improve the application for you.

Kinzin is all about connecting family and friends. And not just online, which is why this latest application was created in such a way that you, the content creator in your family, will be able to subscribe your grandmother to your social network via the post! And people like her, who don’t have a computer or who would rather not play online (or Facebook as well), can be a part of your virtual network.

Some of the more savvy users who use and love These Are My Kids were looking forward to a Flickr upload feature inside the app. So Kinzin has gone and made that possible for you! You can now browse your photos from Flickr, your Facebook albums or your own computer. You can bring all of your Flickr Sets right into the application, and they will remain there, adding to your bank of photos to choose from when uploading an image into your kids’ pages. When you create more sets in your Flickr profile, you can refresh your Flickr sets in These Are My Kids with a click of a button.

This was a pretty vital step and one that was intended from the onset in building this application. For people like me, I have been using Flickr for a few years and have almost 100 sets and 4000 photos, so this feature was one that I am very happy to be able to use. (I use Capo as my kid. No, he doesn’t wear a “jacket” when we go out, and no, he does not have rhinestones on his collar - it’s just fun to play in the space with the latest on what this dog is up to because I, too, want a history of my dog’s life.)

These Are My Kids is the tool that makes capturing your kids’ lives and recording their history a snap. Kinzin’s goal has always been to enable the user to do this with great ease and in a seamless process. By tapping into networks like Flickr and Facebook, Kinzin makes life a little easier and saves you a little time, something the Kinzin family knows we all need a little more of!

If you haven’t heard already, there happens to be this school over here on the Great Northern Way Campus that’s making some rather large waves, to say the very least. I am fortunate enough to be a small part of it. I’ve been at the school for a few months now, brought on board working with the students and faculty of the Masters of Digital Media program - a top drawer digital media grad program - to implement a social media strategy for the school’s online presence. Fun stuff. Plus, everybody here at the school are wonderful people to work with: smart, savvy, fun, creative, and let’s face it: the future.

Just to give you a brief sense of the kind of work and events happening at the school, I’ll highlight this week for starters.

Alan Levine is in town for Northern Voice, and today he paid the school a visit to talk about web technologies and Second Life - it was a fun hour. The NMC, New Media Consortium, pretty much sums up what a lot of us are trying to do: “The NMC stimulates and furthers the exploration and use of new media and technologies for learning and creative expression.” - couldn’t have written it better myself.

One of the school’s students, Mike Cornford, is down at the GDC (Gaming Developers Conference) in San Francisco, blogging up a storm! One of our goals at the school was to have the blog for the site up and running so that we could have first-hand reporting from the conference. Mike has never blogged a day in his life until now: and he is GREAT at it (and, big surprise, loves it) - please read the GDC through his eyes and ears, and words. It’s truly refreshing.

And in fine social media way - get those who are online, offline. Some of the students at MDM are heading to Northern Voice - so look for them, say hello and ask them to tell you all about what is happening at the school. You’ll be both impressed and proud. Lest we forget: Vancouver’s Centre of Digital Media is THE only place on the planet to attain a Masters in Digital Media.

“Help me help you.”

Bridging Media is a new event that Erica Hargreave and I are organizing for March 29th, 2008.

To register, please visit the Bridging Media event page - we have a limited space for numbers, so head on over there and stick your name up.

What is Bridging Media?

In a nutshell, over the past 6 months, Erica and I, along with Kris Krug and Boris Mann, have had numerous conversations and brainstorming sessions around the continuing disconnect and gap between the broadcast and digital media worlds. This is an area in which Achilles Media has been involved for a number of years, as nextMEDIA has had huge success in Banff and is the sister conference to the Banff TV Festival. So we reached out to Mark Greenspan at Achilles and he was more than happy to get behind this event here in Vancouver as a “friend of the event”. Mark also suggested we use this event as a platform to help shape ideas and Banff’s pitching competitions - he’s absolutely right.

The Centre For Digital Media has also come on board as a major sponsor as the host of the event. They have graciously offered their amazing space “The Hanger” to house our inaugural event.

We’ve just begun the plight to take this idea and make it into a bit of a beast (we hope). So far we have had a pretty tremendous and supportive response. We are on the hunt for sponsorships, will be shaping and finalizing the speakers list over the coming weeks - and we always welcome more people-power - Gregg Scott just stepped up to create our logo - thank-you Greg!

Sign up for Bridging Media now!

If you’re not already.

This week in Vancouver, er, Techcouver, is pretty jam-packed. All great stuff, some of which is already happening as I type. (As I relish in the only “free” time this the week (NOT complaining), with my wine, meat and our Canucks.)

Get your stamina and come out to each and all and support this unbelievable tech town. Or, you can read about them. At least pick one of the freebies! And if that’s not enough, there is PLENTY more up and coming in the weeks and months to follow…

• Third Tuesday Vancouver - doh! you missed it. Check in for next month - always valuable
• QuickLearn, also happening right now, but you’ll hear more about this, and so you should!
• CaseCamp at the new lamplighter: Cinci from EATcomm has given new life to this marketing beast
• Northern Voice Opening Party! - deserves it’s own bullet point
• MooseCamp: step one on NV
• Northern Voice: in its’ 4th year and sold out for the 4th consecutive! Don’t miss it, online, if that’s all you’ve got.

I write that title, and then I think, “What a sec, have I?”.

Boris and I are gearing up for DemoCamp FIVE!, “Wild and Woolly 2008″, held next Thursday night, Feb. 7th at the ol’ traditional, WorkSpace. (Thank you Bill and Dane!)

Battledecks will be back, oh but of course. Linda Bustos has already submitted one deck and we’re just waiting to hear back from a “potential”. Any volunteers to get up there, loosen up your Thursday evening and get into an impromptu 3 minute very fun, very funny presentation battle? Drop a note.

CALLING ALL DEMOERS!

If you are planning to demo, head over and throw your name down on the wiki, and don’t forget to add youself to the Facebook event page as well. I think Boris has likely been busy drumming up folks to demo from his perch at Web Directions North. Please, step up - we know there’s a TON happening in this town - we would all like to hear about it and support it!

Big day across the airwaves for Kinzin. Tonight, the CBC is airing a story about online privacy and security in the wake of the MySpace breach. Michael Fergusson is featured in the story with his take on social networking and the privacy issue, and speaks in reference to Kinzin’s latest application These Are My Kids. Catch the story airing on CBC local Vancouver news tonight at 6pm. (Thanks to Tod for sending them this way!)

Sticking with TV Fame, Episode 140 of The Lab With Leo Laporte airs today on G4 Tech TV in Canada (The How-To Channel in Australia). Michael does a segment with Leo, talking about designing and building applications in the era of social networking. That interview will be made available on The Lab website after it airs on television.
xposted from blog.kinzin.com