Mar

29

Scrapblog Review

March 29, 2007 |

While webapps have obviously been on the forefront of interesting developments over the last couple of months, it has been a while since I came across a product that I though was more than just evolutionary. Scrapblog is different, though I am sure I (30 year old male) am not the target audience for this and it is not even written in the almighty AJAX. It’s a flash app.

Why do I care about this? Because I think this is the first webapp I will be able to get my mother to use.

Here is why I like it:

  • - no registration to get started - just start working on your blog and register later if you want to publish your creation
  • - the application feels like a desktop app - it mimics the windows menu layout on the top (file, edit, etc.) and is very responsive (thanks to flash, I assume)
  • - the way things just work almost feel as if this were an Apple product
  • - it integrates very well with PhotoBucket, Flickr (including embedded comments), Yahoo Photos and Webshots
  • - even regular photo uploads are very fast - I wonder if the files get compressed before the upload
  • - large choice of good looking templates
  • - uses RSS feeds for notification
  • - slide shows can be embedded in a webpage

Cons:

  • - video upload right now only works trough YouTube
  • - addresses are very cryptic (they look something like this: http://www.scrapblog.com/0E2618CD-96A3/014210DF-4052 <– you can set your own adress in the settings (see comments)
  • - when looking at a blog, the picture and interactive section looks great, but the comment section still looks a bit bare in comparison

Basically, this is a fun application - it is easy to use, but doesn’t feel restrictive. Mike Arrington points out that Scrapblog is entering the crowded niche of online photo slide shows, but that

Scrapblog keeps a distinct niche by offering a more richly designed presentation less like a series photos and more like a hipper version of Powerpoint.

I agree and I wonder if, over time, people will come up with some more creative ways of using this anyway

And of course, I had to try to make a scrapblog myself…. Here is the one I created in about five minutes with photos from a trip to Crater Lake we took took last summer. And here is one that looks a lot better than mine…

And here is me trying out the “Post on Webpage” function:

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2 Comments so far

  1. Omar Ramos on March 29, 2007 8:02 pm

    Thanks for the review. We are working hard to improve scrapblog every day. Just a quick note. You can customize your URL. So instead of having http://www.scrapblog.com/0E2618CD-96A3/014210DF-4052 you can have something like http://www.scrapblog.com/lastpodcast/MyScrapblog. You can edit your personal url in your account settings in the site and your scrapblog url in Scrapblog Settings in the Scrapblog Builder. Hope this helps! Thanks!

  2. Frederic on March 29, 2007 8:05 pm

    Omar - thanks for letting me know about that - I didn’t notice that. I will fix it in the review.

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