Category: Tutorials

This track has been submitted for your friendly, constructive criticism. What useful feedback can you give the artist? The floor is yours to talk about the track and how they can fix problems in and improve upon the mix and the song.

Download audio file (MyHeartsDelight.mp3)

Description of the track:

This song is part of a two-song medley to be targeted to couples getting married. This is the groom’s message to his bride. The bride’s message to her groom will be uploaded later.

Terms of Use: Users can stream the track for the purposes of giving feedback but cannot download or redistribute it.

Have a listen to the track and offer your constructive criticism for this Workshop in the comments section.

Need constructive criticism on your own tracks? Submit them for a workshop using this form.

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Let’s say you created your mix in your favorite sequencing software. You’ve laid out all tracks with crossfades, filter and effects automation and you would like to burn the results onto a CD for distributing to record labels, duplication houses or your friends. I am going to show you a great, streamlined way of achieving just that.

I will be exporting my DJ set from Ableton Live, then importing the resulting material into Sound Forge 10 to create a track compilation with no pauses in between. Finally, I will use Sound Forge’s professional CD authoring tools to burn the compilation onto CD.

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Setting Up

In Ableton Live, it’s very easy to warp tracks and arrange them in the Arrange view along with any fades, effects and tempo automation. In this example, I’ve used two audio tracks to compose my mix.

A typical two track layout with effects and master tempo automation

One thing to consider here is that the length of your mix should not exceed 79.8 minutes as described in the Red Book CD standard specifications.

Now, I could export the whole mix as one file and then add separate markers in Sound Forge to create CD tracks but it would definitely help me if I had the tracks as separate audio files so that I could utilize Sound Forge’s authoring tools to create CD tracks out of these files.

In Live, create a locator at the beginning of your set, then create a second one at the point where the second track comes in. Similarly, continue as such for the third track and so on until you have as many locators as the number of your existing tracks. Obviously the last locator is going to be placed where the last track of your set is introduced.

Locators positioned between tracks

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Exporting

Now, we are ready to export our tracks one by one. Right click the first locator and choose Loop to Next Locator. The loop brace encompassed the range of our set we have defined as our first track. Select File->Export Audio/Video… On the Export Audio/Video Options window, select 32 as Bit Depth, Sample Rate of 44100 Hz and leave Normalize and Render as Loop to Off. Then click OK, select a name for the track and click Save to save it in a folder of your choosing.

Loop to Next Locator

Audio/Video Export Settings

Proceed similarly, by selecting the second locator, right click and select Loop to Next Locator to select the second file to be exported repeating the steps described above to export the second track with identical export settings as the first track saving the second track in the same folder you did for the first one. You will end up with a number of audio files all located in the same folder. We are now, ready to start authoring in Sound Forge.

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Authoring in Sound Forge

After launching Sound Forge, select View->Windows Layout->Red Book Authoring. This will change the interface layout to a more helpful arrangement for our needs.

Red Book Authoring window layout.

Next, select Options->Preferences. There are a number of options here that interests us. Click on the CD Settings tab. In CD preferences, we can have the Use strict Red Book specification for DAO validation option checked. With this option selected, the software will notify us if any of our settings don’t strictly agree with the Red Book Audio specifications. Another option that we need to have checked is the Prepend up to 2 seconds of silence for DAO Burning. On the Default time CD tracks (seconds:frames) option, enter 0 since we are aiming for a gapless playback on our final CD so we won’t be needing the default pause time of 2 seconds. On the Default CD length (minutes) select the appropriate time for the duration of your mix. I know the duration of my mix was 79 minutes and 56 second so I selected 80 from the drop down list. Click OK to exit the Preferences dialog box.

Sound Forge’s Preferences CD Settings.

Select File->Open, navigate to the folder where you exported your audio tracks and select them all by SHIFT clicking them or hit CTRL+A. At the option further down, put a check mark on the Append to current data window and the Open as CD tracks options and click Open.

Sound Forge’s Open dialogue box.

Select View->Zoom Time->Out Full to view how Sound Forge loaded all of our files and converted them into CD tracks. At the bottom of the audio stereo file we can drag and drop CD tracks to reposition them. By clicking and dragging a track, move it left or right to reposition it. A black down pointing arrow will appear, showing you the tracks new location before you release the mouse button.

In this example, I am dragging Track 3 and repositioning it after Track 7.

At this point you can optionally normalize the whole mix by hitting CTRL+A and selecting Process->Normalize. At the bottom of the interface, we can find the Track List and CD Information tabs. In the Track list tab, we can also enter information about the start and stop of each track. Updating the information there will also update the graphical display of the actual tracks further up the waveform. We can also enter Title and Artist name for each track to be displayed as CD Text on CD audio players that support it and also modify the pause time for each track. Reordering tracks from this tab is also possible, just click on a track number on the left, drag it and release it onto its new location.

Track List and CD Information tabs.

You can also add a final Dither algorithm by selecting Process->Bit Depth and selecting either Bit-Depth Converter or iZotope MBit+ Dither. When you are done, select Tools->Burn Disk-at-Once Audio CD. If your mix is longer than 74 minutes you will get a warning that the disc exceeds 74 minutes. That’s because we had previously activated the strict Red Book Audio validation in Sound Forge’s Preferences. If you plan to send your disk for mass duplication, it’s necessary to contact the duplication plant and ask them if they actually do 80 minute long premasters.

Insert a blank CD that can fit your desired length of tracks you plan on burning. Click on Write CD. For Speed, select the slowest speed available from the drop down list to avoid burning errors in higher speeds. The Buffer underrun protection can also be selected but ONLY if you plan to do a one off burning. If you are plan on sending the CD as a premaster to a duplication plant or make further copies of it, it’s best not to activate this option since it’s possible that it will introduce a small amount of errors. Another great and recommended option to choose, though, is to Render a temporary image before burning since the software will first render an image on your hard drive before starting to burn the disk thus taking the strain off your processor during the burning procedure. You can also test the burn before burning it or just test it without burning it to disk. Hit OK when you are done!

Sound Forge is only available for PC users but there are many excellent tools available for Mac users. Logic Pro has a great tool called Waveburner. Wavelab and Peak are other great alternatives.

That’s all for this tutorial. In part 2 we are going to examine how to complete the same task with another great software geared more towards CD authoring, called CD Architect.

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Have you ever needed to skin an object with a metal surface? In this Psd Premium tutorial, author Ed Lopez will use digital painting techniques to skin a person with futuristic hard and soft metals to create a Crysis inspired nano suit. While this tutorial is meant to emulate the popular video game, the same techniques could also be used on everything from autos to spaceships. This tutorial is available exclusively to Premium Members. If you would like to take your digital painting and drawing skills to the next level, Log in or Join Now to get started!

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Detailed Video Instruction

This tutorial includes 10 videos that demonstrate the process of creating this project in detail so that you can better understand the techniques that were used in each step. Below is a clip from one of those videos. To view more clips you can Log in or Join Now!

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Professional and Detailed Instructions Inside

This tutorial also includes full text and screenshots of each step. Premium members can Log in and Download! Otherwise, Join Now! Below are some sample images from this tutorial.

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Final Image

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Psd Premium Membership

You can join Psd Premium for as little as $9/month. Premium membership gives you access to the source files for all our tutorials as well as access to premium tutorials like this one. This also includes the rest of the sites in our network including Vectortuts+, Webdesigntuts+, Phototuts+, Nettuts, and more! Premium Members can Log In and download this tutorial. Otherwise you can Join Today!

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Remembering things is harder than ever. Stuff to do, links to refer, ideas to develop, articles to read, videos to watch – there is just way too much stuff online to keep track of. We definitely need a digital assistant to track all that stuff for us. thinkery helps you focus on the important things and lets you access tons of information in an instant.

thinkery is a web app that helps users organize their thoughts, ideas, URLs and lists. The app lets you save todo lists, bookmarks, creative ideas and more. Is it actually capable of being your extended brain on steroids as the developers claim? Let’s go check it out.

Overview

The thinkery team has done a neat trick to assist new users. They let you try the app with all its features without having to sign up for the app. This means that you are assigned a temporary username as soon as you arrive at the site and all the stuff you create is stored in that account.

Overview

So, at the end of the evaluation, if you decide to sign up, you can have all your entries transferred to the account without having to go through the hassle of creating them all over again. thinkery is free for everyone.

Getting Started

For the purpose of this article, let us begin by adding stuff with the temporary account and finally at the very end we shall try to create and account and see if it all sticks. Game?

Adding Stuff

I started by typing a todo item in the prominently placed input field. As soon as you hit enter, the app saves the item and takes you to the dashboard for further updates. Apparently, since this is a temporary account to showcase the features of the app, it comes with a small list entries preloaded. All the entries you create are private by default and you don’t have to worry about getting the super secret business plan of yours leaked for all the world to see!

The Dashboard

All items can be edited and you will have the option to add and remove tags, make the item public or private, archive/un-archive or delete it forever.

Updating an Item

Tags in thinkery doesn’t have to be only words like we are used to, but you can insert hashtags right in the entry you are adding and voila! you can see all the related items listed instantly. Alternatively, you can access the standard tags created from the left pane.

Bulk Edit

With apps like these, after a while things automatically start piling up and editing them could be a mess. Use the Bulk edit feature at the lower left corner of the screen to edit or delete tags and entries. You change the public/private status of multiple entries from here too.

Using the Plugins

thinkery is complimented well by its bookmarklets and plugins. To download them, you will need a registered account. So, use the Save Now option to save all the items you have created or edited so far. I will have to congratulate the development team for implementing the slickest sign up process ever.

Just enter the email address, username and password and your account is automatically created and logged in, thanks to the cool usage of Ajax. And yes, all the content I created earlier were all intact.

Thinkery Tools

Head over to the Tools section of the app to gain access to the bookmarklets and plugins. With a plugin and a dedicated app, thinkery is a bit biased to Google Chrome users. Others will have to make do with their bookmarklet. In addition to these, there are tools to import your bookmarks from Delicious, Instapaper and other bookmarking apps that let you export them in HTML format.

Adding Online Content

Installing the thinkery plugin adds a button to the Chrome browser. With this button you can add URLs at the blink of an eye. What is the big deal, you ask? The app not only saves the link, but also extracts all the text, images and video from it too.

An Extracted Page

Now, go back to the thinkery web app and you can read the URL in its full glory, minus some design elements. Except for websites running on Flash, the plugin does a bang up job at extracting content. It’s just not blogs from where you can extract content, but also from popular online destinations like Facebook, Digg, SoundCloud, Amazon, Twitter, XKCD, Flickr and YouTube.

One drawback of the app is that the extracted item is not editable. Meaning, if you want to insert some content of your own, you will have add it as a separate note attached to the extracted content. A lot of other bookmarking apps allows you to do this content manipulation but not thinkery. I am not sure if this restriction is in place to prevent plagiarism or if the feature is under development. Let’s hope they add it sometime in the future.

Final Thoughts

thinkery isn’t a very unique idea, but could be of great help to those who have trouble keeping their thoughts and ideas in sync. I will have to make a note of their design and user interface. While some might say that the app tends to be minimalistic, it really isn’t. The design elements (or the lack of it) makes the app look dull and unintuitive.

Despite nailing all the essential items one would look for in the homepage, thinkery’s homepage looks like it has been put together overnight with poor aesthetics. So, pending a visual refresh, thinkery is an app for those who are looking for something lightweight and gets the job done.

Share Your Thoughts!

What is your take on thinkery? Do know of a better app with the same set of features?

Twitter bought TweetDeck a couple of weeks back for a hefty $50 million (figure is based on reports and has not been confirmed by Twitter or Tweetdeck). This is an interesting development, especially as Twitter is almost completely against third-party clients that replicate the core functionality of what Twitter does in it’s official family of apps.

Both TweetDeck and Twitter have native applications for Macs, with TweetDeck having one for PC too. You can find both apps on your smartphone too, whether it be Android or iOS. However, they both compete for web app love since Twitter has it’s official website, and TweetDeck has it’s Chrome web app. Today, we’re going to compare the two and see whether, from a web app-only perspective, the deal is worth it for the web apps.

Twitter.com

Twitter’s own website is an effort to create more of a fully fledged social network and is always at the forefront of any developments in the social network. The main view of this particular web app features two columns that can adapt to the window’s size. On the left is your stream where each user’s tweets are shown, sorted by the time they were posted. On the right side is a column that adapts regularly. By default, it shows profile data such as your follower count and suggestions, alongside the trending topics. When you select an individual tweet, this column will show that tweet plus any relevant data, alongside any media that was attached.

Twitter.com has a focus on most aspects of the social networks’ strategy. It focuses heavily on your content, but equally on expanding your reach by suggesting new users to follow, and showing the trending topics of the day.

In the deal, Twitter.com will not change, it seems, and will not take on the multi-column design that TweetDeck holds.

Can anyone spot Michael from our Android site?

TweetDeck

TweetDeck presents Twitter’s content in somewhat of a different way. It’s heavily based on columns, but not like the duo that Twitter use. Instead, in the web application that’s exclusive to Chrome users, your various types of messages are shown in individual columns. For example, there’s a column for your followed stream and another for your mentions allowing you to have them side-by-side.

TweetDeck is a client, and follows the same principles that make trends and follow suggestions less prominent. Instead, the focus is clearly just on the posts and messages in TweetDeck. Plus, the web app displays pop ups in the top corner of your screen when you have new tweets to read, something that not even the native Twitter app does.

Additionally, TweetDeck aggregates other social networks into the app with their own columns. So you can have a column of Twitter updates next to your Facebook stream to monitor two (or more) networks at a time.

TweetDeck founder Ian Dodsworth has confirmed in an interview that TweetDeck will remain a separate app, at least for the time being, and will still aggregate other social networks like Facebook, an advantage over Twitter’s web app.

TweetDeck prefers columns over tabs.

Which One is Better?

I used TweetDeck for a long time when I was using Windows and had several accounts to manage, thanks to the high customisability of it’s interface. I could have a column of my feed from one account and the mentions of two accounts display across one window. The constant notifications – visible and audio – are extremely helpful in cases where you need to monitor your feed under certain circumstances.

On the other hand, Twitter is a little more simplistic and makes you feel like you’re actually part of a social network, rather than some group instant messagenger.

Which one do you prefer? Would you like TweetDeck’s column interface to come over to Twitter? What about vice-versa? Let us know in the comments!

For the most part, Apple is know for beautiful hardware and intricately designed software that work great together. The missing part of the Mac and iOS device equation, for the most part, has been web apps and services. Even though Apple has had online services with .Mac and MobileMe for years, they’ve never had a solid online approach to tie together their devices and services.

The iPhone was introduced in 2007 without the ability to run native apps. Instead, Apple encouraged developers to create mobile web apps for their new phone. Once native apps were released, developers turned mainly to non-Apple web services such as Dropbox and Google Apps to synchronize data and more. Apple’s $99/year MobileMe was largely seen as a failure, and few of us used it.

That’s all changed now, with Apple’s renewed focus on the cloud with iCloud. This upcoming service will give free access to MobileMe’s Mail, Calendar, and Contacts, sync your iOS devices through the cloud, and let you backup your iTunes music online so you’ll never lose it. It’s shaping up to be one of the more important services for iOS and Mac users, and will even be useful to PC users who want to re-download their purchased songs from iTunes.

So, what are your thoughts about iCloud? Are you excited about using it, or do you plan to continue using other services to keep you life in sync. Does Apple stand a chance in the cloud computing world? Will Apple be the first to bring Microsoft’s dream of “three screens and a cloud” to reality? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the poll and comments below.

Don’t forget to check out our AppStorm coverage of iCloud, including Web.AppStorm’s iCloud: A Great Syncing Solution for iOS Devices and Mac.AppStorm’s iCloud: An Information Revolution.

My wife and I don’t get to travel very often, and when we do, we tend not to do it very well. We’re both much too happy sitting quietly with a book to rationalize spending a thousand dollars just to sit and read someplace new.

With that being said, we also realize that variety is the spice of the life, which is why it’s one of our family goals to become much better travelers. I’m hoping that with the help of GoGoBot (and our friends), we can reach that goal.

Overview

GoGoBot is a social-networking app focused on travel. Members can offer and request travel advice for any location on the planet (including my rural hometown, population: 1,086), browse lodging and restaurant reviews, explore things to do while visiting the location, view photos of the area, and finally, set up a plan for their particular trip.

GoGoBot also tries to turn trip planning into a game by using badges and “passports.” The former allows you to earn a badge for certain tasks, while the latter is like a scoreboard, keeping tally of how many countries, cities, and spots you’ve been to, as well as how many reviews you’ve written.

Of course, because it’s a social-networking app, the value of GoGoBot is entirely dependent upon its members. But thanks to its tight integration with Facebook and Twitter, the app avoids the obstacle that besets every social app: namely, garnering enough contributing members to become practical and useful.

Becoming a Member

Signing up with GoGoBot is as simple as clicking a button to connect with your Facebook or Twitter account. Once you’ve linked the account, you also have the option of connecting to your Foursquare account, which will automatically link your check-ins to your GoGoBot passport (this works with Facebook’s Places too).

To help ease the process of joining, GoGoBot automatically connects you to any members who are already your friends on Facebook or who you follow on Twitter, though you can turn this feature off in your Account Settings, if you like.

Plenty of ways to connect

Planning a Trip

While you can always just be a helpful member of the site, offering reviews of the places you’ve been and suggesting ideas to your friends who are going places, the real point of the application is to use your social network to plan a trip of your own.

As the founder of the site, Travis Katz, said in an interview, “We’re letting you connect to the people that you know and trust, your friends, to get good advice, trusted advice, about where you should go, where you should stay, where you should eat when you’re taking a trip.”

Choosing a destination

Where do you want to go today?

Because I wanted to get the most use out of GoGoBot in as short a time as possible, I decided to plan a trip to Boston, MA, the hometown of many of the people in my network. I figured I’d send out a message saying that I need recommendations for a weekend in Boston, and see what came back.

Once you pick a location, GoGoBot brings you to a homepage for your trip. Because GoGoBot aims to make travel planning “a visual experience of discovery,” your trip’s homepage contains a lot of eye candy, including a map of the area and Flickr-generated photos of your location’s most popular attractions.

Look at all the pretty pictures!

Researching an attraction

If you already know a little bit about an attraction, you can add it to your trip with a simple click, but if you need more information before you make a decision, you can click on the photo of the attraction to read reviews, get a phone number and address, and browse more photos of the place (thanks to Flickr’s creative commons).

Get detailed information on attractions

If you like what you see, you can just click the buttons at the top of the page to either add it to your current trip or add it to the list of places where you want to go.

The page also gives you links to nearby attractions, including restaurants and lodging, so once you add it to your trip, there’s no reason to go back to your homepage. Just browse through the list of nearby locations, and continue adding to your trip.

Finding a place to stay

If your trip requires an overnight stay, you can use GoGoBot to explore both hotels and vacation rentals. As with the attractions, each lodging possibility has its own page with reviews, photos, and general information, but unlike the attractions, you can use GoGoBot to check availability and prices.

Rather than work to establish its own network of travel reservations, GoGoBot piggybacks onto the major players, such as Expedia, Orbitz, and Hotel.com. You choose the dates of your visit, select which sites you’d like GoGoBot to use when comparing prices, then click the submit button.

I was hoping that GoGoBot would come back with a nicely designed table or chart that showed me the prices that each site had found, but instead, it opened a browser tab for each of the sites I selected, forcing me to click back and forth to compare various prices.

Asking for advice

Of course, the point of GoGoBot is not to tap into the overall network of anyone who has been to your destination, but to collect travel advice from the people you know and trust, your friends and family on Facebook and the people you follow on Twitter.

That’s why, right at top of your trip’s homepage, GoGoBot gives a big, green “Get Advice” button. Clicking on it brings up a basic form field to post your question to GoGoBot, Facebook, and Twitter.

Tap into your network for advice on what to do

Once you fill it in and select which networks you’d like to tap, GoGoBot spreads your question out to the Internets.

How it looks on Facebook

How it looks on Twitter

There’s only one problem with this. It requires your friends and followers to not just respond to your question, but to click on the link and respond on GoGoBot. When I asked my question and sent it to Facebook and Twitter, my network responded right on Facebook and Twitter, either through comments to my status update or direct messages. No one (as of this writing) clicked on the link to comment directly on GoGoBot.

Final Thoughts

GoGoBot believes that “planning your trip should be almost as fun as the trip itself.” And with a visually-rich design, passports, badges, and social networking, they make a decent pass at achieving their goal. It takes the best parts of Yelp and adds a trip-building component.

The only negative is that the applications depends on other websites to do its heavy lifting: to read the complete description of a restaurant, for example, I had to click over to a page on Yahoo; to compare prices for hotels, GoGoBot opened five tabs on my browser; to actually get advice from friends, I had to go back to Facebook and Twitter.

If GoGoBot is to become a one-stop shop for travel planning it needs to do a better of job of bringing all that data back to the site itself. The problem, of course, is that it can’t do it without our help.

Apple took the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone West for their opening keynote at WWDC this afternoon, announcing (or rather, reasoning in the first case) Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and their new service, iCloud.

iCloud is the successor to MobileMe, Apple’s previous set of web apps that synced directly with other devices, whether they be powered by Mac OS X, Windows or iOS. However, iCloud builds on those, providing a much more refined syncing environment for your devices in terms of both data and media.

MobileMe Lives On

The slick and beautiful web apps that existed in MobileMe live on in iCloud, but have become slightly more refined. One can still use iCloud for all his email, calendar and contact needs, with this data being accessible either from a web interface or via the sync to native applications on your Mac, PC or iOS-powered device.

iCloud works via push syncing, where delivery to or actions from a single device or sent to the cloud, and pushed down onto up to ten other devices that are set up to sync with that particular iCloud account. The entire process should be relatively simple and easy to access even when not syncing with a specific set of devices via the web applications that Apple have built up.

iCloud will sync your email, contacts and calendar to all your devices, Apple or otherwise.

Documents and Backup

Apple will also introduce online document syncing done automatically through their newly-refreshed set of iWork apps for iOS. When a user creates or edits a document on either their iPad or their iPhone, it is sent to the cloud and automatically synced with their other devices that run the same software. Unfortunately, however, Apple does not seem to be providing an online access to these applications to be able to edit them cross-platform which could have blown competitor services like Google Docs completely away.

Apple will also provide a cloud-based backup service that automatically, on a daily basis, syncs a device’s app and OS settings and media to the cloud so they can easily access it to backup their device, or in the scenario when they get another one (remind you of a certain Google-powered notebook?). iCloud will even remember your homescreen layout so, should your device need to be backed up, you don’t have to spend hours reorganising it just the way you liked it.

iWork users on iPad or iPhone can enjoy the benefits of automatic syncing in the background.

iTunes in the Cloud

We all had high hopes for Apple regarding iTunes’ integration into iCloud. Streaming was a term commonly associated with the countless rumours that breathed heavily on the pre-WWDC hype. We all had some sort of conception that Apple would allow streaming of music (possibly aided by a Time Capsule that would cache your cloud’s data for faster access when at home or work), but this did not eventually become apparent during Steve Jobs’ introduction of the service.

Instead, we saw this cloud-based syncing mechanism whereby a music track purchased on iOS one device, could be automatically downloaded onto another iOS device without an additional charge, similar to what they do with iBooks. Unfortunately, this is not what any of us were really expecting, which has cast some disappointment on Apple’s big announcement.

Personally, I expect Apple to announce streaming in the fall alongside the undoubted release of a string of new iPods and a new version of iTunes. It seems that this would be the perfect launching pad since this is the time Apple dedicates it’s focus to media products, rather than data and new devices in the earlier months. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Final Thought

iCloud looks like a fantastic service, but it’s not living up to what we expected. It shouldn’t really be judged on what we expected, but rather, what if offers. Luckily, it’s free and it’s coming in the fall so we should get a chance to do a more in-depth review later on.

What do you think of iCloud? Share your comments in the comments!

With the release of its API in February, users were finally able to interact with their Instagram network outside of their phones, as developers began pumping out web apps. Several good ones have surfaced recently, like Webstagram, Instagre.at, and Gramfeed, and each has its good and bad points and different layers of functionality.

Extragram takes these web apps to another level, providing a slick and easy to use interface for all of the social aspects of Instagram, along with a few (very cool) extra features like location and tag-based discovery modes, keyboard navigation, and real-time notifications.

For those unfamiliar with Instagram, it’s a mobile photo app-slash-social-network that has enough juice to be compared to Twitter. It allows you to take beautiful pictures easily, share them with others via popular social networks, and connect with other Instagram users — viewing their photo streams, liking, commenting, following, and being followed.

Meet Extragram

If you’re looking for a web app that allows you to experience the full feature-set of Instagram‘s social network behind a slick interface, then look no further than Extragram.

Extragram blasts by other Instagram web apps, offering more functionality, a better interface, and some additional features that will keep you playing. We take a look at Extragram, in depth, and discuss what makes it better, where it could improve, and why you will want to use it.

Extragram Web App Interface for Instagram

Extragram vs The World

Extragram focuses heavily on the user experience, with an interface that is easy on the eyes and a breeze to navigate. It also does a good job of getting out of its own way. Extragram gets right to the point, presenting the photo content first, whereas competitors like Gramfeed and Webstagram clutter up the initial view of their apps with unnecessary information about your Instagram account and their own service.

Views and Navigation

There are three ways to sort photos in Instagram, and Extragram has them all: what’s popular, your feed, and photos you’ve uploaded. Extragram goes a step further, however, adding a Discover mode that allows you to sort photos by popular or recent tags, hot profiles, what’s happening near you, and recent users. These are great ways to discover new content and users to connect with and are complimented by another Extragram feature, the Map View.

In Map View, you can browse the map as you please, dragging or searching manually, or allow Extragram to use your current location to get map pins of photos that have gone up around you recently. Click on a pin or on one of the items below the search bar, and the grid below the map view gets filtered down to that user, which you can interact with as usual. It’s a fun way to find new users local to you or in an area you’re interested in.

Side note: If you have enabled location sharing in Instagram, a small map will appear below your photo’s detailed view, showing the world where you were when you took the picture.

Instagram Discovery with Extragram Map View

Extragram also has the Grid and Filmstrip views which are common in Instagram web apps. The grid view shows the photos in columns that vary depending on window size, with a small photo of the user on the bottom left, and like/comment counts on the bottom right. Hovering over a photo presents a rising overlay with the picture’s caption.

Interacting with the photos in Grid View is another way Extragram stands out from the competition. Webstagram, for example, allows likes, but you have to load a photo’s detailed view before you can see or add comments. Gramfeed doesn’t even allow liking until you go into the detailed view, and it opens photos in a new window — which is annoying at best. Another Instagram web app, Instagreat, does allow liking from the front end, and has its own interesting navigation scheme, but doesn’t allow commenting at all.

In Extragram you can do everything right from the Grid View. You can like photos by clicking the heart beside the like-count, and when you click on the comment bubble, a small window pops up within the web app that shows a comments tab where you can see comments and add your own. You can also click on the avatar of users who have commented, which opens an @Mention button that automatically adds the mention to the comment box, saving you a bit of typing.

Extragram Comments

The pop-up window also has a Likes tab that contains avatars of users that have liked the photo. Click on the avatar to see that user’s photostream, or hover over it and click the ‘@’ that appears to mention that user. In both instances, you can do multiple @mentions.

When you click on an image in Grid or other Views you are taken to the detailed image page. This page has a comments box off to the right side that works in exactly the same way as the pop-up, which is a nice bit of consistency on the part of Extragram. Filmstrip View is pretty much the same as the detailed page, except that there is a strip of additional images below that allows you to continue browsing. Both the detailed page and Filmstrip View also provide the name of the filter used on the photo when it was uploaded to Instagram.

Extragram Filmstrip View

Keyboard Navigation – Love It and Hate It

Extragram keyboard navigation as a means of quickly navigating through photos, especially in Grid View. Pressing arrow keys moves a green border around the selected image and other shortcuts like pressing ‘C’ opens the comments pop-up. Just type in your comment and press enter to submit. ‘Esc’ gets you out of the comments window if you change your mind.

Unfortunately, the keyboard navigation feature feels a bit unfinished. For example, if you want to view the details of a picture from Grid View, hitting enter doesn’t get you there. This also doesn’t work in Map View, although it’s supposed to, according to the Extragram blog. Pressing enter in Filmstrip View, however, does open the next image, which is almost exactly like the detailed page, so it feels like something is missing from other Views’ navigations.

Filmstrip View works pretty much as advertised, but not being able to use the comments shortcut to easily jump to the comments area takes away from the consistency described previously. Hopefully Extragram will smooth out keyboard navigation soon, and add shortcuts for likes and other app features.

Sharing, Privacy, and Real Time Notifications

You can use Extragram to share your favourite pics on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Tumblr. I’m not sure why all of the Instagram options, such as Posterous and Foursquare, are not included, but that will hopefully be remedied in the near future.

You can share your own photos, but a nice feature is the ability to share other users’ photos if they have sharing enabled in their Extragram account. If you see a share icon to the right of the comments bubble in both detailed and flimstrip view, click it, select your networks from the pop-up, and click ‘Go’. To enable sharing, use the Privacy tab in your setting.

Share Other Instagram Users Pics with Extragram

Real time notifications are another nice addition to Extragram, letting you know when other Instagram users comment on or like your photos.

Extragram Settings

Conclusion

Extragram is the best web app interface for Instagram to date. It has all the social features of Instagram packed into a design that is both beautiful and well thought out. Extra features like Discovery mode and Map View add even more value, and make you want to stay in the app and play for a while.

While there are still a few things that need work, like more seamless functionality in the keyboard navigation, if you want a fun and easy way to interact with Instagram on your laptop or desktop computer, you won’t go wrong with Extragram.