Kinotopic

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!

1.5, the version with filters it out. I’ve been obsessing a lot more these past two days to see how filters and higher frame rate impact the kinos. Up until now I’m pretty satisfied with the results, but that’s for you guys to judge.

It’s been a good time to reflect about the screw-ups in the previous versions, and how they could have been avoided. Which require their own post in the near future.

What now? Leaving aside new features, improvements, bug fixes, the question that remains is: are kinos/cinemagraphs a fad or the next new medium? Are they solving a real problem? Or are they an exponential improvement over something that’s currently being done? What’s missing? I feel like one piece of the puzzle eludes me that would be transform it from something cool into something great. If you know what it is drop a comment.

Will write about the new version once it’s uploaded.

Random Cool Kino

There have been a number of coffee kinos uploaded. But this one makes me want to lick my laptop screen. Make by John.

Tuesday night one of Kinotopic’s beta testers discovered a bug in the filters version that could have been triggered on some videos when using iOS 4.3. Even though the new version should have been up today (Thursday) I decided then to reject the old version and upload one with the fix.

If there’s one thing I learned is that once a version is in the App Store there’s nothing you can do about it. Even if the fix is just a small if() you still have to wait 7 days, while some users might get a bad experience. The next ETA is Monday the 20th. You should know that I’m really looking forward to seeing what you wonderful kinotopians do with the filters.

On some other news, the new version will also include smoother kinos. I’ve increased the fps to 13 (double) to iPhone 4 and 4S, and iPad users. iPhone 3GS users will get kinos with 10fps, while iPod Touch users will remain at 7. 

I’m almost ready with the next version after filters. It contains two features that people have been asking me for a while. Looking forward to having that up too.

Random Cool Kino

Made by the awesome DocPop it’s a kino with higher FPS, noise, and one of the filters (I think). You should also follow DocPop on twitter as he loves photography. (In the future I’m hoping to include links at each random Kino).

I’ve just pushed the version with filters. 12 filters + optional noise on all. Interesting fact: they’ve all been named based on wonderful people that sent us emails to help@kinotopic.com. ETA: 16th of February.

Random Interesting Kino

Just WOW.

This past week I have been travelling, so unfortunately I haven’t been able to work as much as I would have wanted. 

At the same time I couldn’t stop thinking about Kinotopic, and managed to not sleep a couple of nights and continue working on filters. The new version is coming along nice, I still have to put some finishing touches and think a little bit about optimization.

If everything goes well I’m going to upload it tomorrow night. There will be 12 filters, yet unnamed.

The only catch is that they will only work on iOS5. I thought really hard about this, and in fact did an initial implementation that would have worked on iOS4. However Core Image is the future, and probably will be the fastest implementation because it uses the GPU. Unlike Instagram/other photo apps, Kinotopic has to apply filters to 12-16 images (I don’t want to diss Instagram though, I believe they can do realtime filters).

I’m also trying to give more control of ‘Featured’ to users. A couple of times a day (depending on developing time and real life) I look at all the kinos and promote some. However as the community grows I would like you to select them by liking. In fact, most of the coolest and most liked kinos were picked by you.

I already have ideas for the next two versions of Kinotopic, but more on that later.

Random Cool Kino

Badass.

Just uploaded a new version of Kinotopic. If everything goes well the ETA in the App Store is 7 days from now, the 2nd of February. Below is the changelog.

Next: filters. What are your favorite ones?

A lot of people have been writing to me and asking about Kinotopic so I thought it would be good idea to have a place where I can give updates, rant, and talk to everybody about the app.

So what’s the status right now? There’s a version waiting for review for about 5 days that fixes a really annoying crash. It should be up by Thursday.

I’m also a day away with having a new version of the app that adds comments to kinos, ability to follow people, ability to disable the reverse effect, account editing, and more. If I upload it on Thursday it’s probably going to stay in review for another week.

At the same time I’m going to start working on the new-new version. It will be about spicing things up in the kinos, though that’s still currently a work in progress. One feature that people have been requesting is saving directly to the camera roll, so I’m going to try to implement that too.

I see kino’s as a way to tell short stories. What can I make to make this story telling medium more powerful? More about this as I start working on the new-new version and start discovering things.

Random Cool Kino

Not a lot of people liked it, but I love how the liquid moves even though the bottle is static. The colors are perfect too.