Private Networks

Privacy and the Internet don’t always go hand-in-hand. Fotobounce thinks it is important that users be able to control who has access to their personal photos. This is why we have created the Fotobounce Private Network feature. The Private Network is a close group of people where Fotobounce users (aka Bouncers) invite friends and family to share their photo libraries. This feature puts users in control of their photo privacy and enables them to define what is to be shared and with whom. To make it easier to build a Private Network, Fotobounce enables users to invite Bouncers by importing contacts from Gmail and Yahoo. Users can also organize Bouncers into groups.

More capabilities of the Private Network feature:

• See whether friends are online or offline similar to Skype™.
  Bouncers who are online will show up clearly on the user’s Private Network panel. The user can then connect to those friends and browse their photos by People, Events, Places, Keywords, and Collections.
• Invitations are emailed, along with sample photos.
  A user can send a Bouncer invitation email and attach “teaser” photos so friends/family see a sample of the photos available for browsing.
• Full control over privacy of personal photo collection.
  Security and privacy of data is a major concern as demonstrated by the recent uproar over large social networks default privacy settings and associated complexity. Fotobounce places users in complete control of their photos and albums and who has access to view them. All transmissions of photos and associated data are encrypted with 128-bit SSL so users can rest assured that no one can view their photos unless authorized to do so.
• Tags remain “intact” when tagged photos are transferred.
  When users view a photo on a fellow Bouncer’s system, they will see all associated info tags and people tags attributed to the photo. If the photo is copied to a user’s local Fotobounce library, these tags remain intact, copying along with the photo.  This saves time and effort for everyone in the Private Network.

Built-in Face Recognition and Automated Tagging

Fotobounce utilizes advanced face detection and recognition technology to automatically detect faces when photos are found or imported. As faces are detected by Fotobounce and tagged by the user, this “trains” Fotobounce to learn who people are and helps automate the tagging process.

This saves the user valuable time by reducing the need to tag individual photos. Once photos are tagged, they can be shared within the Private Network, or uploaded to Facebook and Flickr. Either way, tags remain intact, saving the user and their friends and family the hassle of re-tagging.

Multiple Sorting Options

Along with “People” and “Date,” Fotobounce users have multiple options to organize photos into different album types. This provides more targeted photo organization and improves “search and find” capabilities. The album options include: Event, Place, Collection and Keyword. Event and Place albums are self-explanatory. A Collection album is a versatile album that can be used where organizing photos into events or places would be inaccurate or impractical. For example, photos of animals or pets would be placed into a Collection album. Keyword albums (or what other programs call “tags”) allow for broad categorization of photos. Photos contained in Keyword or Collection albums can be contained in multiple albums.  You can also create album hierarchies such as Country, State and City.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Flickr Friendly

Sharing photos on Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Flickr is effortless with Fotobounce. Photos are uploaded directly from Fotobounce – with tags and descriptions intact on Facebook. There’s no need to spend additional time painstakingly re-tagging photos and no browser-based transfers or third-party software is required. Other Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Flickr-friendly features include:

• Ability to upload photos to Facebook pages in addition to personal albums. Pages are used for promoting companies and organizations. Fotobounce can now be used to upload photos to any organization page on Facebook.
• Direct transfer of photos from Flickr to Facebook, Google to Facebook, and vice versa. This is extremely beneficial for heavy web users. Previously one had to download photos from Flickr and then upload them to Facebook in two separate steps.  It also works in the other direction.
• View and post comments on Facebook photos.  It is much easier to browse photos on Facebook using Fotobounce than using Facebook itself, and now we have added the ability to comment on Facebook photos while the user browses them within Fotobounce.
• Post entire albums to Twitter in one “tweet”.  You can use Twitpic or use the built-in feature in Fotobounce for maximum flexibility.

Full-resolution photo delivery

Fotobounce’s unique Fotomail feature enables users to email full resolution photos from any portable camera device directly to their Fotobounce system on their desktop. The next time Fotobounce is launched, the user will see that photos are waiting to be imported.  Imported photos can then be placed in the album of choice in their Fotobounce library.  If you have friends sending you photos you can also have them email those photos to your Fotomail address.

PC and MAC Compatible

PC and Mac users alike are able to enjoy the benefits and features offered by Fotobounce in organizing, sharing and managing their digital photos.  There are also no compatibility issues when moving photos and metadata back and forth between PC and Mac users. In fact, a user’s entire Fotobounce photo library, with all related data, can easily be moved between environments effortlessly.   We also have a beta version on our download page for Ubuntu Linux.

Photo Viewing & Sharing On the Go

Fotobounce Viewer is a separate product that runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, Apple mobile, Android and RIM Playbook.  The Viewer makes it easy to browse photos and share them on the go from any platform and practically any mobile device.  For devices not supported by the Fotobounce Viewer, users can use Fotobounce Mobile.  This delivers private remote access to photo albums via any web browser.

Photo Accessibility On Demand

Photos are always accessible with Fotobounce, whether it’s from the user’s desktop, mobile device or from any remote browser.

Twitter compatibility

Photos or albums can be sent to Twitter from Fotobounce.  Fotobounce is the only solution in the industry that allows an entire album to be attached to a single tweet.

Multiple Printing Options

Fotobounce’s print partners make it super easy to print those favorite photos easily, yet securely. Users can choose from a variety of products including prints, photo books, personalized greeting cards, photo calendars, enlargements, and much more. By selecting an album and choosing “print”, photos are sent directly to the appropriate print partner’s online interface. Each print partner offers different capabilities for delivery and pickup. Fotobounce’s print partners include:

• LifePics (USA/Canada)
• FirstPresent (Europe)