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Scrapblog Review

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:

tags: scrapblog, blogging

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!

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

Thanks for the News and Accept Comments for backlinks for my site