Saw this post on Mashable about ZangZing so I decided to try it to make a shared photo album.
Photo StartupMakes It Easy to Create Albums With Friends
It's not so easy.
I'm now trying to use this with my family.
INVITES and SHARING
Image: Invite Friends
See how it says INVITE FRIENDS up there? That's not how you invite friends to add photos to your album. If you click that, they are invited to the site, THEN you have to re-invite them to your album. It's SO not clear.
It seems that after you invite people to join the site, you then have to invite them to join an album. I'm getting emails from my cousins telling me that they can't find my album, after I invite them. They create their own album, even after I invite them to my album, so now I need to try to see theirs. I can't see their album.
They just sent me a link to their album, but I can't see it.
I had to write and email with screen shots to help them navigate the site to make their album visible to me.
The site navigation is not consistent. There are menus at the top, and bottom, with multiple layers, and varying places to click. It's like trying to navigate a graphic adventure game.
Here's what I sent, annotating the ZangZing help notes:
Image: How to Change Privacy of An Existing Album
The Mashable article made it sound so easy:
the best part about ZangZing is its group photo-sharing features. When you create a public or private album, you have the option to invite others to contribute. Friends can simply send a reply email to your album’s designated address (i.e., albumname@yourusername.zangzing.com) — no signup required — or they can head over to the album’s URL to import photos from any of the previously mentioned services that ZangZing supports. It’s an easy way to gather shots from a big group event like, say, a baseball game or a birthday party, particularly for those whose familiarity with the web doesn’t extend much beyond email.
I'm going to see if they can just email in photos.
Update:
I invited myself to join my album.
I now see the problem.
It's not clear.
This is what it says in the email:
Click to add photos or reply to this email with your photos attached.
When you click reply to this email, the email address populated in the TO: field is the sharing email address that they need to use to send in photos via email.
The ZingZang welcome email needs to make that clear. It needs to explicitly write out the exact email that people can use to share photos and tell them to use it to email them in.
Hiding the email under a link doesn't work.
It's not clear.
Maybe something like this:
To ADD your photos to the album email them to: party-pics@billjohnson.zangzing.com
I just tried this and it works very easily.
USER INTERFACE
I have to use the help system to figure out how to tell them how to share their album with me. I have to make screen shots to explain how to share and make public their album. The user interface has menu items at the top and bottom, and under icons. Nothing is consistent.
HELP
The email help from ZangZing is great and everything I've gotten back from them is spot on.
It's just that it's not easy to use.
UPLOADER APP isn't an APP
The ZangZing Uploader App isn't even an App. It's a utility that runs in the background and changes the web interface. So after you click it open five times, you email support to tell them it's not opening. That's because it's not an app.
SLIDESHOW
The slideshow feature show one photo per page at a time. It's very basic. Nothing like any of the other current slide show apps that can show multiple photos per page. No music either.
I need to make a family slide show so after I figure out how to get my cousins photos downloaded I'm going to use something else to make the slide show, like iPhoto, Stupefix on YouTube, or Animoto.
