Lifeblob's World

I am pleased to announce a new addition to our team!

Gowthaman Basuvaraj, a graduate of Anna University and IIIT, who has previously worked for 2 years with Yos Technologies, joined us last week and has promised to take the level of geeky-ness in our office to a whole new level.

As Gowthaman says about himself – “My interests are reading fiction novels and writing code. I am a no-frills weekend biker and a food lover.”

You can connect with him at his lifeblob and twitter pages.

This past weekend was an exciting time for all of us at Lifeblob. We had a stall at the recently concluded siliconindia Startup City 2010 event and we were pleasantly surprised with the response we got at our stall. This was a ideal platform for us to talk about the recently launched Lifeblob Store (http://www.lifeblob.com/store) where we sell personalized photo gifts such as calendars, mugs, canvas, designer photo frames and so on.

Lifeblob Stall

Dart Game

We, also had a dart game in the stall where people visiting the stall could try their hand at darts and win Rs. 1500/- worth of photo products from the Lifeblob store (http://www.lifeblob.com/store). The goal was to get the maximum points by aiming at one of the 3 zones on the dart board (which had different points). If they predicted it right they would get another turn. Else the game ends. More than 500 people participated in this game with many people scoring over 400 points and they walked away with discount coupons on the photo gifts. The winner Mr. Venkatarayappa walked away with the grand prize by scoring 710! Incidently, he had never played darts before!

Hope you all liked our presentation and the products we offer!

Two weeks back, we silently turned on the lifeblob photo merchandise store, sprinked around a few tweets and waited in the hope that one of the hyperactive bloggers ( techcrunch, mashable, pluggd.in et al.. ) will discover it before our formal announcement and brag about breaking the big news before everyone else.

The stage was well set, and cards properly laid out for the sensational discovery, but alas, that did not happen so finally you get to hear about it from the horse’s mouth. The good part is that our customers did find out about the store and we got several orders and a lot of great feedback during these two weeks which we implemented before making this announcement.

So here is the grand announcement – the lifeblob store is finally open for business!

If you are already a lifeblob user, its very easy to place an order – simply click the “Buy Prints” button next to your photos and get started. If you are not already using lifeblob, this is a great time to get an account and turn your photos into beautiful personalized products.

We have partnered with Printo to bring you the highest quality photo merchandise at a price that you can afford. Here is a quick preview of what we are selling currently:

1) Photo Mugs, starting Rs 299 Rs 249 only ( you save 17% )

2) Photo Greeting Cards, starting Rs 50 Rs 40 only ( you save 20% )

3) Designer Photo Frames, starting Rs 299 Rs 199 only ( you save 33% )

4) Canvas Prints, starting Rs 1399 Rs 999 only ( you save 23% )

5) Simple Photo Prints, starting Rs 5 Rs 2.99 only ( you save 40% )

6) Photo Books, coming soon

7) Photo Calendars, coming soon

Do try it out and share your experiences / testimonials with us at feedback@lifeblob.com. Please note that the prices above represent a limited period inaugural offer, so place your orders now!

Today we announce the launch of a much needed and frequently asked for community feature: badges.

As a lifeblob user, badges are a way for you to show-off your accomplishments to the world and get more people to find you on lifeblob. Flaunt your badges on your blog page, your website, your photo-blog or anywhere else you like and declare to the world that you have arrived.

Some of the badges are available for everyone to use and you can pick up the one you like at  http://www.lifeblob.com/badges. If you have more ideas for these badges, let us know and we will get one created for you.

We also have a few special badges that are reserved for privileged / featured lifeblob users. If you have been interviewed on photography tips or if you are a lifeblob power user, you will hear from us really soon about your exclusive badge.

Rediff.com is one of the premier worldwide online providers of news, information, communication, entertainment and shopping services. Rediff.com provides a platform for Indians worldwide to connect with one another online.

We are pleased to announce that we have partnered with Rediff.com to power their “Get Ahead” section with tips and tutorials on improving photography skills. So far, we have been offering these tips at our photography tips site and they will now also be accessible to a wider group of audience on “Rediff Get Ahead“.

Here is the first article that has been published: Tips to shoot great Black & White Photographs

Last week was an exciting and challenging time for us. The NASSCOM Emerge conference in Chennai was coming close and we were working on putting together a showcase of all NASSCOM photos from previous editions on their lifeblob page.

Thats when, Avinash Raghava ( Regional Director of NASSCOM North ) asked us if in addition to the live coverage of the event through photos, we could also provide a live gifting solution where photos of the speakers are used to create photo gifts that are given to them as souvenirs. The idea sounded very exciting so after some initial research we decided to take up this challenge.

So how did we do it?

1) As per the schedule of the event, there were two parallel sessions with multiple participants in the panel through the day. This would mean creating between 5 – 10 photo gifts in 1 hour and this instantly ruled out the possibility of getting the photos printed from an external printer. We decided to carry a HP Photo printer with us.

2) The gifts had to be branded with NASSCOM Emerge graphics. Initially, we created a template that we would merge with the photo to print a branded photo at the event, but we felt that it would increase the turnaround time and is also more prone to errors. We decided to get a tent photo frame printed in Bangalore with a slot where the photo can be inserted. We also got 130 gsm glossy photo paper, a cutter, a scale and glue for the job.

3) On the venue, we setup our equipment at the back of the conference room and did a test run before the event started. Here is Rahul operating our setup at the venue.

4) I took the role of the camera person and Rahul took the role of the gift creator. As soon as a session began, I would run to grab photos of all the speakers and then go to the other room to get photos of the speakers in the other room. It took me 10 minutes to take these photos and thereafter another 30 – 40 minutes to post-process, crop and print them.

5) In the end, the photos were cut out and slotted on the photo frame to create the gift. Here is what it looks like.

It was a great experience for us and I must thank Avinash Raghava for giving us this idea and for Kiruba Shankar for coming up with it. And I hope all the speakers liked it .

PS: We are open for any such ideas for corporate and social events. Drop in a mail at contact@lifeblob.com. We would love to hear from you!

This month started off on a big bang with the prize distribution ceremony of Bengaluru Photo Marathon Infinite 2010. The prize distribution ceremony was coupled with an exhibition of 65 amazing photos that were selected by the judges and was held at Jaaga.

I would like to thank Peevee, Suyog, and everyone who volunteered for all the hard work in putting this event together and to all the participants for their stunning portrayal of Bengaluru in making this event a grand success.

Here are some highlights from the prize distribution ceremony, presented through photos. To view all the submissions to the contest, proceed here.

Lifeblob is all about photos. For the last 2 years, we have been using our dedicated servers on softlayer to host all the user uploaded photos. This was the case until yesterday.

For the last few months, we are witnessing a huge growth on lifeblob. Just a few weeks back we crossed 3 million photos mark on lifeblob!  We have been planning to move to S3 for sometime but have been deferring it for lack of time (btw we are hiring!  http://bit.ly/acZLrM).  On friday ( 30th ), we hit a red mark on the available disk space.  So I had to jump in to do a quick migration. It took us less than a day to migrate our photo infrastructure from softlayer to S3.

Now every time a user uploads photos, here is the sequence of steps that happens:

1. User uploads photos to lifeblob server.
2. Photos are processed by server and 5 versions are created.
3. Database is updated with the photo metadata.
4. User is redirected to the newly uploaded photos. ( format: http://static.lifeblob.com/images.. )

In the background, we have a process that performs the following steps:

1. Poll database for newly uploaded photos.
2. As and when new photos are found, push them to S3 and delete the local copy.
3. Update the photo metadata to point to the new photo location. ( format: http://p0.lbcdn.net/… )
4. Keep polling…

The advantage of this setup is that when the photos are being uploaded, the user need not wait till we copy them ( 5 versions ) to S3. In case after photos are moved to S3 and the user hits the older url, we have the following nginx rules to redirect them to the S3′s location:

The only drawback of S3 implementation currently is that S3 does not allow pointing multiple subdomain to a single bucket. If it had supported, we could have load balanced the photo requests by having urls like p0.lbcdn.net, p1.lbcdn.net, so on.

Did you know that lifeblob puts no limit on number or size of photos being uploaded? Now that we have a truly infinite storage, bring on all your photos!

The moment that you have all been waiting for is finally here. The contest for the month of April is now open and the theme for this month is:

Black & White – Recreate the magic in two colors

Graz by Luca Terminator

Anyone who has been into photography for some time will tell you that there is a charm to presenting the photos in monochrome. Simple looking photos can be transformed into masterpieces with the touch of a button and a splash of some extra contrast.

So time to go ahead, unleash your creative juices and present your masterpieces in black and white. For more details about the contest, follow this link.

Bengaluru photographers, time to get your photography gear out. Bengaluru Infinite 2010 is finally here! A day filled with photography in your favourite city capturing the city at its best.

What is it?

Bengaluru Infinite is a photo-marathon that will test your photography skills to the core. Each participant will be given 4 themes on which they will need to take photographs. The themes will cover a wide variety of subjects that are associated with Bengaluru, that define Bengaluru or that showcase the spirit of Bengaluru.

The contest starts at 8AM in the morning and ends at 8PM in the evening during which, the participants will need to shoot photographs that match the themes given to them.

Remember, you only get to submit two photos per theme, so make sure you take plenty of photos for the theme and pick up the best two of the lot.

You can find more details about the contest and the terms and conditions for submission here.

When is it?

The Bengaluru Infinite 2010 will be held on April 25, 2010. Registrations are open now and please call up the following numbers to get yourself registered for the contest.

Asif – 99451 30745 / Sriharsha – 98866 35410 / Peevee – 99455 16333

You can mail at bengaluruinfinite@gmail.com for further details! You can also register at http://bit.ly/bi2010 and one of our volunteers will get in touch with you.

Are there any prizes?

Of course, there are plenty of cool prizes to be won. The details of the prizes will be available shortly at the Bengaluru Infinity 2010 lifeblob page.

What camera should I use?

Photography is more about finding a great moment and capturing it in your camera, rather than a function of the equipment you use. It doesn’t matter what camera you use as long as you are excited to participate and have a knack of identifying a unique moment from the rest.

It goes without saying that you would do better if you had at least a DSLR camera in your hands, but no need to fret if you have a compact camera of a mobile camera since composing a great photo is 90% of the battle won.