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Filed under: filesharing

What's missing from Piictu

I have been playing with Piictu for a few days now and I must say I am liking it. You can't really compare it to instagram, picplz or path but it has something about it - a different approach that I think is interesting. The idea of sorting piics (how they call pics and pic-replies) by topics/headlines in so called streams feels like groups that everyone can follow and add their pics to. I still want to point out a few things I am missing, mainly usability issues and some features that would make the overall experience a lot better. 

But first some screenshots:

(download)

Now, some things that don't feel right to me:

  • tapping on stream "buttons" results in frustration, cause nothing happens - this should bring up a list of those streams
  • the activity stream won't let you tap on an activity to get to that user or the picture they liked (uservoice vote)
  • new activities are indicated by a nice green numbertag on the lower right profile icon when you launch the app. you have to tap here and then tap on the upper right icon to get to the new activites. one tap too much.
  • why not share who liked someones piics by being able to doubletap the heart icon or something similar?

And things I am missing:

  • search for exisiting streams. I guess there are dozens or hundreds of duplicates already. (uservoice vote)
  • search for users (uservoice vote)
  • share piics on twitter or facebook later. not only when uploading them to piictu (uservoice vote)
  • add piics to multiple streams without having to upload them again
  • tagging with hashtags would be nice
  • push notifications (for all kinds of new activities) (uservoice vote for likes)
  • what about comments? too much to ask maybe :) (uservoice vote)
  • you can't see a date/time of the uploads

 

 

drop.io alternatives

drop.io was sold to facebook and is shutting down in a few weeks.

if you're looking for alternatives, consider using one of these services
depending on what you're up to:


more bookmarks tagged "filesharing"
http://www.delicious.com/assbach/filesharing

do you have more? leave your recommendations in the comments please. 

Droplr (drag, drop, share)

looks good! alternative to tinygrab, quickshareit & dropbox with droplet with some more features. (see old article)
via @pixelgraphix

(edit) after some testing: 

  • nice textsharing (with plain text and markdown syntax)
  • filesharing (zip etc...) 
  • image sharing 
  • all with tiny URLS ( http://drp.ly/ )
  • pretty quick ( although i think tinygrab and drobox are faster )
  • nice UI

what's missing: 

  • deleting uploads (ticket)  see comment
  • see quota (free/used) (ticket)

 

support here: http://getsatisfaction.com/droplr

 

I wish #dropbox would create short links

Think of tiny URLs what you like but they have an advantage when sharing links with eachother.

I wish dropbox would have an integrated short-URL feature in it's iPhone and desktop app so that it makes sharing via twitter etc easier. What i can do now with the iPhone app is send an email with a linked text to someone. Why not show the URL so that i can at least copy/paste it to other apps? And why not use a short URL, so that twitter likes it? Or offer more sharing options than just email?

This would make things easier with the desktop tool as well.
tinygrab and quickshareit already use short-URLs and automatically paste them into the clipboard when uploading something. I just wish dropbox as one of my alltime favorite tools would have this feature.

Db

QuickShareIt vs. Dropbox droplet

Bildschirmfoto_2009-10-23_um_2

After finding this page with dropbox addons via @dotdean
http://wiki.getdropbox.com/DropboxAddons

I installed the dropbox droplet and tested it.
It works fine, but i have to say that i like QuickShareIt better because of the short-URL you get when uploading pics.

Compare:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/4048/Bildschirmfoto%202009-10-23%20um%2023.%20Okt%2009%20%2C%2012.58.46.p/n/ g


http://qkpic.com/5e42e

You can find the tools here, they are free:
http://northslope.pl/dev/dropbox-droplet/
http://quickshareit.com/

ps: i added a few slashes to the dropbox link suffix, so that the link is shown not the pic...