These are kinda funny, but with PhotoCrank, they could have had even more fun with it. Also, with PhotoCrank the winner of the caption contest can automatically be determined based on the what the viewers vote on each Crank, making it very easy to find a winner. For more information on how to add The PhotoCrank Engine to your blog, head on over to this page on PhotoCrank.com.

Taking caption contests to a new level

Unless you have been hiding under a rock while surfing the Web, I would be willing to bet money that each and everyone of you reading this blog have viewed, participated in or enjoyed an online caption contest that was hosted by a website that you visit on a regular basis. Caption contests are basically designed to play off the fact that everyone has an opinion, thought, comment or other reaction when they first look at an image that has been put directly in front of their face - whether they ever say it publicly or not. Pair this with the fact that most of the posted images are completely ridiculous to begin with and that many of them offer up prizes for the most creatively crafted caption, what you end up with is a fun, entertaining and sometimes very edgy way to get a group of people online to display their cleverness capabilities.

The funny thing is that although the technology and interactivity that is now available for web users has changed dramatically over the past few years, it seems that caption contests and how groups of people can choose to participate in them haven’t. Considering that the types of people who are out Crank’n photos every day are also most likely to be the people who love to play along with caption contests, this really got my wheels turning about ways that PhotoCrank can take these old-school caption contests to the next level for those who create and manage them.

Here is how a caption contest would normally play out on someone’s blog or website:

1. A ‘caption-worthy’ image is posted online and everyone is asked to post their best caption into a text comment that can be entered in below the image. For instance, the image below was posted over on The Anti-New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest on radosh.net and everyone was instructed to ‘Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon.‘ This is basically a play off of The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest that is posted each week.

An image that was posted in the latest New Yorker Cartoon Caption contest with captions posted below

2. Captions are submitted, normally through some type of text commenting system that lists them on top of one another down the web page. Depending on the number of captions, this list can grow to be very, very long, which can make scrolling from the posted image to the caption very difficult and annoying. Also, since the comments are text-based and depending on what all is going on in the posted image, it is sometimes difficult to describe who or what is doing the action in the image when creating the captions. This sometimes results in longer captions being needed just to make it make more sense to who is viewing it.

3. After the captions have been posted, the person who is managing the contest is then taxed with the job or searching through all the posted captions for the one that is most deserving of the top spot. This can be very time consuming and is quite a task depending on how many captions were submitted. Also, the people who captioned the image and who are regular visitors to the website have played no part in determining who the overall winner is, which results in less buy-in from those who are involved with the caption contest (readers, contributors, random visitors, etc.).

4. After going through all of the captions a winner is finally selected and is announced on the website. Since no one besides the person who manages the caption contest had a direct say in who was chosen as the winner, the only people who are truly interested and excited about the results of the contest are those who are chosen as the winners. If others could vote up their favorite captions, I would assume that the level of user buy-in and interaction with the contest would be much, much higher.

5. Steps 1-4 are repeated for the next caption contest that is run by the website.

Like I said, pretty old school, right? Thousands of these caption contests are created every day all over the Web and they all pretty much follow the steps above. Crazy, I know - but it’s how these things have always been done and I’m guessing that the people who manage them have never really been informed that there is a better way to do it, an easier and more interactive way to do it, a more fun way to do it. This, of course, is the PhotoCrank way to do it.

Here is the PhotoCrank way to run a caption contest and be sure to pay attention because this will be a pretty quick explanation:

1. A ‘caption-worthy’ image is posted online and everyone is asked to Crank their best caption on top of the image by using PhotoCrank. Everyone is also told to vote for their favorite Crank even if they didn’t Crank the image themselves, which creates a fun and interactive experience for everyone involved whether they are clever enough to come up with a caption or not. I’ll use an image from a New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest as an example again:

2. The image is Crank’d with entertaining captions that everyone can view, vote and Crank withouthaving to scroll down the page and since they can Crank directly on top of the image, the caption is spatially relevant, meaning that those who caption don’t have to describe who is saying what to whom within the caption - they just Crank the captions directly to the image in a relevant way. This makes viewing and creating the captions much, much easier for everyone involved.

3. After the Crank’d captions are completed, the winner is determined by which Crank was given the highest average vote, making it ridiculously easy to determine the winner. No more scrolling through 100 captions to choose a winner that people probably won’t agree with anyways. Let the people decide who has the best Crank and save a ton of time in the process.

4. Announce the winner and post another image whenever you’re ready to have users Crank another caption contest. Almost too easy, isn’t it?

So that’s it, if you are currently managing a caption contest on a regular basis then I think that it’s about time that you give PhotoCrank a shot at making them even better for you and those who are participating on your website. If you need help getting the PhotoCrank Engine up and running on your website so that you can start Crank’n your caption contests, you can check out this page for more info or you can just send me an email at ryan@photocrank.com and I’ll help you out, no problem.

Bloggers + PhotoCrank = Awesome

After many helpful suggestions that led to me chopping up and re-editing my first draft video for bloggers and why they should use PhotoCrank, I finally came up with a very informative video that’s well under two minutes. Check it out below and let me know what you think of the finished product. Thanks for all of your help and keep on Crank’n away!

Getting STIRR crazy in Palo Alto

The amount of intelligent, driven and innovative people that I am beginning to meet and actually connect with here in Palo Alto is amazing to me. I have called Palo Alto home for nearly a month now (am I a local now?) and I am finally starting to see the very beginnings of my new ‘real world’ or offline social network starting form in front of my eyes. I wanted this to happen over night, but building a truly valuable and meaningful network takes time, effort and a true sincerity of purpose behind the relationships that you’re building. In other words, don’t be a business card exchanging whore for the sake of simply getting your name out there. Take time to get to know the person that you’re giving your card to and hell, even get a little crazy with it and suggest someone they should meet, give them a new angle to pitch their wares or give them a few additions or thoughts on their current offering. I mean, if you’re going to be a business card exchanging whore, at least be a helpful one with a purpose.

People like it when you help them out, I promise.

One of the main reasons why I am now beginning to notice my fresh and new offline social network is that I have been hitting up tech events around Silicon Valley like it’s my job. Oh wait…I think that actually is party of my job and I guess that should be part of everyone’s job, right? Meeting new people, making new contacts and tightening up your pitch is never a bad thing and the number one way to hit all of these at once is by attending a few events and throwing yourself out there to the masses. I know that online interaction is one of the main reasons why most of us are out here in Silicon Valley, but we need to make sure that we never forget true, face-to-face interaction and the impact that you can have on someone because if it. Meeting someone, chatting with them and engaging them in an actual conversation is powerful stuff and it provides a great foundation for the online relationships that develop from them. Real people rule.

I bring all of this up because last night I attended an event called STIRR: DealHacks right here in Palo Alto. I had no idea, but the event is produced by a guy named Sanford Barr whom I met at the Ash Bash last weekend, where he was walking around with a hat collecting some cash from the party goers - securing funding for the cocktails and BBQ, if you will. He was a super cool guy and even though we only chatted for a few minutes, I could tell that he was someone I wanted to stay in touch with. Little did I know that he ran one of the best events in town - who would’ve thought, right?

The STIRR: DealHacks event describes itself as ‘[an event that] brings together founding teams of startups to connect and forge relationships.‘ They also emphasize that this is not a pitch session by openly stating ‘This isn’t a pitch session and please don’t attend if your only goal is to find funding.‘ Personally I found this event to be very, very valuable and well worth the $20 tickets that got me and my fellow PhotoCrank’rs in the door. Hearing the VCs talk about their experience with startups and how their brains work when it comes to bringing a new team on board was very interesting and engaging, but a little short-lived in my opinion(about 5 minutes). I think that it would have been nice to have a little bit of dialogue or Q&A with them after they spoke as well. I think that this gives the audience a great opportunity to get instant feedback from the VCs that they most likely showed up for in the first place. A little value-add never hurts and it could be implemented very easily.

In Twitter speak (140 characters or less) here is what I thought about each of the presenters in the order that they spoke:

- Jeff Clavier: A down-to-Earth guy who came to the States to fulfill his startup passions. He now runs a VC that is a startup. Has an awesome French accent

- Rob Hayes: He really emphasized that he is looking to not only bring on startups with amazing ideas, but with amazing people who he likes working with.

- Adeo Ressi: Not a fan of the VCs ‘true’ intentions and emphasized that startups do their VC homework. ‘They’ll tell you everything that you want to hear

Also, here are a few images that I Crank’d according to the situation and people that are included in them. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand Cranks (or more).

Tyler (with the burly beard) talks about Involver to his adoring fans.

Pascale Diaine,a fellow evangelist from Orange, poses with me for a shot.

Sanford nicely tells the crowd to shut the hell up.

Hey friends of the Interweb, I need your ‘constructive’ criticism

So I just created a first draft video below that will eventually be sent out to some fellow bloggers as a way to make them aware of and hopefully make them excited about PhotoCrank. This would hopefully encourage some of them to add PhotoCrank to their blog as a way to further engage their readers.

As I said, this is the first draft, but I wanted to post it so that I could get come ‘constructive’ criticism from some of you on ways that I could improve the video and make it as great as it can possibly be. I know that I have a different way of creating videos, but I really try to add a more one-to-one feel to them because I would send a link to this along with an email introducing me as well as PhotoCrank.

Anyways, check it out when you have a couple of minutes and chime in by adding a comment to this post. I appreciate all of your help! You can also see the video over here on YouTube if for some reason you can’t view it in this blog. Thanks!

Meet A Techie Tuesday: Abdo Achkar

In my attempt to write something daily in this ridiculously awesome blog, I have made the official decision to designate today(and every Tuesday from here on out) Meet A Techie Tuesday, where I will attempt to introduce you and the rest of the word to an interesting ‘techie’ that I have met while hanging out here in Silicon Valley. This will give the blog some consistency and hopefully some value to people outside of PhotoCrank, which I think is always a great idea. Plus, who doesn’t like meeting a new and interesting computer geek every now and then?

Due to the fact that I came up with this blog idea about about an hour ago, today’s techie is what you could call ‘the low-hanging fruit’ of the selection process because he is a friend and co-worker of mine here at PhotoCrank. But, believe me when I say that this guy is definitely worth telling you all about and I have no doubt in my mind that you’ll understand why I chose him after you finish reading the following paragraphs. The guy is awesomely amazing.

The techie that I am talking about is my friend, homie and legendary Lebanese phenomenon, Abdo Achkar (Email, Facebook, Twitter). Abdo is an implant from Philadelphia, PA (Villanova University grad) and before that he was an implant from Lebanon and he’s now a developer for PhotoCrank right here in Palo Alto, CA. Here is some more info that you all should know about Abdo - some techie and some not-so-techie.

Abdo loves the outdoors

Although his favorite outdoor activity is playing soccer, Abdo just basically loves anything to do with getting to run around like a crazy man while outdoors. This can include camping, riding his bike, hiking or simply walking from his apartment to Pizza My Heart on University Ave. in Palo Alto.

Abdo likes to climb things

Like I said, Abdo loves the outdoors and for some reason he really likes climbing random things around the Palo Alto area, such as trees. As you can see, I sometimes like join him in his climbing adventures.

Abdo is smarter than me

Abdo is a super intelligent guy and it never surprises me when we’re chatting and he brings up a topic that I have no clue about. I mean, I’m not saying that I don’t know some pretty interesting things, I’m just saying that he knows a lot of them. As far as developing goes, Abdo programs mainly in .NET, but he has an arsenal of other flavors of programming that he’s familiar with - not to mention that he likes to pick up new ones here and there whenever he feels like a little challenge. I guess that smart people do that type of thing.

Abdo can eat and eat and eat and eat…

Whether he cooked it (Abdo’s a great cook, too) or is just eating it, Abdo can put down some food with the best of ‘em. I’m not really sure where all of the food goes though because ‘large’ is one thing that Abdo definitely is not. He must burn it all off while playing soccer and climbing trees?

Well, that’s a little bit about Abdo, our first official techie for the soon-to-be-Internet-famous Meet A Techie Tuesday. I plan on picking a new techie each week depending on who I meet throughout the week, but feel free to send me any suggestions that you may have over to my electronic mail account: ryan@photocrank.com.

Oh, and be sure to send Abdo a hello as well - I’m sure he’d love to meet all of you, too.

The Ash Bash and a great way to ‘do business’

The guy in the photo to the left is Ash Damle, but most people just simply call him ‘Ash’. If you have never heard of this guy (which I hadn’t until about 3 days ago), consider the fact that you’re reading this now reason enough to go check him out. Hell, feel free to even send him a quick hello - I know that he won’t mind and in fact he’ll probably invite you to his next monthly get together out at his house in Los Altos, CA. I have officially dubbed the far-from-a-strictly-business-networking-event-shindig ‘The Ash Bash’ and if I knew when it was coming up in June, it would already have a spot reserved on my Google Calendar.

I’m not gonna lie, the Ash Bash is probably one of the best events that I’ve checked out since moving out here in Silicon Valley.

Oh and let me tell you something else really quick - a fun party is one thing, but a fun party that a young entrepreneur that’s new to town, working at a fresh startup and looking to meet new people can actually get something out of isway better. This is exactly what the Ash Bash was for me and the rest of the PhotoCrank team that headed out for the drinks, barbecue and socializing on a beautiful Sunday night. By the time we all left we had not only had a great time drinking, eating BBQ and mingling, but we each had all met some great people who will not only end up being valuable contacts for PhotoCrank, but who will also probably become some our newest friends out here in Silicon Valley.

Bottom line: In my opinion, the Ash Bash has created an environment that helps startups like PhotoCrank make some awesome new contacts the best way possible - by getting to know them as a just people first. I feel that if I’m out meeting great, new people who are also part of the Silicon Valley startup madness that we many of us all know and love, then doing business together will just become a natural by-product these relationships. That, to me, is the best way to do business anyways and I feel lucky to have found about Ash and his Bash as soon as I did.

One more thing - Ash isn’t just a party planner, he’s an MIT grad with a super-cool medical startup called MEDgle that you all should check out. I can guarantee you all one thing - everyone who makes their way to an Ash Bash (75+ people and growing) knows ALL about MEDgle as well. Not a bad way to market if you ask me - nice work, Ash.

More pics from the party can be found over here on Facebook, I hope to see you all next month.

More than just word bubbles, PhotoCrank as a photo tool?

As with any other group of people who are developing a product that is new and innovative, all of us here at PhotoCrank are constantly seeking out new and different ways that Crank’n an online photo can add value to anyone and everyone’s web experience. Although we are constantly coming up with some great new ideas (and some that aren’t so great), the core of what PhotoCrank is and what it provides those who use it doesn’t ever seem to really change a whole lot. No matter what our crazy brains have come up with, PhotoCrank still is, and probably always will be an easy, fun and informative way to make photos more relevant to people across the Internet.

But, just because the core of PhotoCrank doesn’t change doesn’t mean that Crank’n can’t be used to do many different things for many different types of people. While a majority of the current Crank’rs out there may be using PhotoCrank for mostly entertainment purposes on photos, I feel that there are also powerful ways that PhotoCrank can become a valuable and useful tool for online images as well. A quick example of what I mean can be found over at TechCrunch, which if you don’t know is one of the most popular tech blogs on the Interwebs (I read it several times a day). In a post that I noticed yesterday titled MySpace Embraces DataPortability, Partners With Yahoo, Ebay And Twitter there had been a mocked-up screenshot of a Twitter profile page posted above the text content that had been written. The screenshot was circled in certain areas that TechCrunch wanted the readers to pay special attention to and although the circles were easily noticed, the sections of the image that they were surrounding was unreadable and hard to make out due to the width restrictions of the blog. For those blog readers out there like me who mostly use the skimming method to keep up with posts, I felt that the image wasn’t getting a good enough point across just standing there on it’s own, which could lead to less time on site, less interest in the actual text content and possibly even a frustrating user experience.

After I saw this particular post, my wheels began to turn a bit and I came up with a potential way for blogs like TechCrunch to use PhotoCrank in these types of situations (screen shots, graphs, etc.). The first image below is what was posted by the TechCrunch guys and as you can see it’s not very easy to quickly understand what the image is trying to get across to the readers:

The following image is a mock-up screenshot of my own Twitter profile page, with circles added just like they were on the original image that was posted with the TechCruch post. To make the image more relevant and easier to understand I simply Crank’d the image with some cropped closeups and short captions of what was circled for attention. Once the Crank is played, the closeups and captions appear and they are very easy to read as they seem to ‘pop off’ of the original image. See the example below and click the Crank It button in the bottom right corner of the photo to play the Crank:

In my opinion this is a simple and powerful way to use PhotoCrank as a tool for images and photos, which takes the value of Crank’n to a whole new level. As more examples like this come along, I’ll post them up here in the PhotoCrank Blog so that I can get your thoughts and comments on each one. Until next time, make sure that you Crank it like you want it.

Keeping up with what’s new at The SiliconValley NewTech Meetup

There’s a refreshing trend that is alive and thriving out here in Silicon Valley and believe it or not, it has nothing to do with buying super expensive sports cars (although that’s a popular trend as well). This trend that I’m talking about is all about people meeting other people, which is obviously nothing new to the human race - people have been meeting and congregating since the beginning of time. But, somehow the simple term known as a ‘meetup‘ has all of a sudden revolutionized, simplified and made public the age-old act of bringing people together for any and every reason that you could possibly think of. For some meetup users it’s as simple as trying to get some friends together for a house party while others might create a meetup as a way to get a Saturday afternoon soccer game organized. But, no matter what the theme of the meetup is, the overall goal is the same - bringing people together.

There are hundreds of meetups listed daily here in Palo Alto and as you can probably imagine, many of them are tech related. One of the more popular meetups that all of us here at PhotoCrank make an effort to check out each month is The Silicon ValleyNewTech Meetup that is run by a fellow Internet addict and super cool guy Vincent Lauria (aka Vinnie). Each month 150+ people pack into a room to check out 4 new web startups that are just hitting the scene and to mingle, network and socialize. It’s a great way to keep up with some of what could be the Internet’s next big thing and it’s also an amazing place to meet some valuable contacts from around Silicon Valley.

Check out a couple of pics below from the meetup and head on over to Vinnie’s blog post to learn more about the companies that presented to the group. Be sure to click the Crank Button in the bottom right-hand corner of each photo to see the Cranks that I have added….and feel free to add your own as well!

Mark Goldenson presents from PlayCafe.com

Vinnie gets to take his shot at presenting with his forum-based site lefora.com

This is Haruna and she came to the meetup for one reason - to find a job.

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