By Brandon on December 6, 2011
A new beta has been submitted which includes a bug fix for Youtube uploading that has been reported by some users in the field. Special thanks to Oliver Thost and Peter Murphy (of Peter’s Kitchen) for working with us diligently on this.
Also in the new beta we added the ability to set the video category for Youtube uploads, something our users were asking about.
So stay-tuned to your e-mail, beta testers, you’ll be getting one shortly 
In other news, please take note of the ‘Feedback’ icon on the blog now. It ties in with to our very own UserVoice forum, something that may look familiar to those of you that have used UserVoice to submit feedback on Windows Phone and/or Windows Phone Development. If you haven’t used those forums, I encourage you to check them out as Microsoft is really looking hard at the “highly-voted” items in each of them.
Posted in Bug spotting, Updates | Tagged beta
By Brandon on December 2, 2011
Good news everyone!
We have solved the Skydrive issues and submitted an update to the Marketplace. As usual, we’ll be sure and let all of our readers (and Twitter followers) know when the update’s been certified and is available.
Here’s an overview of the changes you’ll see:
First and foremost, Skydrive changed their authentication procedures, so we had to accommodate of course. Now, to authenticate Skydrive with Social Camera on your phone, you’ll go to Settings | Skydrive and see the following:
New Skydrive Connect prompt
After clicking ‘Connect’, you’ll be prompted with a Windows Live sign in page
New Skydrive login
Upon logging in, you’ll get a confirmation page showing the access you are about to grant to Skydrive. Note that we only use the Skydrive integration to list and upload videos to your account! The rest of the things they list there come along w/ requesting the upload permission. If/when this changes for us (say, auto-post to your Windows Live status) we’ll be sure and let our users know.
New Skydrive access verification prompt
After that, the Skydrive Settings page will look like this
New Skydrive logout view
And you’re set!
Secondly, when launching Social Camera now, you’ll have to wait a spell while we re-authorize you with Skydrive. You can tell when this is going on as the progress bar will be running along the top of the app, and Skydrive icons will be disabled until the authentication is complete. If it succeeds, you’ll be able to go about your business as normal. If it fails, however, when you try to use any Skydrive functionality you’ll get the regular Settings prompt telling you that you need to re-verify your information w/ Skydrive.
Everything we’ve researched says that, unless you log out, your Skydrive login should persist for 1 year. We’re not sure how this is affected by uninstall/updates of the app at this time, however.
Thanks for your patience and, as always, keep in touch if you find any bugs or think of any features you’d like to see in the next version of Social Camera. Notice we now have a ‘Feedback’ link in the bottom right of the blog for you to use whenever you like!
Posted in Bug spotting, Updates | Tagged bugs, feedback, skydrive, skydrive transfer
By Brandon on November 30, 2011
Some of you may have already read that Microsoft updated Skydrive yesterday with a few new features.
The bad news is that this appears to have broken Social Camera. The good news is that hopefully this will NOT require an update to Social Camera (5 day wait to hit the Marketplace) but the bad news is we, of course, were caught a bit off guard by this breakage. We are in the early stages of investigation and will update via blog/twitter as we find out more.
Posted in Bug spotting | Tagged skydrive
By Brandon on November 23, 2011
We’re proud to report that Social Camera 2.0 was JUST certified by Microsoft. This means it should be showing up in your list of app updates w/in the next 24 hours, and will also be available to new customers in the marketplace w/in that time (via the link found in the sidebar)
Thanks to all our testers for their help & support. Submit your ideas & suggestions for v3.0 to us via the blog, twitter, or e-mail!
Posted in Announcements
By Brandon on November 21, 2011
After working on Social Camera for the past few weeks and releasing it to the Marketplace a month or so ago, I’ve found a handful of apps of awesome usefulness on my personal Windows Phone that I feel compelled to mention to the community:
- Ad Tile Daily - As you know, the trial version of Social Camera displays ads to users on the viewfinder, media, and Settings pages. Since this is my first ad-supported app, I of course am interested in seeing just how many impressions, clicks and (let’s be honest here) money this sends my way. This app not only gives you that information, but does so in a Live Tile that shows you in a graphical format just how much you earned in the last 24 hours and week. Very handy and quite ingeniously implemented.
- AppTracker - I am always very interested in knowing what my users think of my apps, as I think all developers are. Microsoft has given us the ability to know this in near-real-time via app Reviews and Ratings. AppTracker allows you to not only see the reviews/ratings along w/ comment detail for any app in the marketplace, but also “favorite” apps you want to really keep a pulse on. Of course, I have done this w/ Social Camera and also apps that my friends have created so we can all let each other see how our apps are doing.
- Marketplace Dashboard - Developers get additional information on our apps when we log in to the App Hub including downloads, crash count, and other statistics. Marketplace Dashboard takes a really clever approach to bringing this right to your phone. It simply logs in to the app hub via a browser w/in the app, does a screen scrape on the data shown, and then re-formats & displays that information in the app itself. When it does this over time, it also shows you the change in number of downloads and crashes since you last refreshed the stats. It works for both fully-certified applications and those which a developer submits to the Beta Marketplace. I use it to of course keep track of the # of downloads and crashes, but also to track the progress of my submitted apps so I know when they’re available in the marketplace.
I hope you find these apps for your Windows Phone as valuable as I have throughout my development of Social Camera.
Posted in wpdev | Tagged ads, apps, development, marketplace, ratings, reviews, wpdev
By Brandon on November 19, 2011
Were you beginning to wonder?
Well with all the hype, tweets, and e-mails we’ve been receiving we pushed the envelope the past few days to get this version in to your hands. We are hoping certification won’t take any longer than the 5 days it took for v1.1 to get published.
Here is a list of the new features:
- Uploading to Skydrive
- Ability to transfer videos on Skydrive to Youtube
- Upload to Youtube as ‘private’
- Change Youtube details (including visibility) after Youtube upload
- Sharing via text message & e-mail through a Chooser when ‘Share’ is selected
- Many performance improvements w/ launching and scrolling through the app
- Support for 6 new languages: Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and both Traditional & Simplified Chinese (tons of thanks to the folks that pitched in here!)
For those of you wondering, here is a list straight from our bug tracking software of all the changes that have gone in to version 2.0:
- Replace messageboxes for auth pass/fail with icon show/hide
- Share button enables after Youtube dialog closes, even if unsuccessful
- User not prompted for push notification opt-in
- Enable Pin to Start of Skydrive Transfer
- Disable swipe when only one item in panorama
- Share listbox should support back button
- Share list display needs improvement
- Youtube uploads not completing
- Skydrive Transfer pin to start multiple times
- Skydrive transfer doesn’t work w/o push notifications
- Make Skydrive Transfer more performant
In keeping with the original Social Camera release, trial users will still be restricted to the ability to upload to Youtube and copy the link to their clipboard.
What do we like the most about this new release? Hands down it has to be Skydrive Transfer. Why? Because it really gets you around the Windows Phone limitation of not being able to get things to Youtube. You can shoot things w/ the native camera if you like, upload to Skydrive with that, then use Social Camera to kick that baby over to Youtube and share it with the rest of the world. Not only that, but it’s super quick & easy to do! There’s no wait time for your phone to transfer any data other than the command for where on Skydrive your video is, and where to send it on Youtube!
What are we planning for 3.0? First and foremost, the most resounding request from our users is a true background upload. We have put this at the top of our list for 3.0. Heck, once we get it done we may just kick out 2.5 to satisfy your appetites After that, only time will tell. So if you have suggestions or thoughts on what else we could do to make Social Camera great, shoot us a line via e-mail, Twitter, or commenting on our blog.
Thanks again for your support! Be sure to check out the review by Saijo over at 1800pocketpc.com (link in the sidebar) that shows off 2.0 – they were one of our beta testers throughout the process.
Posted in Announcements, Bug spotting, Updates | Tagged 2.0, beta, bugs, features, skydrive, skydrive transfer
By Brandon on November 10, 2011
We have just pushed the latest 2.0 build as a Release Candidate to the beta marketplace.
Most of the improvements we’ve put in have been bug fix/robust/failure handling improvements based on user feedback, along with polishing up our new features like Skydrive Transfer. We’ve taken the extra step and localized our app for nearly all Windows Phone supported languages courtesy of Bing translations. If you’d like to help improve on this effort by providing a more human touch to our translations, please drop us a line
Beta testers, standby!
Posted in Updates | Tagged beta, globalization, language, localization, release candidate, skydrive transfer
By Brandon on November 7, 2011
… and so the Social Camera team is now working to translate as much of the text in 2.0 as we can for various languages!
If you would like to help in the effort, please drop us a line and let us know what language(s) you’d be willing to translate from US English.
Thanks!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged languages, translation
By Brandon on November 2, 2011
We have received a few reports of users who put in their Youtube credentials, click ‘verify’ and are met with the Successful message, but yet when they click the ‘Youtube’ button on a saved video, are told they need to put in their Youtube login information.
Thanks to our user Dylaaan, we have found that this is indicative of the credentials that were put in to the Youtube settings screen in fact being incorrect, but showing the wrong message upon Verification. So if this is happening to you, triple-check your login info and try verification again.
A fix for this will be in version 2.0.
Thanks and happy sharing!
Posted in Bug spotting
By Brandon on October 30, 2011
We hear you. You’ve already taken videos w/ your WP7, and would like to get those on Youtube too, and don’t want to (or can’t) use a computer in the meantime.
Social Camera v2.0 has you covered:
Notice the description...
Functionality we’ve always thought would be sweet, and we just perfected. When you thought it couldn’t, Social Camera v2.0 just got even more awesome.
Posted in Updates | Tagged 2.0, features, skydrive, transfer, upload, youtube
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The first socially-adept camera app for your Windows Phone