Kinotopic

Happy 2013 everyone!

I haven’t given you news in a while and that’s not good.

Kinotopic has had some minor updates, like fixing bugs here and there, adding an embed url to web pages, and a couple more things.

These days I’m working on something new and can’t give Kinotopic the time it deserves. However in my 2013 huge to-do list  I plan on pushing another big update. I’ve started talking to people about what exactly V3 should be, what I should add, how it should work.

I’d love for Kinotopic to have a tight knit community of people uploading amazing things. Instead of going for the mass market. So if you are a PRO gif maker I’d love to know what I should add to Kinotopic app/web to make it better.

Next week I’m starting to work on another Kinotopic update. I have a couple of features that I would like to add based on feedback from you, incredibly awesome Kino users.

The past week was filled with hardware failures. I guess if things go bad it’s better if everything happens at the same time. For the most part the issues were resolved, and pending unforeseen circumstances all should be OK now.

I’m looking for cool tumblr blogs to follow and maybe talk about here. I’m especially interested if you’re a hardcore Kinotopic user and post a lot of animated gifs. I’ll be glad to look over them, write to radu@kinotopic.com.

Random cool Kino

About a month ago KinoFX was approved in the App Store. KinoFX is an app that takes a regular photo and tries to animate it.

It has 5 effects: 

• A simple shaking + floating particles effect called A la carte.
• A Tilt-Shift based effect that gives the illusion of autofocus on certain parts of the picture.
• An old camera hipsterish effect.
• A 3D effect.
• A Day Night filter which gives the illusion of time passing.

KinoFX is still very experimental. We plan to focus on Kinotopic, but it’s sometimes fun to study what can be done and see if we can apply anything we learn from KinoFX to it.

What about Kinotopic?  I haven’t been able to work as much as I wanted to on it, but I have a list of improvements I want to make. SOON…

I’ve pushed a couple of updates to the App Store which are waiting review. It’s taking a little longer that usually to get things approved. But it’s going there. Hopefully I’ll have some interesting news soon.

There are a couple of things that I should have added by now that I’m working on.

The quality of the kinos has gone up recently. It happens quite often that I look though the stream and find touching moments or unique visual places. With Kinotopic V2 I really wanted to transform the app from a cinemagraph making utility to a place where you go to get inspired.

Some cool Kinos

There isn’t that much to say now, but I thought I should keep the blog more updated, even with more trivial stuff.

I’ve pushed Kinotopic and Kinotopic+ 2.0.2 that contain two small bug fixes. Should be approved soon. Thanks to Chuck I’ve figured out what was causing some kinos to appear upside down.

Ike has pointed me to a comment bug that I should fix soon.

Suggested friends now contain relevant people.

In case you are wondering, I am working on something cool, significant, that you’re gonna love. But at the moment it’s going slow. Hopefully I’ll have some news about that soon.

Random Cool Kino

There haven’t been any updates in a while and I’m sorry. It was a combination of a lot of work and then a lot of patience (beta testing and waiting for approval).

It’s finally out, Kinotopic V2 has been approved and released.

What’s new?

The most visible change is the redesign. Our previous version was design worked as an $1 utility that turned into something else.  We went back to the drawing board and created a cleaner, more traditional design that puts the focus on kinos.

But the biggest change is in the create kinos flow. We realized that people created awesome kinos by animating whole pictures (basically uploading a really short video with no sound). They were artsy, fun, loveable, same as with cinemagraphs. 

So we decided to focus on a capturing moments than the actual very specific job of creating a cinemagraph. The new create flow allows you to take a video and upload it in two steps.

On the first step you can easily add filters and create cinemagraphs.

                     

We haven’t forgotten about cinemagraphs 

We’ve implemented a new stabilizer. For what is was designed for, stabilizing shaky video, it does a great job. You’ll see that it moves the videos more than just up, down, left, right, it can now detect if you turned the phone a little while taking the video.

Also in the new create flow we’ve implemented all the cinemagraph tools in one page, so you don’t have to keep opening the popup and closing as you create the cinemagraph.

The last thing we added was a ‘clear everything’ button during the cinemagraph creation process. If you can’t figure out what to do with the video just tap that button and it’s going to restore the status to how it was before trying to create a cinemagraph.

                     

Other stuff

We’ve added the traditional by now news feed. We’e also added a new tab called Classics where you can (re)discover old awesome kinos.

In conclusion

You should download the new Kinotopic V2. It’s awesome. 

http://kinotopic.com

Write to us at help@kinotopic.com.

I’m back from my month long trip in Silicon Valley. It was awesome, as usual. I met with lots of cool people. Stayed a great living/co-working space called The Glint. And hosted the first Kinotopic meetup, which was awesome.

The only thing I wasn’t able to do is work. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking something. And that was supposed to be out by now, but I guess it should be tomorrow or soon.

That is Kinotopic 1.8 and Kinotopic+ 1.0 (Kinotopic+ is the same thing as Kinotopic with the PRO upgrade). 

The new version adds the possibility of animating the same kino using different directions and speeds. That is the regular plain forward animation, 2x speed forward animation, reverse animation, and 2x reverse animation.

I’m pretty sure you will be able to create freaky looking stuff. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to add more creativity into kinos.

1.7 is out. The new thing is writing on Kinos. You can add your own custom messages that are embedded in the GIF/MOV. Also we’ve added the possibility of finding facebook & twitter friends that are already on Kinotopic.

One new thing is that from now on when you share a kino on Facebook it should be able to play directly there without having to redirect to our website. Hope you enjoy this.

There won’t be a new version of Kinotopic for a couple of weeks as I’m in the Valley and not very productive. At the same time this gives me the opportunity to meet fellow Kinotopians and learn from their experience.

The first Kinotopic Meetup will be Wednesday, April 4th, at Mars Bar & Restaurant on Brannan st. You should join us.

As you’ve probably noticed by now 1.6 is up. It adds offline kino creation and hires kinos in an $1 in-app PRO upgrade. The upgrade is free if you bought Kinotopic a while back.

In the future I’ll add more stuff for PRO users. I did my best to upgrade all the people that paid to PRO, but if for some reason it didn’t go through it means I missed your account. Send me an email to help@kinotopic.com and I’ll get it sorted server-side.

It took a little longer than I expected to upload this version, mostly because I found minor bugs and had to re-upload it a couple of times. In the mean time I finished the next version and I’m ready to upload it hopefully today or tomorrow.

Next week I’m travelling as I’m going back to Silicon Valley. I would love to meet you guys so if you’re in that area please join the Bay Area Kinotopic Meetup.

Random Cool Kino

Dandy.

I want to take a second to say: Thank you for using Kinotopic! 

It’s a pleasure to look at your kinos. I’ve seen so many happy people, and this is what it’s all about. While in a picture you can see someone smile, in a kino you can see someone laugh. You have shown your creativity has no limits.

I bet all the Kinotopic community feels like this. You’re making us feel good and happy. Thank you!