John Saddington must be very excited. His community-backed Pressgram project is well underway. The app has been released and it's creating some buzz. The app has also caught the attention of professional photographers like Scott Wyden Kivowitz, who backed the Kickstarter project at one of the higher levels. Scott has used the alpha and beta versions of the app.
https://twitter.com/shotbyjenn/status/375673993174716416For Pressgram I backed a little more than I usually do because of what the project represents, the fact that it is a combination of both of my passions (photography and WordPress) and I really believe in the created and the product.Scott Wyden
I think what's driving the passionate buzz behind this app is the idea of freedom. Freedom from the ever-changing terms of service (TOS) from various social media network in an ever-increasing grab for giving themselves full copyright control over uploaded images. It's what got me excited about the project.
Scott already has some ideas of what he's like to see in the app. One is a Custom Post Feature1 and the other is what Scott is calling "Party Mode".
Party Mode would be a fun feature. The idea is that an event organizer can create an event inside of Pressgram and give event attendees access to post to the event blog post. As they take pictures at the event, the organizer will get notified and has the ability to approve or deny photographs from being posted to the blog article. At the end of the event, the one event blog article could have a few or many photographs from various Pressgram users at the event. Think Google Plus Party Mode (Android users have this) but for a WordPress website. Cool, right?
I love that idea! Most of my friends and family are iPhone users. My wife's family lives close by and most weekends we are together celebrating something2. This summer we spent a week in a rental home in the Virginia Beach area. We took a lot of photos on the drive down and during our stay which we later uploaded to Shutterfly. We didn't upload many to Facebook because of concerns of who might see mostly candid family photos.
i heart #pressgram pic.twitter.com/a0bjuwe087
— melody joy (@melodyjoy1983) September 5, 2013
Imagine how much more fun it would be to update a web site in real-time with iPhone snapshots during our trip and keep complete control over who could view or download those photos? That's the promise of Pressgram. That's the possibility that the community has rallied around. I can't wait to start "pressgramming".
Like Scott mentioned Instagrate Pro is a WordPress plugin that allows for cross-posting images posted to Instagram to a self-hosted WordPress blog. I used it for a bit with my iPhoneography but found it lacking. I love big images and wide uncluttered blog pages. Instagram only allows a 612x612 export of images. All the photos posted with Instagrate Pro were limited to 612 square. That meant that on the 960 grid layout that I used on my blog the Instagram images looked out-of-place. I eventually deleted the plug-in. I'm hoping Pressgram will support larger images sizes.
