Use your “good name at SmugMug” to login at fotoflot.com

beacazil

fotoflōt is a unique new product for displaying photographic prints. The system eliminates glass in front of the photo, minimizing glare, and uses magnets to simplify mounting and changing pictures. It "floats" the photo off the wall, giving an impression of depth.

We recently launched fotoflot.com as the place where you can easily “fotoflōt” your digital images. Designed as a “Rich Internet Application” we have integrated the SmugMug API into the experience so that SmugMug customers have access to all their albums and images directly from fotoflot.com. We also have added tools to prepare the images for best fit with the selected fotoflōt products.

And the best thing: no need to upload images to fotoflot.com. Your “good name at SmugMug” is enough. Try it out and let us know what you think – simply use your nickname/password to have immediate access to all your images.

Go directly to fotoflot.com or find more detail in ClubSmug at SmugMug.com/ClubSmug.

Kevin G

Works great!

Now how do my clients login? Lol.

I guess us owners have to do the ordering on our own?

beacazil

Kevin G wrote:

Works great!

Now how do my clients login? Lol.

I guess us owners have to do the ordering on our own?

Hmm. I had never thought about that as a feature, Kevin. But we are in the process of gathering requirements for the next few releases. We have thought about easy shipping address management for professionals so that you can order products to be drop shipped to your clients without too much hassle.

How would you envision a client login to work? Lots of questions come to mind like:

• Would you let clients crop images?
• And what is the granularity of access control? Individual images, single album, groups of albums?
• ...

devbobo

Nice work Jürgen, the integration is looking really nice

It was great meeting you guys briefly the other month.

Cheers,

David

jfriend

beacazil wrote:

fotoflōt is a unique new product for displaying photographic prints. The system eliminates glass in front of the photo, minimizing glare, and uses magnets to simplify mounting and changing pictures. It "floats" the photo off the wall, giving an impression of depth.

We recently launched fotoflot.com as the place where you can easily “fotoflōt” your digital images. Designed as a “Rich Internet Application” we have integrated the SmugMug API into the experience so that SmugMug customers have access to all their albums and images directly from fotoflot.com. We also have added tools to prepare the images for best fit with the selected fotoflōt products.

And the best thing: no need to upload images to fotoflot.com. Your “good name at SmugMug” is enough. Try it out and let us know what you think – simply use your nickname/password to have immediate access to all your images.

Go directly to fotoflot.com or find more detail in ClubSmug at SmugMug.com/ClubSmug.

I'm interested in trying out your service, but am uncomfortable giving your site my Smugmug password. Would it have been possible to use Smugmug's OpenID support to authenticate us with Smugmug instead?

devbobo

jfriend wrote:

I'm interested in trying out your service, but am uncomfortable giving your site my Smugmug password. Would it have been possible to use Smugmug's OpenID support to authenticate us with Smugmug instead?

John,

Fotoflot uses the API like many other applications/services. Providing the password is just a means to get a SessionID by calling smugmug.login.withPassword, the password is not saved anywhere by fotoflot. The integration has been done in consultation with SmugMug, so everything is above board.

Cheers,

David

jfriend

devbobo wrote:

John,

Fotoflot uses the API like many other applications/services. Providing the password is just a means to get a SessionID by calling smugmug.login.withPassword, the password is not saved anywhere by fotoflot. The integration has been done in consultation with SmugMug, so everything is above board.

Cheers,

David

I didn't suspect anything malicious was going on. I just don't feel comfortable giving out the master password to my entire Smugmug account to any other web site. I'd be surprised if there aren't other people who feel the same and I thought I'd pass on that feedback.

beacazil

jfriend wrote:

I didn't suspect anything malicious was going on. I just don't feel comfortable giving out the master password to my entire Smugmug account to any other web site. I'd be surprised if there aren't other people who feel the same and I thought I'd pass on that feedback.

John,

while I was rereading how exactly SmugMug supports OpenID, David pretty much said what I wanted to say, too. We use the SmugMug API for the integration and I am not sure OpenID is an option right now.

The goal for the integration was to give SmugMug customers access to all their images during the order process on fotoflot.com avoiding the need for additional uploads. The next major release of fotoflot.com will have a direct upload feature, so that you will be able to upload just the images required for your order.

devbobo

beacazil wrote:

I am not sure OpenID is an option right now.

There are some reasons why we can't offer OpenID at the moment.

jfriend

beacazil wrote:

John,

while I was rereading how exactly SmugMug supports OpenID, David pretty much said what I wanted to say, too. We use the SmugMug API for the integration and I am not sure OpenID is an option right now.

The goal for the integration was to give SmugMug customers access to all their images during the order process on fotoflot.com avoiding the need for additional uploads. The next major release of fotoflot.com will have a direct upload feature, so that you will be able to upload just the images required for your order.

You could let people see how the service works before requiring a password by making it work with publicly visible galleries. I believe you can use the api on public galleries with only a user name and without needing a password.

Or, you could even give people the option of entering a gallery number and it could then work with a private gallery without requiring an account password.

beacazil

jfriend wrote:

You could let people see how the service works before requiring a password by making it work with publicly visible galleries.

Interesting that you bring that up the “test drive”, John. We do have that designed and most of the pieces are in place. I'll see if we can add that feature to the next maintenance release.

We felt the “test drive” feature would be great for customers that do not have SmugMug accounts (or do not want to upload images before trying things out), but it will serve your purpose.

I'll let you know and post here when “test drive” becomes available.

beacazil

Just wanted to let you know that we just released a new version of the fotoflot.com web presence. Here a few highlights:

• We rewrote how the login scheme works. Image information is now retrieved from SmugMug only on demand, so that customers with large portfolios have a much faster and more stable experience.
• The album tree has been fixed so that horizontal and/or vertical scroll bars appear and content is no longer simply clipped.
• We fixed the issue where certain SmugMug albums did not appear on fotoflot.com if they were part of a category and a sub category.
• A “tour mode” has been added so that customers do not have to provide their SmugMug credentials if they just want to try out the site.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Llywellyn

After reading about this everywhere on the boards, I decided to give it a more thorough test run with my photos instead of the quick browse I took before. I have to say, very well done. Smooth interface, though some long load times for me. It'd be great if I could choose some galleries not to load upon log-in to help with that. (I see the first bullet above for the improvements, but I'm not quite seeing how it works in practice.)

I have a couple questions dealing mainly with marketing this to our clients, as this seems to be a topic being broached recently. I see you have plans for us to make it easier for us to drop-ship to clients, and perhaps even allow clients to log in directly to order. However, what I'm not seeing is how this is profitable for me, the photographer.

This is a fantastic framing idea and one that benefits me personally should I want to hang some of my art on the walls and switch it out frequently. Just awesome! But if I want to market this to a family with a newborn, it appears all the profit goes to fotoflot and none to me. On the business side of this venture, my curiosity is piqued. Has this been thought about yet? If so, I'm interested in what some of those thoughts might be.

Llywellyn

In other news, those "long load times" turned into "no loading at all" times. I get the flashing "f" in perpetuity.

Sewerman

Can't login
Logon does not work. with email or user name?

beacazil wrote:

fotoflōt is a unique new product for displaying photographic prints. The system eliminates glass in front of the photo, minimizing glare, and uses magnets to simplify mounting and changing pictures. It "floats" the photo off the wall, giving an impression of depth.

We recently launched fotoflot.com as the place where you can easily “fotoflōt” your digital images. Designed as a “Rich Internet Application” we have integrated the SmugMug API into the experience so that SmugMug customers have access to all their albums and images directly from fotoflot.com. We also have added tools to prepare the images for best fit with the selected fotoflōt products.

And the best thing: no need to upload images to fotoflot.com. Your “good name at SmugMug” is enough. Try it out and let us know what you think – simply use your nickname/password to have immediate access to all your images.

Go directly to fotoflot.com or find more detail in ClubSmug at SmugMug.com/ClubSmug.

tommca

Sewerman wrote:

Logon does not work. with email or user name?

Sorry about that. The web site is temporarily unavailable - it should be back up shortly.

Tom

tommca

Sewerman wrote:

Logon does not work. with email or user name?

fotoflot.com is now back up. I apologize for the problem. Tom

claudermilk

Ah, that explains not being able to log in. And when I was demoing to my wife for xmas gift ideas too.

rainforest1155

This seems like a very cool product. Here's a bit feedback on my first visit on the site.

I tried placing an order to see the shipping cost, but after adding a fotoflot to the cart, I can't seem to click on the cart.
Okay, I found the cart only with Barb's help. On my Macbook Pro, the widescreen resulted in that I had scrolled down when first visiting the site and that's why I never saw the cart icon in the top center of the screen and neither did I see the logout until Barb told me where to look.
It's a bit annoying that I can't use my scrollwheel in the flash application and that's probably the reason why I didn't discover it accidentally.

How about putting an additional cart button in the right column of the window, maybe below the print sizes button. Also, you might want to tell people that they have to their popup blocker off for the site in order to get to the checkout page.

Additionally, I would like to see some kind of shipping estimates page to give me an idea of how much I need to spent in order to get a fotoflot, especially since international shipping could be anywhere from $10 to $30 or even higher, which is a significant criteria when considering ordering such a print.

Other than that, the site works pretty well and I hope to see a fotoflot of my own soon.

Thanks,
Sebastian

tommca

Sebastian, thanks for your detailed feedback - it helps make our site better for you and others.

It's a bit annoying that I can't use my scrollwheel in the flash application and that's probably the reason why I didn't discover [the shopping cart] accidentally.

We agree that Scrollwheel capability is needed. It's on our feature list and will be implemented soon.

How about putting an additional cart button in the right column of the window, maybe below the print sizes button.

We agree on this one too, and it's also on the feature list for release soon.

Also, you might want to tell people that they have to their popup blocker off for the site in order to get to the checkout page.

When you click on Checkout in the shopping cart, a screen appears that describes the checkout process, including a note that you may need to give your browser approval for a popup window. That note can be overlooked, and perhaps we need to make it more visible.

Additionally, I would like to see some kind of shipping estimates page to give me an idea of how much I need to spent in order to get a fotoflot, especially since international shipping could be anywhere from $10 to $30 or even higher, which is a significant criteria when considering ordering such a print.

The information is provided when you select the ship-to country, but you're right that it needs to be visible earlier. We're going to add information about international shipping charges to the Sizes & Prices and FAQ sections in the next few days.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Tom