Kinzin Blog

DIY With Kinzin

2011-07-06T15:24:00.000-07:00

As the economy struggles to regain its composure people have become more interested in do-it-yourself (DIY) projects. Instead of hiring someone to build a deck people are looking up instructions online and taking the rocky steps towards making it themselves. Whether it’s out of necessity or just simply curiosity, we are becoming inventors and crafters.

Many times, DIY provides a better outcome that no one else can match.¹ There are many reasons why. First, you don’t have to depend on someone else’s expertise. Starting from scratch can be daunting but there’s nothing like having a vision and creating the outcomes. Second, you work with your own timelines. No one is rushing you into decisions. If you need a little time to make sure the means to the outcome are sufficient then you can stop and think about it. Last, but not least, there is nothing like seeing your finished product. Nothing matches that. Nothing.

DIY is not new. In fact, many people do some backyard “tinkering”. What’s new is the amount of new technology that gives us even more options for creating. http://www.howtogeek.com, http://makezine.com, http://www.instructables.com are just a few sites that provide instructions and guidance for creating with technology.

The most common and accessible technologies that most of us share are smart phones and affordable digital cameras. They provide us with countless digital photos that, more often than not, just sit on our computers or the smart card. So what do we do with them? How do we make these great photos memorable? These are questions that we ask at Kinzin. That’s why we make tools to allow anyone to easily make books, trading cards, greeting cards, etc. We are the DIY of photo creations. And believe me, all the Kinzin mothers are thankful that we take the time to give them a photo gift instead of a hard drive.

¹ If you’re not convinced and want to read more then check out this research by the Social Issues Research Centre. http://www.sirc.org/publik/tea_and_diy_why.html

What is Social Publishing®

2011-06-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

(and why it’s not simple Photo Sharing)

By Peter MacLean - President

The Theory
A social publishing system combines web content management, social software and application frameworks into a cohesive set of technology for assembling a web site that provides structure for people to share ideas, preserve memories, and engage each other in proven patterns of expression.

Where Theory Meets Reality
Inherently the process of taking and printing photos is an action that is socially based. Individuals who take photos in large part do so to capture a social event with the intention of sharing these moments with other people at a later date. Due to the social nature of photography and printing images, Kinzin has identified the importance of creating an environment that encourages the sharing and printing of images in a permission-based community environment.

Kinzin is the intersection of social networking and photo publishing. It started with taking a close look at how people interact within their own lives. It could be your kids’ soccer teams, their classrooms, your extended family, your friends or your hiking club – social circles and communities that embody your personal interests and values. Kinzin's Social Publishing® service is a unique environment on the Internet that lets individuals, groups and communities engage each other while privately sharing photos and messages about their shared experiences.

Aggregated Community Assets
The image sharing and printing environment that is achieved through Kinzin's Social Publishing® service is one that not only encourages a collaborative approach to photo sharing and printing, but also supports inherent social interactions that drive photography as a whole. Members of a group within Kinzin’s application software not only have the ability to view and print images, they have the ability to post comments, notes and stories associated with these images — ultimately providing members with an enhanced emotional attachment to these images and assisting with the inspiration and creativity needed for printing and creating photo expression products. Unlike traditional photo-sharing, Kinzin's platform allows for collaborative photo expression product publishing: a user can simply invite members to share photos within his/her private group and each group member is able to create uniquely personal photo products from the group's shared content.

Trading Cards = Personalized Business Cards

2011-05-19T16:28:00.000-07:00

When people talk about photo business cards they usually think of a plain card with contact information, and possibly a logo – however, Brian Oberquell sees them a little differently.

In addition to being Kinzin’s QA Engineering Lead, Brian is a freelance pyrotechnician who uses Kinzin’s personalized trading cards as his version of a business card…here’s why:

“The pyrotechnic field isn’t terribly large so it’s nice to be able to make yourself stand out, and a customized card is a great way to do it,” Brian says. “Having your photo on the card is an effective way to help people remember you, and the ‘stats’ fields are a perfect way to show contact information listing the licenses I have and also allowing me to provide a list of show credits. This gives potential clients the information they need, and the fact that the cards are bigger than they expected makes them a bit more memorable.”

By adding a face to a name, Brian is able to make meeting new business associates more meaningful to his pyrotechnic business.

Other people who can take advantage of personalized photo business cards are photographers, personal consultants, actors, models, athletes, journalists and more.

Making A Photo Book For Mom

2011-04-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

You know that Mom will love a book full of photos and stories about her dear loved ones.

Here is how you can get started:

Go to Kinzin.com and click on “Make A Photo Book”.
Next, upload a bunch of photos of the people that your mother loves.
If you don’t have enough photos then save your project and create an account so that you can continue later or invite people to help.

Kinzin is different because it allows you to collaborate by sharing photos in a private space.
Tip: Email your invitees and let them know what you are doing and why. This will ensure that they are on the right track.

Once you have invited people and they have uploaded their photos then you can go back to your saved project. New photos will be there for you to use in your Photo Book.
Creatively add the photos and text by dragging them onto the targets in the pages. Blocks of text can be used and short captions can also be added to the photos themselves.
Once the pages are filled then all you have to do is add the Photo Book to the cart and complete your purchase.

New: Make Personalized Print Products Without Signing Up

2011-04-13T15:45:00.000-07:00

Kinzin has developed a new feature allowing visitors to kinzin.com to create personalized print products without signing up.

We realized that a few people have a bigger interest in creating the products than collaborating within a group or participating in Social Publishing™.

We made it possible to do both.

Rest assured, whether you decide to start a group and/or make print products, the quality of the experience will always remain high.

Try it yourself.

Transparency. How It Becomes Lost During Disaster Relief Efforts.

2011-03-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

By Julie Gendron

An important component of Kinzin for community organizations is our fundraising capabilities.¹ In this situation, the transparency about who is receiving what monies is simple.

However, in the case of disaster relief like what we are seeing in Japan, it becomes more difficult to distinguish between organizations that are accepting donations and organizations that are actually delivering relief.

Some people are simply saying “Don’t donate to Japan”.² This messaging is confusing when we hear about people still in need. Here are a couple of important things to know before you decide what to do.

Organizations around the world accept donations even if they don’t have a plan already in place for directly helping the people in Japan. If they accept the money and then never get into Japan to help, it may go to another arm of their charity. This may or may not matter to you but you should be comfortable with the charity’s other directions. There are plenty of people in need in this world and many are not televised or tweeted about.

Over 90 countries have offered assistance but Japan has only accepted it from a handful. Some relief workers have even been turned away.³ Japan is a rich country and is quite prepared for most disasters.⁴ In some cases, nothing can speed up relief efforts that have no precedent. In most cases, charities and NGOs can’t solve the major infrastructure problems that are preventing help from arriving faster.

Humanitarian aid watchdogs suggest the following:

Hold off on giving until more is known about what is specifically needed and which organizations will be delivering help.⁵ Add a reminder to your calendar to make sure you don’t forget to check in on the situation.

OR

Give to local organizations in Japan. You can find suggestions on this site. http://goodintents.org

The Canadian Red Cross has also reported that they are sending donations directly to the Japanese Red Cross Society. http://www.redcross.ca

OR

If you really want to give NOW then find other organizations that are helping on other fronts in different ways. Chances are that communities in your own corner of your world need help also.

Notes:
up ¹ Kinzin allows qualifying organizations to fundraise through the sale of photo products that they produce for themselves using Kinzin’s product builder.
up ² “Don’t Donate Money To Japan”, Felix Salmon, http://reut.rs/gvNhZB , March 14, 2011
up ³ “Aid: Good Intentions Are Not Enough", Conor Foley, http://bit.ly/fa0F1Z, March 17, 2011
up ⁴ “Q+A: How Is Japan’s Relief Response Coordinated”, Francois Servranckx, AlertNet, http://bit.ly/ed3Llx, March 15, 2011
up ⁵ Why Waiting To Give To Japan Is A Good Idea”, Good Intentions Are Not Enough, http://bit.ly/eBbW39, March 14, 2011

Kinzin Has Moved

2011-03-16T16:54:00.000-07:00

Take note of our new address:

Suite 320, 369 Terminal Avenue
Vancouver, BC, CANADA
V6A 4C1

Our support information is the same.

EMAIL: support@kinzin.com
SUPPORT CENTER: https://kinzin.com/sites/help
PHONE: 1-888-6KINZIN (1-888-654-6946) (Mon-Fri, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM PT)

Tutorial: Using the Message Board

2011-03-10T15:48:00.000-08:00

On your group’s home page there is a Message Board. When Members of your group add photos or content, this information will be automatically added to the board. Making it easy for Members to see what’s new.

You can also write a message to the group here. When you have finished writing the message click on the (Post Message) button.

At any time you can edit the messages on the board by clicking on the (Edit) button.

You can also push the message to the top of the list by clicking on the (pin) button or delete it by clicking on the (delete) text.

If there are multiple messages at the top of the list and you want the order to be switched you can click on the (up) and (down) arrows to change the position.

If you are interested in learning more email us at community@kinzin.com. Or sign-up / sign-in and check out our help tutorials.

Horseshoes In Our Back Pocket

2011-03-08T15:03:00.000-08:00

A couple of our staff attended the US Youth Soccer Workshop in Louisville, Kentucky last week. Some great conversations were had and it turned out to be a productive trip.

But not without a few glitches...

First of all, one of us (we aren't going to name names here) only noticed that his passport was going to expire the day before he was leaving. In a total panic and pale faced he was able to get photos taken and the application processed in less than 24 hours. It was a miracle, really, considering government bureaucracy. Within a couple of hours of picking his passport ______ was on the plane. If you want to know who it was then you're going to have to email us. community@kinzin.com

The second major glitch was weather. Hashim Mitha one of our business developers was rerouted to Chicago from Denver. You business travellers out there know how much extra time that adds to an already hefty schedule. At 7am (that's 4am in Kinzin's timezone) Hashim was back on a plane and finally on his way to Louisville, Kentucky.

But that's not all. The icing on the cake was when the airline lost their luggage with all of their presentation material. Fortunately, they got it back.

We've never seen two people so happy to be back in our Vancouver office.

How Many Groups Do You Belong To?

2011-02-24T17:04:00.000-08:00

This is the first question we ask when people inquire about what makes Kinzin different.

Kinzin was created to make it easy for groups to share content (photos, stories and messages) privately and easily collaborate on creating personalized print products together.

EXAMPLE GROUPS

Youth teams for sharing with parents and grandparents.
Daycare teachers for sharing with parents and guardians.
Parents for sharing with families.
Teachers for sharing with students' parents.
Camp counselors for sharing with parents.
Corporate retreat leaders for sharing with attendees.
Club leaders for sharing with members.
Professional photographers for sharing with potential clients.
Church organizers for sharing with their congregation.
Tour groups for sharing with their fellow travelers.

USE KINZIN WHEN YOU…

want to keep photos and messages private without any crossover between groups of people.
don’t want your children's pictures all over the Internet.
don’t take many photos but others in your group do. (And you want to see them)
want to create fun, personalized photo products from everyone’s photos.
don’t want to be weighed down by complicated and confusing websites. Or you have trepidations about sending your non-techie family, friends and colleagues to them.
want a tool to help fundraise and brand your organization.*
don’t want to download some clunky piece of software from another company.
want to access Kinzin on any computer that has Internet access.
want to give different permission levels to different people in your group.
(Administrators, Contributors and Viewers.)

HOW IT WORKS

You start an account.
You create a Group.
You invite people to that Group.
Everyone uploads photos, add comments and write messages.
Anyone can create Trading Cards, Photo Books and Calendars from everyone’s shared photos.
You can start another Group for another social circle you are involved with and so on…
The photos and information between Groups don’t cross over like they do in Facebook or Flickr. It’s private.

That’s how easy it is. If you have any questions or suggestions then please email us at community@kinzin.com. We promise it will reach a real person who is ready and willing to listen.

*Keep in mind that your organization needs to qualify. Email partner@kinzin.com to find out more.

Innovative Page Layout Design

2011-02-17T12:21:00.000-08:00

By Frank Lee - Creative Director

Creating print products with Kinzin is incredibly fast and easy because of our unique page layout system.

THE COMPETITION'S APPROACH

Designing a Photo Book or Calendar with other web services or applications can be an extremely tedious task that can consume many hours or even days.

Here are some of the tasks and decisions that slow people down:

Waiting for Flash or plug-ins to load or installing the application on your computer
Selecting a theme or style for the project
Finding the photos you want to add to your project
Adding the selected photos to the application so you can access them
Deciding on the number of photos for each page
Deciding whether text is needed for each page
Selecting from dozens of page layouts for each page
Adding photos and text to the page layout
Selecting page options such as page color and background design
Selecting photo options such cropping, borders, effects, etc.
Selecting text options such as font, size, and colour
Moving and aligning all photo and text objects

KINZIN'S UNIQUE APPROACH

One of Kinzin's main goals is to make the user experience dramatically faster and easier while ensuring professional results. Kinzin achieves this by reducing or eliminating steps and decisions, and putting the focus on your photos and stories.

The first thing Kinzin does to make starting a print project easy is ensuring that all contributed photos from members in your Group are easily and immediately accessible as soon as they are uploaded.

Next, Kinzin’s unique system lets you dynamically experiment with different layouts quickly so you can focus on telling your story vs. fussing with countless options and controls.

Each page starts off with 9 green target zones.

Here's how pages are filled:

Drag and drop your photos to a target
You can also drag a text region to a target
Resize photos by sliding the resize control
Add captions by clicking the "Edit Caption" button over each photo

That's it! With just these few steps, you can actually create a variety of layouts that combine photos, text, and captions. The results are clean, simple, guaranteed to look good and fit everyone's tastes.

You can complete a professional looking Photo Book or Calendar in just a few minutes, instead of hours.

Please let us know what you think or if you have any suggestions for how we can make designing print products even easier. Email us at community@kinzin.com.

Creative Tip: Taking the Load Off Organizers

2011-02-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

We’ve been told that teams love to make Photo Books to commemorate their year. We’ve also been told that it’s a big job for organizers to write the content to go along with the photos.  

So, the Kinzin team brainstormed on how to make it easier. One of the ideas we came up with was asking the team members to write about themselves.

Hashim Mitha, one of our Business Developers, put this idea to the test with one of his son’s teams and it was a hit!  

“The kids loved writing about themselves especially knowing that it was going into a Photo Book.”  

If you are interested in trying it with your team here's how:  

Start a Kinzin Group for the team. 
Invite everyone on the team including parents, friends and family to the private Group. 
Encourage anyone who takes pictures at the games to upload all their photos to the Group. 
Ask each player to write about themselves. This can include a bio, season highlights, stats, funny stories, etc. 
Create a book using Kinzin’s Product Builder. 
Add a few general photo pages that surmise the season. 
Dedicate the rest of the book to creating player pages where a couple of images of each player can be coupled with the writing that they did for him or herself.

If you have other suggestions for taking the load off of team organizers we’d love to hear about it. Email us at community@kinzin.com

Kinzin at the Utah Youth Soccer Association AGM

2011-01-26T12:02:00.000-08:00

By Peter Field - Business Development

Kinzin just returned from a successful two-day trade show packed with meetings and events from morning to night.

The trade show kicked off on the Friday night with the 2011 Gala Awards Banquet, honoring the year's most accomplished soccer athletes from all over the state.

Kinzin sponsored the Referee of the Year Awards for both men and women. We not only had the privilege of presenting the awards at the Gala but we also had the honor of eating dinner with this year’s recipients, Derek and Kayla. They are both great youngsters very deserving of the scholarships; both investing a lot of themselves into the beautiful game.

Kinzin’s Photo Books, Calendars and Trading Cards were the highlight of the show. There was a buzz when people realized they could privately and securely create team websites where groups of invited people could not only share their digital photos but also access other parent’s content and then quickly and easily create these great products.

We came away from the show feeling very proud of the platform we have created and it was most satisfying to see, in real time, in the real world, that what we have been working so hard on developing... is relevant!

One of the key components to the Utah Youth Soccer partnership is that a share of the proceeds on all Kinzin products sold are going back to the individual soccer clubs.

All and all, it was a very enjoyable and successful trip. Leading up to the show we spent a lot of time fine tuning our message to simply present the concept of Kinzin to a large and broad audience and the message came across clear that "We’ve created a Social Publishing® service to allow groups to privately share photos, collaborate and create printed mementos that everyone can enjoy.”

There’s Music in the Code

2011-01-19T14:35:00.000-08:00

By Stewart Yu - User Interface Developer

Even though I’m a front-end developer at Kinzin, I actually developed and produced our new promo video! I’ve been working as a programmer for a while now, but in school, I studied both computer science and music. I’m the kind of person who thrives when I’ve got a lot of different things to do, so I really needed to have that mix of arts and sciences in my studies.   

One of my favorite courses in school was computer music, where we learned how to record and edit audio on the computer. I had a lot of fun working on those projects, so I jumped at the opportunity to produce this video for Kinzin, because I knew that I could draw on a lot of skills that I don’t normally get to use as a programmer.  

As a pianist and singer, I’ve had a makeshift recording studio in my apartment for a few years, so I put it to use in this production. The background music is actually a simple loop that I wrote and recorded at home, using Logic Studio and my keyboard. Also, I drew on my acting and singing experience to record the voice overs. For this particular video, I used After Effects to create the animations and to piece together the final video.

For this video, I really wanted to focus on showing what makes Kinzin different. Our built-in privacy model gives you peace of mind, allowing you to easily share photos without worrying about whom else might be looking at them. And I truly believe that Kinzin makes it incredibly simple for people to create print products online. Over the holidays, I had my mom test out our Calendar Builder and although she usually needs someone to show her how to do things on the computer, she actually figured it out on her own in minutes!

Welcome to Kinzin's New Blog

2011-01-05T16:34:00.000-08:00

This is our first blog entry and as usual all inaugural events create more questions than answers.

Who is Kinzin? 
Why are we writing a blog? 
What do we want to say? 
What is our personality?

While looking around the room during our weekly staff meetings it is extremely clear that we are definitely a motley crew of programmers, designers, communicators and business people. Along with our commitment to Kinzin, the staff also has a variety of other interests that include soccer, theater, marathon running, photography, sculpture, baking, pyrotechnics, bicycle touring, motor bikes, singing, sci-fi, raw foods, and more.

So what brought us all together to build Kinzin? Here are some of the reasons.

We have a keen interest and commitment to our communities. Many of us are parents. We wanted to create a collaborative authoring tool where important assets like photographs are protected from strangers but freely shared within groups.

We know that every community group has members with a variety of technical skills. We wanted to make Kinzin simple and extremely functional so that everyone can use it.

It’s always more fulfilling to look at photographs in print. We wanted to deliver personalized print products to our clients that are easy to create and high quality allowing you to give or keep the gift of memories.

This blog will show you how to get the most out of Kinzin, give you creative ideas, and offer more insights into Social Publishing®.

Stay tuned…
The Kinzin Team