Pixorial, Inc. » The New Sharing

Spring is here, it’s time to step up your photo and video game

admin — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 17:12:07 +0000

After the coldest winter there ever was (possible exaggeration) it’s safe to say we are all ready for spring. Spring can also mean a full roster of sports for the kids and all kinds of other outdoor activities. Shooting in direct sunlight outside can be tricky, so check out some of our favorite tips for catching your best springtime photos and videos yet.

Pick the right device If you have to shoot from a distance don’t you dare leave the digital camera at home; your smartphone zoom just can’t compare. If you are in close proximity and your subject isn’t moving, most advanced smartphone cameras will be comparable so feel free to shoot and share right from your phone.

Know where the sun is This one probably seems pretty obvious but if you are planning on recording or photographing an extra special game, think about where the sun will be when the game is being played. Generally, you want the sun behind you to avoid shadows. If you end up with the sun behind your subject, focus on the light source instead and capture silhouette shots, this works best with a digital camera!

Keep it steady A steady hand is pretty tricky to keep while you are cheering at a game or moving at all. Consider using a tripod or a monopod. No need for a huge setup, portable tripods are pretty affordable and can make all the difference (you can even get tripods for your smartphone!)

Use the shade Even cell phone cameras can be manipulated to take better photos simply. By using your hand or a card to shade the lens you will see a huge improvement in the lighting on your subject. This can be especially helpful when you can’t help but shoot into direct sunlight.

It’s a numbers game With today’s digital storage, there is no reason to take just one photo or video. Great group shots can be especially tricky to capture so just keep clicking! There will always be the notoriously bad smile-r in the family so keep clicking and tell your best jokes. You can easily review all the shots later with Pixorial and choose the perfect shot.

With the temperatures finally creeping up over 60 and the sun shining, the time has never been better to capture photos and videos. Once you’ve captured don’t forget to upload to Pixorial for the easiest of sharing.

Sign in here or sign up for your free account here

Also check out Pixorial for Android or iOS for on the go uploads and viewing that is just about as easy as it gets!

Contest Grand Prize Winner Uses Photos & Videos in the Classroom

Jim St. Marie — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 13:03:57 +0000

Pixorial is used extensively by K-12 educators #EdTech worldwide. And Megan, our Grand Prize Winner in Olathe, Kansas is an educator who uses our service in a lot of innovative ways in the classroom. Here’s her story…

“As my school’s Technology Facilitator, computer science instructor, yearbook Advisor, and an ELA (English Language Arts teacher) I have found Pixorial to be an amazing Web 2.0 tool that seamlessly integrates itself in classroom instruction and professional development.”

“The mobile applications support our BYOD program by making activities such as digital photography scavenger hunts, QR code treasure hunts, narrated photo-stories, and student created video projects possible. Teachers appreciate the easy account creation process and the ability for students to collaborate and share out their albums / work from either a desktop or mobile device.”

Like many other educators, Megan told us that she offers Pixorial as an option to her students on projects where video creation, digital photo editing, and digital storytelling are key components.

“Pixorial is an innovative tool and I’m excited to continue finding more ways to utilize the service in and out of the classroom.”

Thank you Megan for sharing your story and congratulations on winning the Samsung 50-inch 1080p Smart LED HDTV.

Personalized Photos & Videos Important to Second Place Contest Winner

Jim St. Marie — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 22:54:42 +0000

Our Share The Love contest second place prize winner is Patrick from Savannah, Georgia. He uses Pixorial in both his personal life and professionally as the Director of Technology at his school.

“Personally it makes a great photo and video editing tool for my family media. We have two little boys and tons of photos and video footage to keep track of and edit for family and friends.”

“Pixorial makes adding titles and transitions to my video so easy and its integration with Google Drive makes it even better. I can take a video on my phone, it automatically uploads to Drive, and then I pull it into Pixorial to edit and share with everyone! I love it!”

We love hearing stories like this where customers have been able to centralize the media collections that mean the most to them in our secure, integrated platform. For Patrick, it’s clear that the benefits of Pixorial have also simplified his professional life as well.

“After seeing how easy (and fun) it was to use Pixorial for photo and video editing, I have added it to my list of Google Chrome Apps that I recommend to teachers and students. Whether creating a video for a classroom project or just something fun to share with friends, Pixorial makes editing and sharing so simple (which makes my job so much easier)!

Thank you Patrick for sharing your story and congratulations on winning the Google Nexus 10 tablet.

Watch for the story about our Grand Prize Winner coming tomorrow.

Third Place Contest Winner Shares Photos From International Trip

Jim St. Marie — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 02:17:05 +0000

Yesterday, in Congratulations to our Contest Winners!, we announced the prize winners from our Share The Love contest. We thought you might be interested to learn a little more about our third place winner.

Alissa works in healthcare in Columbia, South Carolina. She recently took a group trip to Europe and India. When asked about how she uses Pixorial, Alissa told us…

“Pixorial has allowed me to share my photos with my friends that live in India and the UK and also lets me see what pictures they took!”

Our experience working with customers revealed that most have photos and videos trapped in all kinds of different devices and networks, including friends’ phones, cameras and storage locations which makes it nearly impossible for them to easily find all the media from their different activities. It’s always great to hear how Pixorial has helped solve this problem. Alissa added that…

“There have been way too many times when someone takes a bunch of photos and tells me they will send them to me later – now photo sharing is super easy and lets everyone pool their photos into one album to make up a great library that will allow us all to remember our adventures for years to come.”

“I would highly recommend Pixorial to anyone interested in doing more with their pictures and videos and also sharing them with their friends and family.”

Thank you Alissa for sharing your story and congratulations on winning the $250 Amazon Gift Card.

Stay tuned to hear about our second place winner tomorrow.

Congratulations to our Contest Winners!

Jim St. Marie — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 02:11:09 +0000

Thank you to the more than 10,000 people who participated in our Share The Love contest.

Every day people around the world use Pixorial to share the photos and videos from the life experiences that are important to them. To say thank you for helping make 2013 our best year ever, we invited customers to create albums and invite their friends to join and get entered to win awesome prizes.

Today, we are excited to announce our Prize winners:

Megan T. of Olathe, Kansas – Samsung 50-inch 1080p Smart LED HDTV
Patrick M. of Savannah, Georgia – Google Nexus 10 tablet
Alissa T. of Columbia, South Carolina – Amazon Gift Card for $250

In the coming days we’ll provide you with more info about our winners and the exciting ways they are using Pixorial.

Remember to keep sharing with Pixorial and let us know if you have interesting ways you are using our service. Email to *protected email* – we are always looking for reasons to say thank you – who knows, you may even win a prize!

Snag a free Premium account for life just for sharing

admin — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 23:07:24 +0000

2013 was a huge year for photo and video sharing and Pixorial was psyched to be a part of it. As a thank you, we are offering you a chance to double your storage for life through January 29, 2014 plus entry into our “Share the Love” giveaway.

This is your chance to earn a free Pixorial Premium account for life and be entered to win one of three pretty spectacular prizes:

-50-inch 1080p Smart LED HDTV ($1000 value)

-Google Nexus 10 tablet with 32GB memory and Pixorial MyPlayer HD software ($500 value)

-$250 gift card

Entering is simple. Just share an album with your friends. Once 3 new users join your album; KABLAM! a Premium account is yours for life and you’ve got 3 entries to win a prize. We’ll even give you another entry for every new user after that. We want you to share your story with all of your friends and family so we won’t be limiting your number of entries as long as every new user is for real.

Kick off the new year right by sharing holiday memories and everything else friends and family are missing. Learn more here and get to sharing!

Photo & Video on Android: Fast, Easy, and Tons of Fun

admin — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 22:38:31 +0000

Want an effortless way to capture, transform, and share your photos and videos? Well, look no further. Today we announced a major update to the Pixorial app for Android. These changes are all about fast, easy, and fun! Here’s what’s new:

Capture unlimited photos and videos

Pixorial on Android is fully equipped with photo capture, editing, and sharing – with no limits on how many shots you can upload to your secure library. Take a picture, then enhance and crop with our easy photo editor.

Express yourself by adding frames, stickers, and captions in just a few taps.
(Check out “Add Some Fun to Your Pictures” for more on using these editing features). And when it comes to taking videos, you can capture clips of any length – no restrictive 15-second limits.

Save time with our streamlined interface

Pixorial on Android offers faster photo and video sharing, thanks to streamlined navigation and menus. Looking for a certain pic or video in your library? Now you can resize thumbnail tiles to fit more on the screen and quickly find the one you’re looking for.

The New Sharing: How you want, and when you want

Got lots of photos and videos? Now you can share all or part of a collection by creating as many secure private albums as you want. Share pics and videos in the same album, add comments, and give your friends access to your original, full-quality media. They’ll even be able to add their own content to your album. At an event like a party, reunion, or concert? Your friends can instantly find your album for easy social sharing.

Whether you have a Samsung Galaxy, HTC One, Google Nexus, or anything in between, we’ve got you covered! Visit the Google Play store to install or update Pixorial on your Android device.

End the media clutter

admin — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 23:37:38 +0000

As technology slowly (is it really that slow?) takes over our lives, more and more of our memories live online. Is it just us or are they all online but really hard to find?

Photos from that vacation in ‘09 on Flickr, Becca’s birthday party in an album on Facebook, and yesterday’s latte art in Instagram – now there’s a way to see them all together. Let’s stop messing around and do a final round up of your old photos and videos and start using the only hub you’ll need for your media from here on out.

With Pixorial you can pull in photos and videos from sites like Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Google Drive, or Dropbox and create shareable Albums to post on Facebook, Twitter or anywhere a URL fits.

That’s not the end of it either. Tag your photos and videos with titles, dates, and places to make all your media searchable. Create a collection of your favorite moments of your ski trips to Colorado or a whole Album of everything that happened last summer. Stop searching through mysteriously labeled hard drive files and securely store everything in Pixorial.

What does spicy bean dip have to do with video sharing?

admin — Wed, 16 Oct 2013 22:06:47 +0000

At the risk of making you hungry, visualize the following scenario:

You arrive at a friend’s BBQ, and are immediately greeted by a massive spread of food. It’s all there: the grilled meat, chips, four varieties of nicely chilled beer, desserts – the works. You have your own addition as well: some spicy bean dip for guests to munch on. You’re a picky eater, but there’s plenty here to choose from. Time to chow down.

Such is the beauty of the typical potluck. When everyone brings something to the table, there’s more variety and everyone comes away happy.

Now…take this familiar concept, apply it to video, and you’ve got a album .

An album is a collection of videos that you can share anywhere. That can help you save time and hassle when you want to share multiple videos at once – for example, a collection of clips from that weekend BBQ.

But here’s where it gets really cool. An album can also have multiple collaborators. Just like a potluck, everyone can contribute. You can pick and choose the best of the bunch, create a video showing the best parts, and share it with anyone. Your friends and family can do the same.

This video smorgasbord gives you the power of instant collaboration. The possibilities are endless. Cobble together a best-of from a family outing, concert, or even that BBQ.

So how do you create a album?

Well, there are two ways, depending on whether you’re on your laptop/desktop, or your smartphone.

Using MyHub, our online video platform:

First, login. Find the albums tab on the left of your screen. Under that tab select “Add album.” Name it, describe it and fill ‘er up!

On our Pixorial mobile app.

First install the app on iOS or Android. Then open the Pixorial app, and click the plus sign (+) in the top-right corner on iPhone or choose ‘Add album’ in the Android menu. You’ll be prompted to “Create a New Album” and select whether your album will be public or private. Enter a name and description for your album – and that’s it!

Once you have a album filled with videos, you can take those clips and put them together using Movie Creator – our free online video editing tool. Or just share that collection of videos to family and friends, via social networks or with a shareable URL. Super-easy. (Chips not included.)