Lifeblob's World

At lifeblob, we are constantly innovating to help you do more with your photos. Today, we announce the launch of a widget that is so unique and powerful in showcasing your photos that all existing widgets simply pale in comparison.

What is so unique about this widget?

If you look towards your right, you will see this widget embedded in the sidebar of this blog. The unique aspect of this widget is that it allows a viewer to browse through your entire public photo stream by simply scrolling through it.

Try scrolling down in the widget on your right and you will see that it keeps fetching more photos as you move down. This makes it really easy for you to showcase your entire photostream within the limited space available on your blog. And when the viewer likes a photo, he/she can click on it to see a larger version of the same – neat, isn’t it?

Whats more, as you add new photos to your photo stream, the old photos get pushed down and the new photos automatically start showing up in the widget!

Thats so cool – how do I get it on my blog?

Here are 3 simple steps in which you can quickly build this widget for your blog:

1) Sign up for a lifeblob account – yup, its required. How else would we get your photos?

2) During the signup process, you will be asked to link your existing flickr / picasa / photobucket / facebook accounts. Follow the instructions on the page to link up as many accounts as you want and we will get your photos from there.

3) After you finish the signup flow and reach your profile page, click on the “Embed” icon. You will then be taken to a page where you can get the embed code for your widget – simple!

So get all your photos on lifeblob and proudly showcase them to the world! Do let us know how you like this embed.

The “Beautiful Moments” contest ended on 28th February, 2010. Once again, we received over 1000 entries. The competition was intense. Only one vote separated the gold and silver prizes.

Congratulations to the winners! We hope to see even greater participation in this month’s contest.

Gold Prize – Wonderful Purple trees by seanjw

Silver Prize – Magic Morning @ Lake Navajo by Leanne Dyckson

Here are some more remarkable entries to the contest:

On 27th Feb, Pranav, Sidhartha, Madhusundhan and me went photowalking round the Ulsoor Lake in Bangalore. Since it was neither early morning nor evening, we had the park and the lake all for ourselves and we made the most of the opportunity! We got some great shots of the lake and the also got a few people fishing by the side!

Barge - Sidhartha

Solitary Fishing - Pranav

Branches - Pranav

For more snaps, check out the Photowalking group on Lifeblob here and join it to get updates from photowalking trips from here on.

This is nothing short of a testimony to our growing impact in the field of photography, we have made it to the photography page at Alltop.

Starting today, you will be served with 5 spectacular photos from lifeblob at http://photography.alltop.com/. And if you are one of our users, do keep an eye out since your photo may be the next one to make it to alltop.

And if you are not already sharing your photos using lifeblob, its time you start doing it if you want to see it on Alltop!

We had our second photowalk on the eve of Valentine’s Day in Bangalore. We chose Shivajinagar- Commercial street area for our photowalk with the intent to capture the mood of Bangalore’s shopping scene on the eve of V-day.

From the street dwellers to Mega malls; the Shivajinagar-Commercial street area gave us an opportunity to capture the rich diaspora of shopping experience. From cheap china electronics to Kashmiri carpets, the Shivajinagar area has a lot of street vendors selling all kinds of stuff. I was accompanied by Sidhartha, Zeeshan, Prashanth, Rakshith, Vishwas, and Pranav.

Here are some photos from the walk.

Rakshith Prasad	Vishwas Narendra	Broken - Zeeshan
Mosque - Vishwas	Antique Clocks - Pranav	Abandoned - Sidhartha

Follow us @lifeblob for updates on future photowalks.  Not from Bangalore and want to start photowalking at your city. Do let us know!

The Ride a Cycle Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that promoted bicycling as a sustainable and socially responsible means of transport is organizing the Bangalore Bicycle Photo Festival to spread the awareness about cycling.

We would like to invite all you photographers out there to participate in this and spread the word. There are two broad themes in which you can participate:

1) Bangalore Cyclists

Take the Photos  of Cyclists who brave the terrible traffic in Bangalore.

• Kids on Cycle/   Cyclists of Bangalore
• Puncture Shop Owners
• Cycle Business Services like the tender coconut on cycles etc
• Cycle Stores

2) Bad Urban Design for Cyclists

• Tell the story of  Bad Design by the urban planners  of Bangalore that makes cycling really hard in Bangalore.
• Share your miseries and  laughter of stupid designs  by BDA/BBMP/Urban planners  using photos.

Post your photos to the Bicycle Photo Festival Group at lifeblob, help spread the word for a noble cause and also get a chance to win some prizes. Here are some photos that have already been posted to the group.

Posted by Abhijith Rao

Posted by MGDPhoto

Posted by Abhijith Rao

Posted by Mayank Rungta

Posted by Murali HR

Posted by Sameer Shisodia

** Details of prizes and awards will be announced shortly.

Last saturday, the 6th of Feb, 2010 we had our first “official” photowalk, though we started photowalking some time back.

Siddharth, Suman, Rakesh, Prashanth, Vikas, Vishwas, Pranav and yours truly met up near Vidhana Soudha (which is a seat of state legislature and one of the most prominent monuments in Bangalore)  and walked towards Cubban Park, taking photos of the High Court, Central Library along the way. It was great fun meeting the the photography enthusiasts in Bangalore and we learnt a trick or two from them.

Here are some of the snaps clicked by the fellow photowalkers. For more photos go here

Siddhartha Reddy	The Photowalkers - Pranav Bhasin
Dragonfly - Pranav	Statue - Pranav Bhasin

We are organizing another photowalk on Saturday, the 13th of Feb 2010 near Shivajinagar-Commercial street area. For more details and RSVP go here. See you there!

We’ve been thinking how we can help our users do more with their photos and one of the things that we hear very often is:

“Hey, I’m happy to see my photos online and see my friends comment on it, but it would be kinda nice if I could print them!”

So a few weeks back, we decided to figure this out and I’m happy to announce that we will be announcing the launch of a lifeblob photo store really soon.

The lifeblob photo store will allow you to turn your photos into beautiful frames, personalized greeting cards, canvas prints and gorgeous photo books. You will also be able to get your favorite photos printed on T-Shirts, Mugs and several other artifacts.

To take advantage of our location, the store will initially be opened up for delivery within India and will thereafter be scaled up to enable deliveries in other countries as well. If you would like to see your country supported, do send us a note at feedback [at] lifeblob.com and it may just help us prioritize our next steps!

So get your printing wishlist ready and watch out for our launch announcement soon!

flow by sicknessclown

When we ask our users how they like to browse through photos, the thing that we hear most often is:

“Whatever you do, just don’t make me click”

Well, we took that rather seriously and have come up with a very interesting way to browse through your photos. We call it the river view for the way it offers a free flowing way of browsing your photos.

Simply keep scrolling down the page and we keep adding more photos until you have seen all – cool, isn’t it?

Click here to check it out

So what can you do with this? Here are some of our thoughts and we would certainly like to hear how you end up using this!

a) Open up your lifeblob page in the river view and breeze through your entire photo album in <15 minutes. Really, I’m serious!

b) Open up a friend’s lifeblob page in river view and stumble upon photos that you’ve never seen before. Do comment on some of them too, your friend will appreciate it.

c) Think of the first word that comes to your mind, stick it at the end of http://www.lifeblob.com/tag/ and see the photos that everyone else has posted related to your word. It could be something cheesy like http://www.lifeblob.com/tag/cheese or it could be something funny like http://www.lifeblob.com/tag/funny or any random word like http://www.lifeblob.com/tag/random but you are bound to find some great photos!

The photos are currently ordered by popularity, but if you want to see them time ordered too, shoot us a mail and we’ll build it for you. We would love to hear how much you like this one!

Celebrations photo contest ended on 24th January. We received a lot of interesting submissions; mainly around Christmas and New Year celebrations from around the world.

The winners of this edition of our photo contest are:

Gold: Anuj Sethi - lorenzkirche Nuremberg Dec 31 ‘09

lorenzkirche-Nuremberg-Dec-31-09 by Anuj Sethi

Silver:  Olga Kornivska – smile

Smile - Olga

Livewire: ripizzo – Frozen Puddle

Frozen-Puddle - Ripizzo

Honorable Mentions:

Control the let go – josh_wroe

Control-the-let-go Josh wroe

Disney World Celebrations at night – Vishal Sood

Disney-World-Celebrations-at-night by Vishal Sood

The current contest “Beautiful Moments” is on till 28th Feb 2009. So submit your entries and win great prizes!