The version of chaopin that we demo'd at Techcrunch Battlefield is now available in the appstore in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan.

Introducing Catalogs

This version adds catalogs to help you organize and arrange the styles you like. For example, if you're in need of a new winter coat, create a winter coat catalog. Add the photos of coats you like so you can use it for reference later when you are off shopping.

Another good example is for weddings. Create a catalog of inspiring wedding dresses which you can take to the designer or shop of your choice so that they have a good idea of what type of dress you are after!

See the full gallery on Posterous

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We were selected to fight it out at the Techcrunch Battlefield, something we can be very proud of achieving. Competition was fierce, there were more than 400 applicants and the final 17 were a high quality group.

High Quality Competition

Mean average funding amongst the finalists was just over $1.25M USD , the Median was $450,000 USD demonstrating the social proof that many of our fellow finalists had already created before reaching this stage.

Experienced entrepreneurs were also in the mix, with some of the startups having executive experience from companies such as Tudou and E*Trade. Another 2 of the startups were from the chinaccelerator incubation programme in Dalian.

Average company size was 15 employees, with a median of 10 of those that reported their employee numbers on Crunchbase or counted from Linkedin. Of the 6 companies who I couldn't find employee numbers, they had an average of over $1M USD in rasied capital, median of $830,000 USD.

The Preparations

It's a very well organised competition. Every finalist signs an NDA, so we were not allowed to let anyone know that we would be in the final, this meant telling many people that we were going just for the conference. We arrived a couple of days before the battle. A quick rehearsal was completed during the hackathon where the techcrunch team + advisors, gave some quick tips about the presentation.

After revising our notes, the day before was used for the tech rehearsal. This was where we glimpsed the other finalists. The role of this rehearsal was to make sure our technical requirements were met, e.g. audio, laptop connections, close-up camera incase you were demo-ing on a live handset. 

The demo itself is expected to be live, and video should only be used as a backup.

The Competition

We went backstage about 45 minutes before we were supposed to present. Lot's of people rushing around behind the scenes. The presenters introduced themselves and we did last minute preparations to get ready. Then we went up on stage and presented -

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With the new update to Fusioncam we've enhanced it in a few ways and we're having a special promotion. We're reducing the price to $0.99 for a week. If you haven't already got it, now is a good time. Here's why.

Faster saving time

We enhanced the app so that it saves faster, which means you can take more shots in a shorter amount of time.

Clearer Buttons

We realized that in bright conditions, some of the buttons were difficult to see. We lightened up the display a little so that the buttons are clearer.

See the full gallery on Posterous

When you press the save button, you will be able to transfer the app for more editing in other apps, if you wish. You will get more apps to transfer to as we add them to the list, without you having to update the app.

iOS5 Support

We fixed a few things that stopeed fusioncam from working properly with iOS5

Hope you enjoy it!

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Todays going to be busy with a few announcements.

All of our apps have now been updated to support iOS5 and have had the latest Steply 2.5.2 added to them.

If you were experiencing issues with iOS5 and our apps, this set of releases should fix it. If you experience any more problems, please let us know.

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Steply has been updated to fully support iOS5

We also squeezed in a few bug fixes and few little things to help you out -

Comments Management

- You can delete your own comments

- You can manage all the comments on the photos you post

When in the comments view, swipe to be given the option to delete the comment.

Camera Settings Saved

If you selected 4:3 or square mode or you switched on the grid guidelines, it will be saved the next time you use the camera.

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There is also a handy randomize feature which selects a bunch of settings for you, so you can see what it can do without having to 'fine-tune' everything.

The Steply community and upload features are installed in the app. Press the 'People' icon at the top to see a list of shares, and to access the community. From here you can press the Steply icon to see the community in action, or press the Steply upload icon to share to Steply.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Camera improvements

We've made some improvements to the camera to give you a bit more flexibility. You can now adjust the camera to take 4:3 or square photos. If you're a fan of square photos, it's possible to take those shots now.

For the 4:3 view, you can switch on grid lines to help you with the rule of thirds.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Opening the app has been improved, now it's much faster when you start Steply. If you have logged in previously you should notice the difference.

Social Networks & Finding Friends

We've simplified this. When a friend in an existing social network joins Steply, you will be informed via the notifications system. Likewise, when someone new joins Steply, we make it easier to find someone from an existing social network or to follow a suggested user.

Enjoy!

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Every now and then, it's good to take a break and do something different. Some companies, such as Facebook,  do this with Hackathons. We did this to test if we could work using different development processes and to see what we could make.... to test our engineering and design skills.

The Experiment

Could we create, design and develop an app that allows us to test the China market?

Market Test

The China market is a different online animal to the West, and with our experience in photos, we wanted to test how it is different from the West, how people created, consumed, shared photos in social media services. With this in mind, we asked the following broad question -

How do people using Sina Weibo (Twitter equivalent in China) share/view photos?

Internal Test

We didn't want to spend a long term working on this, so a 2 week time frame was chosen to design, build and develop from the ground up. The question we wanted to ask was -

Could we create an app within 2 weeks, that is still beautiful, easy to use and helps answer the questions we had?

Idea Generation

We began with a few theories, that people in China are too busy to take photos in the same way that people in Japan and the West do. Cities are sprawling and those who regularly access social media have less interest / inclination to take/share photos. A little bit of study on Sina Weibo showed that people like to consume and re-share photos. Finally we reached an idea for an app that would help us to test a few assumptions/hypothesis -

• People using Sina Weibo want a good photo viewing experience.
• They are more likely to connect with their Sina Weibo account if it's not a pre-requisite.
• There is a demand to view and rate fashion themed photos.

Enter Jiepai (Street Fashion)... later renamed to Chaopin (Trendy Fashion) 

Viewing street fashion photos seemed quite popular, however the viewing experience isn't great, and just viewing photos is not very interactive, so we came up with an app that makes it a beautiful experience to browse street fashion related photos from Weibo, that allows you to discover and follow the people who are sharing these photos, rate the photos hot or not, see which are the hottest photos and re-share them all on Sina Weibo... All within 2 weeks, this meant designing the UI, coding the UI and interactions, as well as the server backend that stored the ratings and allowed people to connect their Sina Weibo accounts.

Development

We used a design-driven agile development methodology to create a 'minimum viable product'. The developers and designers had control over the process, with the designer creating the UI mockups which were then discussed and split up amongst the developers. Our developers created tasks and divided it amongst themselves to conquer. It was split up into design, server implementation, testing architecture, iphone app development and content curation. We had to gather the sources for good quality photos that could be used for consumption.

Discovery in Progress

During the 2 weeks we discovered a few things that meant adjusting what we were developing.

• During the content curation process, we discovered there weren't enough street fashion photos available on Sina Weibo, this meant we had to find photo sources from a larger pool, therefore we adjusted the scope of the app to cover trendy fashion rather than just street fashion.
• Changing the focus to trendy fashion meant the app needed to be redesigned to articulate the app's new content. This had an impact on the iphone development because some of the UI elements needed to be redeveloped. 
• We wanted to keep the 2 week limit, to do this, we had to cut features, therefore the design needed to be adjusted to reflect the slimmed down version.

Lesson Learned... so far

Whilst procuring sources for the photos, it helped point us towards a more appropriate market. This helped us to adjust the focus of the app towards something that had more material and hopefully, a better market fit.

Stripping out features because of the time frame really helped us to focus our thinking about what is really needed for the first test of this "minimum viable app".

Creating an hypothesis to test helped to focus our thinking. What features are needed to test the assumptions?

Going through the process helped us to learn more about this style of development. The Lean Startup methodology (coined by Eric Ries) advocates parts of what we were trying in its process. We are still to go through the customer feedback process and this will help us to know if our assumptions are correct and to do this we have to release the app... That day is today!

Introducing Chaopin

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Yes, we decided to do it. We added filters to Steply so that your photos can be 'enhanced' if you wish.

We love this release so much, we made a video that you can share with your friends to show them what Steply can do:

Also included as part of this update is :-

• You will receive a notification when you are mentioned in a photo.
• We've grouped together like and comments so that you're notifications are not inundated.
• We've improved the speed of uploading photos.
• Your following list will display the last time someone shared a photo and is ordered in time order.

Filters

Landscape or Portrait photos, the filters will work and create the frames (if the filter has a frame) for them all. Take a look at what they can do -

See the full gallery on Posterous

Followings

With the previous update it was more difficult to see who updated when. With this update, when you look at your own following list, you can see when they last shared a photo.

Hope yo enjoy this new brand new version of Steply!

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There's a black and white photography challenge ongoing. Check out some of the photos shared in the challenge.

Are your black and white photography skills up to scratch?

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SigNote is the one and only app available on app store which allows you to personalize your photos with your very own scribbles or doodles! Perfect if you are tired of standard photo stickers or longing for a personal touch. SigNote allows you to take a picture of your signature, logo or drawing and combine it with your photos.

 

To see how this wonderful app works, here’s a SigNote Trailer for you.

You can share with Steply from Signote by tapping on buttons at the bottom right corner. I used my business card to get the logo onto the photo.

Signote is available from the App Store.

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Labelbox is on Android! If you have friends using Android phones who missed out on the Labelbox experience before, now they too can be a part of it.

Thanks to your support, Labelbox achieved a million downloads within 25 days, hitting number one photo app in 46 countries. And now, we are introducing it to Android users.

Introducing Labelbox to Android users

Why label your photos? Because it's cute and nifty. Because it's easy to do. And because it's simple, but adds a nice touch to your photos. Get creative and use the tapes to form your own frames.

Labelbox for Android features 9 free labels and 4 premium cloth labels as an in-app purchase.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Easy to use

Similar to the iPhone version, this app lets you add labels easily. If you want to delete a tape, just touch and hold to make it disappear. You can even clear all tapes by simply shaking your device.

Sharing integration

And to make sharing easy for you, Labelbox for Android also has an early version of Steply built-in. Just press the upload button, and you can share to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and more, all via Steply. What's more, Android users can now share their photos with Apple device users, and vice versa - all on Steply.

Are you an iPhone user already using Steply? Get your Android friends to join you, and share your photos with the Steply community!

See the full gallery on Posterous

Enjoy!

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You asked for it, so we're giving it to you. Labelbox from v1.2 will support moving tapes and auto stretching and there is a whole new pack of tapes.

In a nutshell, we've added -

• Auto stretching of tapes
• Movable Tapes
• Brand new 'European' Label pack

Auto-Stretch Typing

After you swipe the tape onto the photo and start typing, if the tape is not long enough there's no need to start over. The tape will auto-extend to fit the characters. We figured this is the simpler approach than manually lengthening the tape. There is no need to learn anything new, it just works.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Move the Tapes

Once  a tape is laid, you can move it by dragging it around the screen. This means you can position it anywhere you want in the photo. The last moved tape will also become the 'top' tape. So if you want to stack tapes together this is a way to arrange them so you can select the top tape.

See the full gallery on Posterous

European Label Pack

We've designed a European flavoured label pack for you to use consisting of 4 brand new tapes

1. Kilt - A knee length garment worn by men and boys in Scotland made from Tartan in the 16th Century
2. Doily - An ornamental mat made by Doily a 17th Century London Draper
3. Black Lace - Openwork fabric, patterned with open holes which may have begun in Flanders in the 14th Century
4. Picnic - The word is derived from France and this design emulates some of the patterns used on paper picnic mats

See the full gallery on Posterous

Have fun using these new cultural labels, and the new features we've added.

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You can now share to Steply using RetroCamera. It's an amazing iPhone app with lots of features to help you create stunning photos through its huge array of options from filters, frames, noise and textures. There are an amazing 168 film simulations, 146 textures and 64 frames providing a huge bag of tricks to play with. If it sounds too complicated, don't worry, there are 21 preset templates to play with.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Currently you can only share with Steply from RetroCamera - Here's how to do it.

Press the Folder button and then press the Save to Sharing service button and Steply is sitting right there

See the full gallery on Posterous

You can get Retrocamera from the App Store

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See the full gallery on Posterous

A fast, quick way to add Lomo to your photos. Snap a picture and it is lomo-fied straight away or grab a picture from your library and it's lomofied and saved. Ideal for photographers who know they want that Lomo effect without having to scan through a list of filters.

To browse the steply community, tap the 'Steply' button on the top left. After you have created a photo, either from the camera or library, you can share to Steply using the button on the top right.

The Pro version provides more filter types which you can configure from the preferences menu and removes the in app adverts.

Quick Lomo

Quick Lomo Pro

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First Day Downloads

In the past year, we have released these 4 photo apps.

1. Actioncam in April 2010
2. Phototreats in October 2010
3. Labelbox in March 2011
4. Fusioncam May/June 2011

Let's look how each app performed in its first day of sales

Each consecutive release has achieved much stronger opening day sales than the previous app. Actioncam was released before there was a Steply Network, and Phototreats was released during the Steply Network's early days.

Labelbox eventually went onto more than 1 million downloads within a month but when comparing first days sales, Fusioncam performed almost 500% better even without being featured by Apple and none of the more popular review sites have reviewed Fusioncam yet, it's a strong performance for an app on the first day.

Why is this the case?

Steply Network 

With the growth of the Steply Network, it has helped to push the cross promotional capabilities of Fusioncam at launch. Here's how it works -

• In app notifications. Any app part of the network gets these notifications which provides a link to the app store.
• Shared photos by people who start using Steply. The photo page on the Steply site provides a link to the app that shared.
• Network App shows all the apps in the Steply network and allows people to see Fusioncam photos share by other users.
• Steply In-app provides links to every app used to share the photo in each individuals photo stream to encourage app discovery.
• We utilised our facebook and twitter channels to help with the release.

These factors all added up to help create the first day momentum of Fusioncam, and it was under our own circle of influence.

Regional Influences

See the full gallery on Posterous

The above charts show the top 5 countries for downloads on the first day. One clear trend is that US downloads dominate in all of the first day sales across all the apps. From our data, clearly the US market holds the largest scale in downloads compared to any other country. Our second most dominant country is Hong Kong (where we are based), and this helps because tweets or communication in Chinese can cross over to other countries where Chinese is common. With a growing base in both Asia and USA, apps launched using the Steply network can chart high positions in the ranks in the first few days.

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Special Promotion

For the first day of release (31st May), we are giving it away for free. Price will then be at a reduced cost of $0.99 for a further day before it resumes its regular price of $1.99, so get it whilst its under promotion.

Introducing Fusioncam

If you're a regular user of Steply, you will have seen quite a few photos taken using Fusioncam. So what exactly is Fusioncam?

It's a beautifully designed Toy Camera that produces photos reminiscent of real toy cameras with the ability for multiple exposure

Multiple Exposure

What is multiple exposure? In a traditional camera, it's when you take 2 or more photos over the same piece of film. This happens when the film doesn't wind forward. This leads to some interesting effects when there are 2 or more photos overlayed on top of each other. When combined with the effects a toy camera produces, leads to some artistic, creative photos.

Easy to Use

We created Fusioncam to make it easy to use. There are only 2 screen. One representing the back of the camera, where there is a selection of 3 modes, flash, and to switch the multiple exposure on and off.

With a flick of a switch at the bottom, you open the camera case to reveal the film, from here you can choose to develop (save) the photo, and to share it to Steply. You can also delete films off this roll from here. Below is a selection of photos already shared on Steply using Fusioncam.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Download Fusioncam from the Apple App Store

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The latest app to join the Steply Network, it divides your camera into 2 and lets you create some amazingly creative photos in a few simple steps

1. Adjust the slice
2. Take a photo
3. Move camera and take another photo

That's it.. no messy editing, no need for cut and paste.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Steply 2.0

It has the latest Steply 2.0, which lets you see all the apps in the app network tab. Click on an App and you can see all the featured photos shared using that app, and if you don't already have it installed, it will give you the option to go to the app store to take a look.

See the full gallery on Posterous

When you are looking at featured photos or in your photo stream, it will tell you which app was used to share the photo. Clicking on the appname will take you to the app profile. A great way to check out and discover new apps. 

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Now you can use Steply on Android. If you have friends using Android phones who can't share their photos with you on Steply... Now they can.

Action Snap, an action camera with Lomo & Sepia filters, has joined the Steply Network. 

ActionSnap

Action Snap is an easy to use app from Oursky Ltd, that enables actions shots in frames such as 1x4, 2x2, 3x3 at time intervals of 0.21 to 0.5 seconds. It's already one of the most popular camera apps in the Android Market and now you can share to Steply with it too.

Accessing Steply is easy. Press on the setting cog and the Steply icon is there.

Steply Network on Android

For the first version of Steply on Android, we've made it as simple as possible.

• You can share to facebook, twitter, posterous, flickr, sina weibo and tumblr. 
• View featured photos
• Like photos

We've made it as easy as possible to get on board, and we will be adding more features soon. You can still use the Steply webpage to follow people and comment.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Now's a good time to get your Android owning friends to share their photos with you. Get it from the market or grab more info about Action Snap here

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Part 3 of the upcoming Steply Network's new look.

More

There's certainly a lot more inside. Pressing the More tab brings a new wealth of options. We've made it easier to Edit your info or to manage your share settings by separating them out. Also notice that find friends is also located here (as well as in the friends tab) and you can search tags from here too!

Profile

We've completely beautified the profile page, a lovely large profile picture, and your photos in a thumbnail view. Have a look at it now -

You can get to someones profile from either clicking on their profile picture anywhere you see it or if there is a @name mention, clicking on the name will take you to the profile.

If you're looking at someones elses profile, you can even check your follow status with each other. Number of photos and followers are clearly identified. We also show the photos that someone has liked. Click on the 'Likes' Tab to see it, now easier to discover even more photos -

The info page still holds the places, following, bio, your website (if you have one) and achievements information. You can still discover new people via the following and followers lists.

Suggested Users

We do have a new suggested users section to help you to decide who to follow. When you press find friends, there is now a suggested users option. Press that and you can see a short list of people (using a recipe we cooked ourselves to determine which people are suggested)

Search Tags

Last but not least... you can now search tags. Use the search tags option or press any photo that has has been hashtagged by the photo taker. You can add tags to your old photos in the comments and it will still work.

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