Introducing Aviary for Windows Phone 7

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Ever since we announced development plans of the Aviary SDK for Windows Phone, we’ve been fielding emails from very eager developers. Good news! The wait is over, and we have a few juicy details that we’re sure you’re equally excited to hear about:

  • Redesigned SDK from the ground-up to take advantage of the Metro design principles of Windows Phone
  • The same, easy integration process: add our editor to your project in as little as 15 minutes, with just a few lines of code
  • Customizable color theme
  • Controllable output size based upon developer preferences — you decide what makes the most sense for your app or service
  • … Not to mention that Aviary for Windows Phone has all the standard features as the rest of our mobile SDKs

For developers looking to expand their repertoire beyond the iTunes App Store and Android Marketplace, our new SDK is a perfect tool to add to your Windows Phone 7 apps. Our friends at Nokia think so, too:

“With the new Aviary SDK for Windows Phone 7, developers can create ground breaking applications that take advantage of the unique features of Nokia Lumia devices, like the Lumia’s Carl Zeiss lens, as well as to bring their existing imaging apps to Windows Phones consumers around the world.” - Bryan Biniak, VP of Global Partner and App Development

Want to see some of the first integrations? Check out our early bird partners:

“Behind every great photo is a better editor! The Aviary toolset is a great addition to our Postcard on the Run product. We’re excited to release our new Windows Phone product with Aviary’s software and we know our users will be thrilled with the high resolution output. Aviary will make our postcards more memorable and fun to send!” -Josh Brooks, Founder of Postcard on the Run

Windows Phone devs, we’re looking forward to building beautiful products with you. To get started, download the SDK at aviary.com/wp7. Let’s take the Windows Marketplace by storm, together.

Important Stickers Update to the Aviary iOS SDK

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If you’re using the iOS SDK, there’s an important update to the build in regards to the sticker archives you should be aware of.

Currently, the sticker archives in the iOS SDK are being stored in the Documents directory, which is backed up by iCloud, but as of late, Apple has begun to reject any apps storing things there that can be re-downloaded.

To solve this issue, we added an extra attribute to the sticker file to mark it as excluded from iCould backups.

Please see our release notes for more details: 

https://github.com/AviaryInc/Mobile-Feather-SDK-for-iOS/blob/master/RELEASE.md#version-236—may-10-2012

Please download and update to the latest build to avoid any issues. You can grab it at aviary.com/ios.

If you have any questions, please feel free to send them to mobile@aviary.

Twitpic Adds Aviary to Their New iPhone App

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Twitpic, a platform that allows you to share your photos and videos, has just announced the launch of their long awaited iPhone app, and has added Aviary’s editor to the mix!

They’ve taken advantage of the ability to customize the look and feel of the editor’s user interface (nice!), and have chosen the 5 tools that they believe makes most sense for their users: Effects, Enhance, Crop, Orientation, and Brightnes.

Download the brand new app here (iTunes Link), or read more about it on their company blog.

 

To learn more about Aviary’s iOS SDK, or to see how you can do the same for your app, visit aviary.com/ios.

 

Aviary’s editing tools: now in Google Drive!

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Google Drive is a brand spankin’ new product from Google that brings a wide range of functionality to the ever-growing realm of cloud storage. To add to the awesomeness, any photo that you upload to Google Drive can be edited with Aviary’s simple photo editor.

Here’s a super simple way to get started.

You’ll need to install Aviary first (get it from the Chrome Webstore!) Once it’s installed, just right click on any photo in your Google Drive and select “Open With > Aviary for Google Drive.”

Our editor will pop up, and the same easy experience you know and love awaits! When you’re done, the updated image will be saved to your Google Drive account.

We’re especially fond of the fact that Google saves versions of your image at various stages in the editing process, so if you change your mind and want to do the process over — without necessarily starting from square one — access to some of your previous edits is as simple as right-clicking the file name and selecting “Manage Revisions.”

To check out the other tools on Google Drive, check out their app offerings here!

As always, if you have any questions, we’d love to help. Reach us any time at contact [at] aviary [dot] com.

Aviary Announces Partnership With Flickr, Brings Editing Capabilities to 75 Million Users

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It’s a big day at Aviary! We’re excited to announce our partnership with Flickr, which brings our photo editing platform to a vibrant and bustling photo community.

With 3.5 million photos uploaded to Flickr per day, our editor will help enrich the experience of sharing memories for photographers and viewers alike, providing new, visual ways to engage with images hosted on the site.

To access Aviary’s editing tools in Flickr:

(1) Click on the Actions tab, then select Edit photo with Aviary.

(2) Our editor will pop up, giving you access to fourteen simple tools.

(3) A few clicks are all it takes to tweak your photo to your liking.

Like what you see? Perfect, you’re all done. Carry on!

We’re absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to share our passion for photos with the millions of users, with myriad interests. From diehard travel photographers to amateur hobbyists shooting candids of their loved ones, Aviary’s creative tools will provide a sleek, simple way to quickly fix pictures; after all, a faster, easier editing experience means that users have more time to spend exploring everything Flickr has to offer. Plus, since Aviary is 100% mobile friendly, you can edit your Flickr photos on your tablet too!

As we spend the next few weeks unrolling editing capabilities to the entirety of Flickr’s community, we’re paying extra attention to your thoughts and feedback. Please let us know what you think – your opinions will help shape the future of the Aviary editor.

In the meantime, don’t forget to check out what our friends at Flickr have to say about the partnership.

Have fun and stay awesome!

Love,

Team Aviary

Important UDID Announcement for Aviary’s iOS SDK

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If you’re currently using Aviary’s iOS SDK inside your app, there’s an important update you should be aware of in regards to the recent report of Apple rejecting apps for accessing unique device identifiers (UDIDs).

We don’t collect UDIDs, but the analytics library our SDK uses does access them. We do not expect the inclusion of this library, or of the Aviary SDK, to cause any problems with future versions of your app being accepted to the app store, but just as a precaution we have updated to the newest version of the analytics library which prevents UDIDs from transmitting in clear text.

Please download and update to the newest SDK (v 2.3.4) here: 

www.aviary.com/ios

Note: You must be logged in to download the SDK.

As a nice bonus, the new version of the Aviary iOS SDK includes some color customization options, and higher resolution output (up to 3MP). You can read about all the new updates on our changelog. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to email us at mobile[AT]aviary.com.

Photo Hack Day 2

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32 hours, 250 bagels, 300+ tacos, 300+ burritos, 12 buckets of BBQ chicken, 20 quarts of pulled pork, 12 pans of cornbread, 20 quarts of mashed potatoes, 150 cookies, 80 boxes of pizza (640 slices total), 27 cases of water (432 bottles total), 384 beers, and 28 cases of soda (448 cans total) later…

On February 25-26, Aviary had the pleasure of throwing Photo Hack Day 2, the first — and biggest — photo hackathon to take place in New York City (…and, as far as we know, the world).

With 496 RSVPs and 250 developers in attendance, 30 participating companies, headline sponsorship from Nokia Developer, and $10,000 in prize money, PHD2 trumped its summer predecessor in terms of scale. An astounding 58 hacks were registered to demo by the time Sunday rolled around. General Assembly was at maximum capacity for hackers and attendees alike; the spin on this winter’s hackathon — additional emphasis on mobile development — opened the floodgates for hackers waiting to test their iOS, Android, and Windows Phone chops.

The Friends of the Web team at PHD2; Aviary developers pull a late night; Sunday demo day attendees; Aviary CEO Avi Muchnick with the judging panel.

Saturday evening consisted of Google hangouts with hackers simultaneously building their own projects at Photo Hack Day Berlin, ample BBQ, and beer from the good folks at Sixpoint and Lost Tribes.

Alexis Ohanian, Ben Huh, and David Karp, founders of reddit, Cheezburger Inc., and Tumblr, respectively, joined Aviary CEO Avi Muchnick and the developers in attendance to share their thoughts on engineering creative systems, the strength of image-based communities, advice on community governance, and the intersection of public policy and internet. Their answers ranged from insightful (as expected) to surprising: for instance, Ben Huh, mastermind behind LOLcats and the ensuing barrage of feline-relevant memes, revealed that he does not — or more importantly, cannot — own a cat… due to allergies. (WHO KNEW?!)

From L to R: Ben Huh (Cheezburger, Inc.), Alexis Ohanian (reddit), David Karp (tumblr), and Avi Muchnick (Aviary).

Sunday’s demos ran the gamut from funny and lighthearted to the incredibly practical. Some of our favorites:

  • David Hu’s “Linstagram” and “Linterest”
  • Vivek Bhagwat and Hans Hyttinen’s “Here, Have a Kitty!”
  • Max Stoller, Spencer Fry, and Andrew Mercando’s “Player Status”)
  • Mason Du’s “Sweet Potato”, which generates unique photo montages made of other photos
  • Arcadius Kazimierski’s “Face Value”, which used Face.com’s facial recognition API to recognize dollar bills for the blind

The judging panel was equally diverse, with Jason Black (Nokia), Jason Morrow (betaworks), Jim Estrin (The New York Times), and Jamal Fanaian (Flickr) holding court on hacks and demos. In the end, Yufei Liu and his collaborative image editing platform, Synviary, emerged as the big winner of the weekend, sweeping up first place, people’s choice, and the Aviary company prize for a grand total of $7,500 in prize money.

Here are the final results from the weekend:

  • First place: Yufei Liu, “Synviary”
  • Second place: Matt Grasser, Nick Ihm, Christopher Guess, and Emily Duong, “What Is Up”
  • Third place: Mike Kelberman, Liangjie Xia, and Chris Bell, “Rotobooth”
  • People’s Choice: Yufei Liu, “Synviary”

We’ll publish a full list with the winners of company prizes once we get confirmation. For now, refer to our HackerLeague page to see what was created over the weekend!

For more photos from #PHD2, check out the Photo Hack Day Flickr group or sneak a peek at The Bosco’s photo booth mug shots! You can also read the event writeup from the perspective of Mr. Estrin in Beta620, a New York Times blog.

Big thanks to all of the hackers, companies, and attendees who made Photo Hack Day 2 a success! Looking forward to seeing you all at the next hackathon.

Cheers,

The Aviary team

Partner Spotlight: MailChimp

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Aviary provides a simple editor for web and mobile that developers can embed in their apps with just a few lines of code! Read on to see what MailChimp did with our tools, or check out our featured partners to see how they’re putting our editor to use.

MailChimp makes it easy to design, share, and track email newsletters that connect businesses and services with their users. Their range of templates, fonts, and features translate to a highly customizable campaign, and we’re happy to announce that Aviary has been added to their extensive list of tools.

Now that you can edit your photos in MailChimp, there’s no element of email that you can’t tweak or perfect — what better way to reach your audience than sending them a newsletter that is exactly as you like it?

Check out MailChimp’s email newsletter service now!

Best of all, you can access Aviary’s editing tools within MailChimp in three clicks. Observe!

Step 1. From the template page, drag and drop an image into MailChimp’s upload functionality.

Step 2. A preview of the image that you upload will appear in the right hand side of the floating box. Beneath the image, you’ll see an Edit button. Click it to open Aviary’s editor.

Step 3. Perfect your image with Aviary’s range of editing tools. Tweak colors with our brightness, saturation, and contrast feature, apply filters to change the feel of a photo, or opt for one-click fixes with our enhance tools. Hit apply when you’re finished, save your changes, and your image is ready to go!

More good news: We’ve added resize — back by popular demand — to our already-extensive list!

We’re particularly fond of MailChimp’s integration: it’s sleek, intuitive, and feels wonderfully natural in their existing workflow. To learn more, check out their website or visit Aviary to see how our editing tools can help you!

Say Goodbye to Bad Facebook Cover Photos

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If you haven’t already noticed, Facebook’s latest profile update includes a feature called Timeline, which among other things allows you to upload an eye-catching cover photo to your profile.

In the latest update to our Facebook app, we’ve added a custom crop tool that allows you to perfectly cut out your cover photo! No more need to resize and drag to make it fit.

To start:

  1. Go to apps.facebook.com/aviaryeditor *Note: If you’ve used our app before, make sure to clear your web browser’s cache to see the update
  2. Choose any of your photos from Facebook, or upload one from your desktop
  3. Choose the Crop tool
  4. Choose “Cover Photo” inside the Crop tool
  5. Drag to select area
  6. Apply, Save, BOOM.

Now head back to your profile, hover over your Cover Photo and select “Change Cover”. Then select “Choose from Photos”, and it should be in both your “Recent Uploads” and the Aviary album we create for your edited photos.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at support@aviary.com.

 

Why hello, Windows Phone!

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Last week some big news broke on Geekwire and The Verge: we’re bringing the Aviary SDK to Windows Phone!

Our goal at Aviary is to democratize creativity so that it’s available for everyone. After creating SDKs for iPhone and Android, the next natural step was to follow with the Windows Phone platform. We’re especially smitten with the new Nokia Lumia phones, which are aesthetically gorgeous and have great hardware (…did anyone say Carl Zeiss lenses?).

Given these latest devices and overall developer interest, we feel that the Windows Phone platform will be an increasingly appealing — and popular — choice for all you app developers looking to expand beyond the App Store and Android Marketplace, and Aviary for Windows Phone means you’ll be able to easily add photo editing to any apps you build for that platform, too!

A full release of the SDK should be ready by Q2 of this year. Can’t wait that long? You can get a sneak peek of the Aviary SDK for Windows Phone at Photo Hack Day 2, which is being held at General Assembly. The hackathon offers developers an opportunity to preview our SDK for Windows Phone, as well as the chance to build on the platform for cash and crazy prizes!

Says Bryan Biniak, Nokia’s VP of Global Partner and App Development:

“With the new Aviary SDK for Windows Phone 7, developers can create ground  breaking applications that take advantage of the unique features of Nokia Lumia devices, like the Lumia’s Carl Zeiss lens, as well as to port their existing imaging apps to millions of Nokia Windows Phones around the world.  We’re proud to support Aviary as the headline sponsor of the Aviary Photo Hack Day event and look forward to promoting the winning apps created by talented Windows Phone developers attending the Photo Hack Day event in New York City.”

Hope to see you February 25!