Cross-platform: check.

Touch, has one thing going for it right away (besides a great bargain on a good domain name, touch.com) in that it’s immediately available for Android, iOS and BlackBerry. No “Android version coming soon” or “BlackBerry? Why bother?” for them, and that’s a very good thing in terms of encouraging user adoption. That’s mostly because it isn’t entirely new; it was PingChat, but has been rebranded as Touch, along with the introduction of its new “experience” sharing features. But long-standing leaders in the space like WhatsApp Messenger also have cross-platform access covered, and also boast a lot of momentum, so it alone won’t guarantee success.

Group messaging: check.

Another thing Touch has covered is group messaging. You can add people to group chats, see participants at a glance via profile pics, and leave group chats whenever you wish just by swiping to delete the message thread in your main list view. It all works well, and as advertised (though Touch’s servers are having some sporadic trouble at launch, so there’s been a few issues with messages getting through) but you won’t find too much that isn’t available in Facebook Messenger here.

With one-on-one messages, you’ll get “Sent/Delivered/Read/” receipts, just like you would on BlackBerry Messenger. You can’t, however, turn off read receipts like you can on iMessage if you’d rather not let someone know whether you have or haven’t check out what they said.

Photo sharing: check.

Touch’s major changes revolve around “experience sharing.” Essentially, this is photo sharing, wherein you choose a picture from an existing album or take a new one, upload it to Touch and select friends to share with. You also choose a name for the experience, and then friends you share it with can comment. It also reports whether or not your friends have viewed what you share. In this way, Touch sort of competes with Path, or with Instagram, but with a much more private audience, since you handpick individuals to share with.

A capable product in a crowded market

Touch is a good app; it’s cleanly designed, easy to use and strips away unnecessary features and frills to make conversation the real focal point of the experience. But it’s also in a tough spot; I found it hard to find anyone I know using it, despite its having taken over PingChat’s reported 12 million users. Plus, for photo sharing, Path’s gorgeous version 2.0 has it beat in almost every way, besides the ability to be more selective with who sees your photos, and a landscape mode for browsing and composing.

There are some things that work in Touch’s favor, however, including the ability to limit sharing but in a better way than most dedicated private messaging solutions provide. Also, there’s an HTML5 version in the works, which could open up Touch’s cross-platform appeal to a very broad audience, since it’ll allow desktop and all tablet users to participate, too.

Touch has a lot of polish and a lot of promise, and beats the user experience of WhatsApp in my opinion, judging by my trials on Android and iPhone devices. But its staying power will depend on whether or not it can convince more users to jump on board; tough to do at this stage in the group messaging competition.

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If looks could kill

Version 1 of Path wasn’t ugly by any means, but the new Path is positively breathtaking. Little things like the timestamp indicator that floats into view while you scroll through your friends’ activity, and then fades away again when you stop moving, work perfectly. In fact, the small animations when you call up controls, and other bits of visual candy offered by the app all add up to an incredibly pleasurable browsing experience. I mention this up front because it’s that sense of pleasure that is Path’s single-biggest improvement in terms of convincing users to stick around and engage.

Path 2.0 succeeds immediately, without even scratching the surface, by having a surface worth coming back for, time and time again. It’s image-heavy, but not just a straightforward waterfall of pictures; comments and activities notes break up the stream, but never threaten to take over and make browsing paths a text-heavy endeavour.

More friends, but no overload

Path has also upped the max size of your circle, allowing you to add up to 150 friends instead of just 50. It’s a smart change; opening things up altogether would take away Path’s defining feature, taking away its ability to cut through the noise of sites like Twitter and Facebook and offer users a less noisy social networking experience.

The friends limit also makes its similarities to Facebook’s new Timeline feature more apparent. You can pick a cover image, just like in Timeline, and activity presents itself in a time-organized stream very similar to how it does on Facebook. Unlike with FB’s Timeline, however, Path isn’t strewn with apps, updates from relative strangers and other detritus. Its limited circles and limited activity types (location, check-ins with friends, music, simple status messages and photos) makes it so that your stream will stay clean, while still also providing plenty of opportunity for interaction.

Simple

Navigation is handled using the new swipe left/swipe right type interface that has become very popular since first appearing in apps like Twitter, and more recently, Facebook. It’s a good fit, letting you access your own settings and activity with a swipe of one finger to the right, and checking in on friends (plus finding more) with a swipe to the left.

You can add new contacts from your own address book, from Facebook or by inviting them, or by searching for them by name. A Twitter account tie-in would be nice, but for this kind of sharing (closer friends, relatives) I think the options are effective as is.

Areas where it might be too simple include the lack of a landscape navigation mode, which I think could add a lot in terms of making picture viewing more flexible, especially for landscape shots. The app also cries out for an iPad version, where it’s easy to see the interface being even more of a pleasure to navigate. I wouldn’t be surprised if all these options were in the pipeline, however, so it may just be a matter of time before we see them addressed.

The Path to greatness

From checking out who has seen which photos and sharing simple feedback via icons, to letting people know the music you’re playing right now through direct integration with your iPod app, Path no longer feels like a closed book where not much goes on. Instead, it comes across as a much, much more enjoyable version of Facebook, with an interface worthy of design awards and sharing options that actually let a user feel like a simple set of advertising data to be mined. The only time you’ll run into any commerce in the app is when you use the built-in camera, which presents you with live filters, four of which are available as paid upgrades through in-app purchases at $0.99 a piece.

If Path sticks to this kind of freemium setup, as founder Dave Morin suggested it would in conversation with our own Colleen Taylor, while also keeping the base product this appealing and easy to use, I think it will become a shining example of how you can turn a so-so idea into a great one through intelligent redesign.

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Of course, all of that comes with a price, and a recurring one at that. Carousel is a subscription service that ordinarily costs $99 per year (or $9.99 per month) but that is available at an introductory price of $59.99 (or $5.99 per month) annually. Luckily, Carousel also comes with a 30-day free trial subscription so you can see if you’re into what the service is selling.

Isn’t this just Photo Stream?

It’s understandable to assume that Carousel and Photo Stream are basically the same. Both advertise the ability to sync your photos across devices. But Carousel is actually quite a bit more sophisticated. It offers impressive yet easy-to-use editing tools (which use the same tech found in Adobe’s Lightroom program) on any device you happen to be using, as well as ample sharing options.

Editing

Carousel’s editing choices are impressive. There are a number of quick-hit filters you can apply with a single click (17 in total), which act like Instragram filters to give your pictures a stylish and distinctive look. You can also quickly adjust white balance, exposure and contrast (including using auto settings for the first two), and you can crop and rotate your photos on any platform (iPhone, iPad and Mac all have similar but specifically tailored interfaces).

All editing is nondestructive, too, so you can peel back effects at any time and restore your original image. This also allows you to compare various effects with others when applying filters. It’s remarkably powerful and very easy to use.

Sharing

Photo Stream is great for automatically keeping all of your photo libraries the same, but it doesn’t offer you much in the way of sharing photos beyond the service, outside letting you email, tweet or message images. Carousel also lets you share individual photos directly via email and Twitter and also via Facebook and Tumblr.

Also, you can share an entire Carousel (you can create up to five on one account) with a person or up to five people. Users will be notified via email that they’ve received access, and they can then check out the full gallery by downloading and installing one of the Carousel apps on any platform. It’s a huge advantage over Photo Stream in my opinion, and one many MobileMe Gallery users are likely missing from Apple’s iCloud offering. You and people you share Carousels with can also tag images as favorites, so that you can see which they like most and vice versa.

Control

Photo Stream has taken a lot of flak for the absence of a delete option for single photos (you have to reset your stream completely to erase them), and Carousel doesn’t make the same mistake. You can individually delete any photo you add; just hit the share button and a big red delete button also appears.

You also don’t automatically add every photo you take to Carousel, as you do when Photo Stream is turned on for iOS devices. Instead, you select them from your phone’s image gallery and camera roll. Imported photos are then grouped by date (something I do wish could be tweaked). For some who appreciate the automatism of Photo Stream, this will be a drawback, but for people who want control over what does and doesn’t go to the cloud, it’s a plus.

Great service, but is it worth it?

For a just-launched service, I was amazed that Carousel was so easy to pick and jump into, and that it worked out of the box exactly as advertised. There were no launch-day hiccups or syncing issues, and inviting others to check out my shared galleries worked smoothly, too. There’s no doubt, for me, that Adobe has produced something better than Photo Stream (it feels like what Photo Stream should have been), but the only question that remains is, Is it something I’d be willing to pay for long term?

There are lots of free options for sharing and storing photos, and even basic services like Flickr can accomplish a lot of what I want to do with Carousel’s sharing features. But Carousel really impressed with how slick it is and how much control it provides a user over what gets posted and who can see it. Adobe also did a great job of taking the most important Lightroom features and packaging them in a simple, accessible way for the average consumer.

In the end, I’m leaning toward signing up because I can already tell this will be the perfect tool for sharing photos with my far-flung family members in a more private way than other alternatives, and because in addition to the existing iOS and Mac apps, Adobe has promised that Android and Windows versions are in the pipeline, too. True cross-platform photo management, editing and sharing that lives in the cloud and works well is definitely something I can get on board with.

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Color will add some useful features that make it more than just another Facebook photo browser. It lets you Like and comment on photos, just like you can on the web, but it also introduces the ability to create and share group photo albums with multiple people, which is more than Facebook currently offers through its own service.

It also lets you view your Feed and the new Timeline history of activity as pure photo streams. And there’s the “visit” feature, which lets you request access to live-streaming video from either friends, or anyone who has their permission settings arranged such that you can see their content.

You can request visits whenever you want; someone doesn’t have to be online. If they aren’t, they’ll receive a push notification from Color on their iPhone (or Android device). Live streams initiated through the app can be viewed either through the app itself, or on the Facebook website. It sounds a little bit like the new approach Google is taking with its ability to broadcast through Hangouts. It’s not exactly video chat, and it’s more interactive than straightforward video posting. It doesn’t currently allow video recording or audio, but that could come in future versions.

Color’s problem was that it was too ephemeral and too small. It couldn’t muster a large enough group, even at major events, to be relevant to any users. Facebook’s network means it shouldn’t have a problem when it comes to users. But its differentiating factors still depend on being in the moment; without the real-time elements of visiting and live streaming, it seems like little more than a Facebook photo browser.

The new version of Color will remain in private beta for a while longer, and then move into a larger, invite-based testing phase. The broadcast angle is interesting, and could make Color a very useful Facebook feature. We’ll see if Color can thrive using the network of another, where it failed trying to curate its own.

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Live filters

Filters can be applied before you take a photo in Instagram 2.0.

One big change introduced in Instagram 2.0 is that you can now add filters in real time as you take photos. Live filters can be enabled by tapping the eye icon from the picture-taking interface, and are instantly applied to the live preview of the image visible through your iPhone’s camera lens. It’s a nice addition, made more so because it’s optional: You can still take a normal picture and add filters after, like in the previous version, or switch to a different filter after the fact, too.

Once you’ve actually snapped your shot, there are a few seconds of processing time, and then you can again cycle through the available filters to make sure you’re happy with your choice. Cycling through the available effects was lightning fast in this new version. It literally feels like I’m using a next-gen device when compared with the previous iteration of Instagram.

Live tilt-shift and borders

You can modify the tilt-shift effect to be applied to photos using multi-touch gestures.

Filters aren’t the only things you can now apply in advance. You can also add and modify tilt-shift effects before you snap a picture. Just tap the tear drop icon at the top of the new camera interface, choose either a line or single-spot based effect, and then tap, drag or rotate the live image preview to modify where the in-focus area will appear and in what orientation. It makes it much easier to frame your shots in advance, and again, you can remove or change the effect even after the image is taken in the same way you can modify filters.

You also have the option to turn the border on or off for any effect you’re using while in camera mode before you take a picture. It’s another simple change that makes it easier to frame shots. Borders can also be removed or added after the fact once a picture is taken, which is a nice improvement over the inflexible border mechanism in earlier versions.

New filters

Instagram has added four new filters in this update, too: Amaro, Rise, Hudson, and Valencia. These are a little more subtle in effect than many of the other Instagram filters, but they look good and definitely add to the app’s existing repertoire in useful ways. I especially like the Hudson style, with its subtle vignetting and slightly cooled colors.

Overall

Instagram’s changes to the core in-app camera are the biggest highlights of this update, and really do a great job of improving the aspect of the app that makes it so much fun to begin with. But developer Burbn also added some great tweaks that aren’t necessarily as apparent, like higher resolution photos (up to 1936×1936 on the iPhone 4 and 1536×1536 on the iPhone 3GS) and easy one-click photo rotation that all add up to a more pleasant experience overall.

New users should find Instagram 2.0 more accessible than its predecessor, and existing fans will love the app’s added flexibility and performance improvements. For an app with no shortage of biters trying to steal its thunder, this is a great update and a solid reminder of why it leads the pack. It’s still iPhone-only, though, so Android users will have to continue watching from the sidelines as Apple fans have all the fun.

Instagram’s CEO Kevin Systrom will be speaking at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference, September 26 and 27, in San Francisco.

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Like Instagram and its ilk, Badger is a social photo-sharing tool that allows you to create a profile, snap pics with your iPhone’s camera and share them with other users. Yet there’s an extra layer to Badger’s sharing model: It associates shared photos around themes or contextual similarities, known as badges (hence the app’s name).

Badges are user-generated, so you can create one for basically any situation you can think of. For example, “Apple Store Planking.” Users can then snap a photo of themselves planking, and either search for the term to find an existing related badge, or create one themselves, and attach it to their photo. It’ll then be displayed in a stream along with other photos bearing that badge. Badger Co-Founder and COO Jacek Grebski explained that it’s basically a topic-specific, crowd-sourced photoblog that works in real-time.

Because the nature of badges is relatively free-form, they can be about pretty much anything. Badger supports location-tagging, so you could create a badge specifically for your city or neighborhood. Or you can make it very broadly applicable, like the “I Love Lamp” badge, one of three featured in the app right now. As you might have guessed, it features pictures of various lamps.

Not all of the app’s badges have so seemingly random a purpose, however. For example, Grebski pointed out that there’s a “bike-napping” badge, where “users took photos of bike theft, resulting in a heat map of bike crime in NY.” Because Badger is location-aware, it can actually be used to crowd-source some pretty interesting data around topics that is also locally relevant.

If you’re thinking that sounds like it might appeal to some businesses as I did after testing out the app, you’re right on the money. Grebski explained that the app was actually designed with brands in mind from the outset. Badger is launching its first partner campaign on Friday, wherein motif 365, an NYC-based accessory company, is giving away a handbag to the best photo taken in the “Street Style” badge. Because it provides clear data about audience reach, location and engagement, if this kind of campaign proves successful, it could hold serious appeal for small and medium-sized local businesses.

Badger is the offspring of the web-based photo sharing game of the same name by Badger Media, which was founded in Dec. 2010 in NYC. Badger received seed investment from Launch Pad Ignition 2011, LLC, a Tech Stars-affiliated incubator based in New Orleans. The new iPhone app works with the website, where you can view uploads, badges, comments and interactive maps of the content from the app and other sources.

Not all of the kinks were yet worked out of the Badger app when I took it for my trial run. Photos taken in portrait mode on the iPhone, for example, were squished down to fit Badger’s default landscape orientation. But Grebski says improvements are on the way, including feature additions like “point systems” and “a concrete plan for more engaging elements to foster submissions.” The core idea of Badger, however, is smart even without those additional elements, and the early implementation shows lots of promise. A network where every photo shared is linked to a specific context, and one which can be used in meaningful ways by both users and businesses, is definitely an idea worth paying attention to.

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Let’s go over how to import your iPhone photos to the two programs that come with the Mac, Image Capture and iPhoto. I’ll be covering using your iPhone with Aperture and Adobe Lightroom in a later post.

Determining what program, if any, opens when you connect your iPhone

Some people like having an application open when you connect your iPhone; others hate it. Regardless of which camp you fall into, it’s easy to set what program (if any) launches when you connect your iPhone.

1. With your iPhone connected, open Image Capture (it should be pre-installed in your Applications folder by default).
2. You will see your iPhone under devices. Click the iPhone icon.
3. Down at the bottom, you will see “Connecting this iPhone opens…” with a pull-down menu under it.
   
4. Select what application you want to open. Choosing “No Application” will naturally open no applications.

Image Capture

Image Capture is a hidden gem. For iPhone users, Image Capture lets you do two things very easily: mass-delete unwanted photos, or import them to a folder of your choosing. This eliminates the need to store them in a program like iPhoto.

Connect your iPhone to your Mac and open up Image Capture. You’ll see a screen similar to the one below:

From here, simply select the photos you want to do something with. If you want to delete them, select them and choose the delete icon; it’s the red circular icon on the bottom to the left of “Import To.” If you want to import them, select the pull-down to the right of “Import To” and choose a location. Also, if you want to both delete images and import them to a program like iPhoto or Aperture, you can do that here.

Image Capture is my preferred way of deciding which iPhoto images I get rid of. In the end, I keep very few. They could either be shots that totally failed, or a reference photo from a store, or a photo that was a one-time “wish you were here” photo. The ability to delete unwanted photos, and send ones you do like to iPhoto or Aperture is great. Unfortunately, if you use Lightroom it won’t show up in the import list.

iPhoto

Since iPhoto comes with every Mac sold by Apple, it’s a logical favorite for sorting and storing photos. Even though Lightroom is my post-processing tool of choice, I still use iPhoto to sync images to my iOS devices as well as store general images — all my desktop wallpapers, images used in presentations, and images grabbed off the web.

To import photos into iPhoto, connect your iPhone and open iPhoto. You will be greeted with a screen similar to this one:

Select the photos you want to import and click on Import, or Import All if you want to just take everything. Fair Warning about iPhoto: if you keep “Split Events” checked, it will auto-create Events based on the preference you set in iPhoto. If you have a lot of pictures spread over a long period of time, make sure you uncheck that, since it will split your photos into a huge number of separate events Naturally, if you do have an Event’s worth of photos (two weddings, for example), feel free to split the events. Based on my usage, I take one or two photos at a time and forget to import them, so it isn’t useful to have iPhoto automatically divide them based on dates.

Using your iPhone for geotagging

One nice benefit of taking photos with your iPhone is by default, it tags all photos with your location. My DSLR does not have a GPS, but I’ve gotten in the habit of taking one or two photos my iPhone during a shoot. After I import both the DSLR and iPhoto images and merge the Events, it’s a simple two-step process to copy the GPS tag to all of the photos.

1. Select the photo with the GPS info, right-click and choose Copy.
2. select all the photos you want the GPS tag applied to, go to the Edit menu and choose “Paste Location.”

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The aluminum case itself features a tripod mount and hooks for a pro camera strap, so you can wear it around your neck and take night shots like a true pro. Just think of how jealous your Instagram followers will be when you snap some quality wildlife pics with your $3,000 telephoto lens. You might doubt the ability of the iPhone 4′s 5-megapixel camera to deliver the goods, even with your expensive SLR lens collection attached, but the Photojojo demo pics are actually pretty impressive.

As with previous prototypes, this solution runs up against the fact that you can’t replicate an internal mirror system with the iPhone’s built-in camera. However, it should be better than just your iPhone 4 acting on its own, especially when you’re trying to use digital zoom to capture a far-away subject. You could probably also shoot some pretty cool HD video with this lens adapter.

As of this writing, the check-out process is down but a fix is in the works, according to a Photojojo.com service rep. Maybe it couldn’t keep up with overwhelming demand for the iPhone 4 SLR mount. Anyone thinking about a purchase? I have a bag full of seldom used Canon-mount lenses that suggest it might be worth considering.

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Let’s just get this out of the way: If Facebook releases this app, it will get downloaded, and used, a lot. Photo sharing is one of Facebook’s most-used features, with around 6 billion photos uploaded each month, or approximately one for each person on earth. Even third-party apps that aren’t particularly well-designed that plug into Facebook’s photo feature do well, like iLoader for Facebook, currently at number 15 in the top paid Photography apps in the App Store.

Facebook also seems to be paying attention to what users are liking about other photo sharing apps like Instagram, Color, Path and WITH, since it appears to incorporate friend tagging, likes, comments and other social features that may go above and beyond what these apps already provide. Providing those features on the existing network means Facebook won’t have to convince users to sign up for something new, or depend on the kindness of strangers as WITH must do with Twitter, since it uses Twitter’s network as the sole source of its membership.

There’s no debating that consumers would use a standalone Facebook photo sharing app (which could become part of the site’s primary iOS app down the road, according to TechCrunch). But would it spell the end for competitors? Yes and no. I’d argue that it will hurry the demise of apps that missed the mark to begin with, such as Color, which reportedly saw only five photos posted during a particularly busy time at last week’s WWDC, an event that hosts thousands of iPhone developers. Color also just saw the departure of President and Co-Founder Peter Pham, according to reports Wednesday morning, which is never a good sign for a startup this early in.

But stickier apps like Instagram should be able to stay afloat, even with Facebook throwing up a huge wake. The iPhone-only app recently hit the 5 million user milestone, with roughly 26 million photos taken each month. It’s a far cry from Facebook’s volume, but consider that Instagram is just eight months old, with only a single mobile client on a single platform. In the same way that people don’t use Facebook to the exclusion of Twitter, or vice versa, I expect Instagram users wouldn’t jump ship if and when this Facebook photo sharing app launches. Like Twitter, Instragram offers a different set of experiences and expectations, maybe precisely because you’re extending beyond your normal social graph.

Will a Facebook offering shake up the space? No doubt, and it will be very hard for apps having trouble attracting an audience as it is, and for new apps coming up to come up with interesting ways to differentiate themselves. But I don’t think it’ll eclipse all possible competition. What do you think? Would you still use Instagram or other clients if Facebook offered something functionally similar?

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Basically, WITH lets you tag another Twitter user (or users), and optionally take a photo of or with said user, then post it to both the WITH network and Twitter itself. You can also like the posts of other users, and use free and premium (available through in-app purchase) filters to add Instagram-style effects to the photos you include. The more you check in with specific people, the higher they rise in your profile. If you get close enough with friends through multiple check-ins, you can receive “special benefits,” according to Path. You can also follow and unfollow people on WITH, independent of whether or not you follow them on Twitter. There’s also a with.me web-based presence for the app, although at the moment it just points you to the App Store.

WITH is more useful than Path, because it doesn’t have any arbitrary limit to the size of your network. But WITH is also far more dependent on Twitter than Path, or Instagram, which is probably closer in concept. That’s a strength because it lets you sign on quickly and easily (you do have to provide your email in addition to your Twitter credentials, so it isn’t quite one step), but it also means that in many ways, WITH feels like a cool user-created feature for Twitter, rather than an independent, standalone product. Twitter’s @ replies and hashtags started out from similar, albeit more organic, roots.

WITH seems a little rough around the edges (figuring out how to post took a little while to figure out; it’s the person icon at the bottom in case you were wondering), but it seems like a more generally appealing product than Path. Plus, now that Apple has announced system-wide integration for Twitter in iOS 5, the fact that it relies on Twitter for its existence might not be such a bad thing, though Twitter itself is racking up a nasty reputation when it comes to playing nice with outside devs. We could see more apps like WITH betting heavy on Twitter now that it has the Cupertino seal of approval, however, so we’ll have to wait and see how the social network handles more attempts to exploit its services.

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Carousel doesn’t allow you to use photos or take pictures and upload them from your desktop, but it does let you view your stream, view the stream of other Instagram users, and like and comment on individual photos. You can also view existing comments and likes, and see a larger version of images in the stream using the instant preview function built in to OS X.

You can also easily save any photos to your hard drive, copy URLs and view photos in your default browser. Carousel even provides location information when users check-in with the photos they upload to Instagram, and access to the Popular stream of public images as well. In short, Carousel gives you all the functional features you could ask for short of image posting, which is not yet supported by the Instagram API, and therefore not available to third-party developers. Mobelux co-founder Jeff Rock told me that if Instagram decides to allow photo posting, the Carousel team will definitely consider an adding the feature at a later date.

But Carousel doesn’t just do what Instagram does on the Mac in a workmanlike fashion; it actually looks really good doing it, too. The minimal single column interface displays a waterfall of your feeds, and does so using one of four themes (bonus points if you can identify the source of the theme names). The themes are well designed, and all of them look terrific with the old-school polaroid-type photo frames used to display each picture. Carousel also can auto-update with a frequency of your choosing, and display a dock badge and growl notification when new photos come in.

Rock told me that the design was key to Carousel’s creation. The app was created because Mobelux “wanted an elegant solution to view our feeds on the Mac.” He also articulated that it was particularly important that the app “took up a minimal desktop footprint, had character and felt wonderful to use.” It does indeed meet those standards.

Right now, you can download a free trial of Carousel via the Mobelux site. The trial lasts 15 days, and provides unrestricted functionality during that time. Carousel currently costs $4.99 to purchase, but that’s listed as a temporary, half-off introductory price. Mobelux has also announced that Carousel will soon be available through the Mac App Store, and Rock told me that pricing will always be the same no matter where you purchase. 

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The success of Fotopedia’s earlier apps in this genre seem to suggest that consumers are attracted to the idea of virtual vacations. The company’s prior titles: Memory of Colors, Heritage and National Parks (each of which presents a photo exhibit around a particular set of locations or themes) have been downloaded more than 2 million times to date, and the apps attract around 600,000 unique visitors each month. And Fotopedia Senior Vice President Christophe Daligualt thinks those visitors are spending quality time with the app.

“People spend on average 22 minutes per session in our apps,” Daligault says. “This tells us there is huge potential. Think of it as entertainment. Not as addictive as games but probably more satisfying and certainly less frustrating.” Fotopedia’s worldwide appeal is fairly broad, too, with nearly even distribution across North America (32 percent), Europe (33 percent) and Asia (23 percent).

But the new Fotopedia Paris app is different. While it resembles the others in interface and layout, this time around you can choose from a number of pre-selected tours or build your own “excursions” by selecting your favorite photos. The app then builds an interactive map that provides some geographical perspective of your virtual tour, which is handy in case you ever want to make the trip for real. And Paris is only the start. Daligault explained that “Paris is only the first city,” and that Fotopedia has plans to “expand in ways most people would not expect.” When asked about additional possible social features, such as the ability to share directly through the app, Daligault admitted this is an option they’re pursuing, but that Fotopedia wants to be very particular about the way it works that angle:

Saying that there are many photo sharing apps today would be an understatement. The questions we are trying to answer is what is it that is so personally relevant to you that you’d want to share it with the world, what is it that you’d really want to see from others and how to make that interaction smooth and satisfying without merely replicating things that already exist.

As with the company’s previous apps, the photography in Fotopedia’s apps is top-notch. You can also share photos (outwards only, unlike the features Daligault hints at above) from the app to your contacts via email, Facebook and Twitter, and save them to your device in the Photos app for use as wallpaper or however else you wish to use it. That assumes, of course, you respect the Creative Commons license that governs the use of each photo featured in the app. All images featured in the app are contributed by people through Fotopedia.com, which offers open community photo sharing. Daligault says that Fotopedia is hoping users who enjoy the Paris app will be inspired to join up and “contribute photos of their own city, neighborhood or country and share their favorite spots and sights.”

Positioning the iPad as a coffee table book replacement is an easy sell, and Fotopedia’s apps work very well in that capacity. But the iPhone and iPad are more than just digital book replacements, and Daligault is quick to point out why they represent the perfect platform for Fotopedia’s apps:

We are building a brand, we care a lot about all the interactions people will have with our apps. Apple gets media, they are driving profound changes throughout all the media industries and everything is very well thought through. This is the ideal platform. The quality of the display and the touch interface are superb. But it’s not just the OS or the devices, it is the entire eco-system and customer experience, from the Apple store, to the App Store.

Daligault admits that the Fotopedia team is a bunch of “fan boys,” and that a number of other former Apple staffers are among their ranks, in addition to ex-CTO Hullot, but the fact remains that iOS devices are still the best way to reach audiences. And the revenue potential that represents is not something that’s lost on Daligault, either. He closed our email interview with a few words regarding the company’s business model, by noting that Fotopedia’s audience is “becoming very appealing for certain brands,” and that the company is “currently exploring different possibilities for partnerships and sponsoring but we are very careful as we want to do it right.”

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Previous evidence regarding an iOS Photo Stream feature, which came by way of earlier digging through iOS 4.3 code, appeared back in January. Basically, the system seems to work by allowing users to create publicly viewable albums which will automatically update on other users’ devices, so long as those devices are subscribed to and have the proper permissions to view the stream.

The new discovery shows the system is largely already in place throughout iOS, with Apple likely only needing to flick a switch to turn it on in the next major update of its mobile software platform. It also shows that Photo Streams should be available to third-party apps, and that apps will also potentially be able to publish directly to shared Streams, building into iOS a system-wide, photo-sharing social network that may compete with the likes of Instagram, Path and Color. In fact, if Apple makes social photo sharing available to all, built-in and easy to use, those apps may have a hard time staying afloat. HDR photo apps aren’t exactly burning up the charts since Apple baked that into iOS 4.1, for example.

Apple is also thought to be working on a major revision of its MobileMe cloud services package. The new MobileMe is rumored to be free, and include a number of social networking features, including a “Find my Friends” Google Latitude-type service. It could be that Photo Stream hasn’t yet been released because it ties in tightly with an overhauled MobileMe, so both services need to launch at the same time. In fact, it’s almost a lock that photos shared this way would be stored in the cloud (device-to-device always-on sharing isn’t practical in terms of battery life), but whether or not it would fall under the brand umbrella of MobileMe specifically is another question altogether.

iOS needs to deliver something big to jumpstart iPhone growth in the wake of Android competition, especially if Apple isn’t planning on unveiling new hardware in June (something I still think is unlikely). Built-in, system-wide social sharing features that turn iOS ownership into social network membership is precisely the kind of thing that could shake up the market, especially if Apple makes the smart move and provides such features free for all device owners.

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• Why Color Is More Than “Yet Another Photo-Sharing App”
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Color also has some influential people behind it. Founder Bill Nguyen is the man who sold music streaming service LaLa to Apple in 2009, and he has a history of successfully building and selling other companies, too. And Color recently brought on board DJ Patil, who was the chief scientist at LinkedIn.

The app itself works well and looks good, with an intuitively designed minimal interface, but you’d be mistaken for thinking you’re somehow not using it properly. It only really works if there are a group of people in your immediate surroundings using the app simultaneously. Otherwise, you’ll see little more than a steady stream of whatever you yourself happen to be capturing with your iPhone’s camera, because the app is limited to showing images from a highly local area.

Color is playing with solid core concepts, even beyond the trend-chasing aspects I mention above. Photo and video sharing among friends is clearly a proven winner, as is evident from Facebook’s success. And the app lowers the barrier to entry (though not necessarily to actual use, as you’ll see below) more than any existing social app by making the only login requirement your first name (no passwords, no sign-ups). But even that doesn’t save it from feeling badly like an idea in search of a problem.

The app first goes wrong by requiring you take a picture before you can use it. To some degree, that makes sense since the sharing mechanism is so simple, but in contrast to the simplicity of requiring only a user’s first name to sign up, asking for a photo and not letting you choose an existing image on your handset means many users who aren’t in a position to take one or just don’t feel like it might shut the app down and never open it again. And those who do satisfy this early requirement might be no less put-off by their next experience: You may find that no one around you — within 150 feet — is sharing photos, and the app appears to offer next to nothing.

The alternative case is not desirable either: Nearby people are sharing photos, and you’re inundated with images of complete strangers, along with the realization that those same strangers can see the self-portrait you just snapped, too, without much warning from the app. In both cases, I think many will be put-off enough to stay clear for good.

It’s possible Color has more appeal among the teenage users Mark Zuckerberg talked about when explaining the idea behind Facebook’s expanded messaging service, and I’m in a category of users who just doesn’t get it. But I think it’s more likely this is a prime example of how, when it comes to apps, 1+1+1 does not always equal 3. An app can’t just hope to profit by being at the intersection of a number of promising mobile trends. Developers still have to think intelligently about how those trends integrate, and remember that user experience, especially the one following first launch, is still the key to wide app adoption. Color fails this test, and as such, it definitely isn’t going to be the next Facebook, or even the next Instagram for that matter.

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Apple’s replacement for .Mac has had a very rocky start, and has a long way to go before its ready to compete with free alternatives. Many users do not want to move away from MobileMe because of the deep integration with the Mac desktop, while others are reluctant because its hard to find another single service that provides all of the services that MobileMe does. If the latest outage has you ready to jump ship, here’s a guide to making the break.

Mail: Gmail

Making the transition to Gmail is very easy. Gmail allows you to use POP3 to download all of your existing mail from MobileMe into Gmail, and Gmail also allows you to send email as yourname@me.com allowing you time to migrate slowly. With instant search, integrated chat, nearly infinite storage, and an extremly fast interface, making the switch to Gmail not only replaces MobileMe Mail, it makes your email overwhelmingly more enjoyable.

Calendar: Google Calendar

Using the mail substitution above, its a simple click away to use the excellent Google Calendar. The web interface is excellent, but if you are an iCal user, Google Calendar provides a very simple way to migrate all of your existing calendars off of MobileMe. 

First, create blank calendars on Google Calendar to mirror each MobileMe calendar you use today. Next, simply follow the instructions here to sync your Google Calendar to iCal. Finally, drag and drop your calendar events from the local iCal calendar to the newly added Google Calendar. Once all of the calendar events are moved over, delete each of the iCal calendars. Give Google a second to sync everything up to their servers and then check the web interface. All of your calendars should be available.

Address Book: Plaxo

Plaxo not only syncs your address book contacts to their web service, it also keeps your contact information current with others who use their service. Plaxo includes a plugin for the Mac’s Address Book that makes the sync painless. It can also sync to Gmail’s contacts, Outlook, and a host of other services.

iPhone Bonus! If you’ve got an iPhone, you can sync Address Book directly with Google, bypassing Plaxo. There’s also a clever hack to enable this ability without an iPhone, but, being unsupported, the next Mac OS update will probably wipe it out.

Gallery: Flickr/Picasa

There’s certainly no shortage of photo sharing web sites available.  Crowd favorite Flickr is a great choice, and with the $24 FlickrExport tool from Connected Flow, you can upload directly from iPhoto.  Flickr also has a ton of social media capabilities, and the ability to integrate into other online services.  If you’d like to keep with one provider as much as possible, Google’s Picasa is another great photo sharing site, which also has a free iPhoto plugin to upload photos.

iDisk: Amazon S3

This is another area where there is certainly no shortage of competition but I ultimately chose Amazon S3 + Cyberduck for my online storage needs. Box.net is another strong option; however, my initial tests found very poor WebDav capability. Amazon S3 can be a little complicated to set up, but at only 15 cents per gigabyte, the price is hard to beat, and there is an active developer community creating new applications for accessing S3 all the time.

Sync: Mozy

Mozy provides 2 gigabytes free online storage, and their Mac client integrates easily with the desktop. The utility installs as a menu item, and offers pre-configured “Backup Sets” for many common items like Address Book, Apple Mail, Keychains, and Firefox or Safari bookmarks. It also offers to backup your entire Documents, Music, and Movies folders. With the Backup Sets feature I set up a custom Yojimbo set by selecting all of the files in ~/Library/Application Support/Yojimbo. Mozy also allows you to specify a specific file or directory that you would like backed up.

Sync Bonus! If you are using Firefox as your main browser, Foxmarks can sync both your bookmarks and passwords between multiple machines, regardless of operating system. I use it to keep my browsers in sync between my Mac at home, and my Windows XP laptop at work.

iWeb Hosting:  Google Sites

Google Sites gives you a very simple and easy way to setup a web site for sharing stories, photos, and movies with friends and family. While not as all encompassing as an iWeb site, it still gets the job done. If Sites is not really what you are looking for, consider setting up a free blog site with WordPress.com. If sticking with iWeb is a necessity, simple, low volume web hosting with a company like 1and1 or Dreamhost is relatively inexpensive, and can give you full control over the content, look, and feel of your site.

Breaking away from MobileMe is not a decision to be taken lightly, but by taking an objective look at exactly what you want out of an online service, the move can be relatively painless, and surprisingly enjoyable.

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