by Kelly Smith

In Zapd 2.0 we introduced a new way of ordering posts in your Zaps.  You can now view a grid of all your photos and posts and reorder them in any way you like –  very similar to how you can rearrange app icons on your iPhone. Here’s how:

1. Go to one of your Zaps.
2. Hit the icon of two arrows at the bottom of the screen, second from the right.
3. Once you see a grid of all your posts, hold your finger down on one until it begins to shake a little.
   
4. Drag the item to where you want it to appear in the order of posts.

Here’s a short video tutorial:

In the old version of the app you had one of two options:  new posts and photos were displayed at the top of your Zap or they were placed below all your other posts (chronologically – we called this “story mode.”). We think our new way is much more powerful and customizable.

Let us know what you think…

thanks,
Kelly

Kelly Smith | Founder and CEO
kellysmith [at] zapd [dot] com

by Michael Todd Smith

Ahhh the Holidays!

With friends and family gathering together to share roast beast (thank you Dr. Seuss) there is no better time to use Zapd! There are so many memories that happen during Thanksgiving – new baby, kids home from college, family flying in, the dinner prep, celebration, and of course the much beloved afternoon nap. Capture your celebration by easily creating a Zap website with your family and friends, straight from your iPhone.

8 Easy Steps to your Own Social Thanksgiving Website

1. Download Zapd from the AppStore if you don’t have it on your iPhone already. It’s free!

2. Open Zapd, hit the “plus” sign on the opening screen to create a new Zap, and select a theme!

-With dozens of themes to chose from for your new website, you’ll be sure to find the perfect one for the occasion

3. Add a title, text, batches of photos or links straight from your iPhone by selecting each icon in the lower tool bar

-Even access photos in your Apple iCloud Photo Stream!

4. Use the built-in photo editing capabilities by selecting the edit icon to add filters, crop, adjust brightness, contrast or saturation as you wish.

5. Modify your title, personalize your URL, add tags or change other settings. If nothing to modify, click “done” in upper right corner.

6. Invite the entire family to collaborate on your website (Zap) by clicking the profile icon in the upper right corner.

-Select people from your Address Book, Facebook, or search for other Zapd users

-Everyone you invite can add to the Zap, whenever they’d like and wherever they are. No need for everyone to wait until they get home to upload photos.

7. Now share your new website with the family and friends who couldn’t attend by clicking the share icon in the lower toolbar.
-You can share the link on Facebook, Twitter, SMS or email

8. Your new Zap will look great no matter how they choose to view – be it mobile, tablet or computer!

There’s no easier way for everyone to document and share memories of the holidays together than with Zapd. Grandparents, cousins, siblings, even friends visiting from college, the entire gang can get involved! Zapd is the perfect place for this special day to be documented- together. And yes, all this for free!

This holiday season, share your special memories with Zapd on your own personalized, social websites.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you from all of us here at Zapd!

Follow these step-by-step instructions to delete an individual Zap.

Step 1: Select the Zap to delete.

Step 2: Open the settings page.

Step 3: Scroll down and tap on the
delete button.

Step 4: Confirm the deletion.

by Kelly Smith

We often get asked, “Why did you create Zapd? What does it do? Why do I need it?” This video answers these questions and walks through how Zapd is different than – and often complementary to – traditional website builders, Facebook, blogs, Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr, email and other ways of sharing photos, events, and stories.

Zapd is a mobile-first app that allows users to instantly create a website, micro blog, or photo album right from their iPhone and share it with their friends via Facebook, Twitter or email. Zapd is also the first iPhone app that enables collaboration between multiple people on the same shared website, or Zap. There are many other tools out there for sharing photos or stories but each one more or less specializes in one particular area and/or user experience and approach. Zapd includes the most relevant things to provide a uniquely social tool for stories and chapters of your personal or professional life, which includes photos, text, and links.

How Zapd compares with other alternatives:

Website Builders

• Website builders like Wix and Go Daddy are good for small businesses but too complicated to tell a story about a family vacation.
• Not event-based or impulsive; you can’t tell a quick story from your phone.

Blogging Tools

• Starting a blog can feel like a big commitment.
• Blogging tools like WordPress and Tumblr can get complicated.
• Not easy to use quickly or create from your phone.

Photosharing

• Photosharing sites like Flickr or Shutterfly are for photos only and don’t have elements of a blog to tell a story.
• Sometimes users have to have an account for photosharing sites to see your full albums.

Social Networks

• Social networks make it hard to selectively share, you can’t share photos with just some of your Facebook friends.
• It’s hard to keep a cohesive story going on your Facebook feed. Too many photos “pollute” your friends’ feed.
• Twitter only lets you share one photo at a time; it isn’t good for telling a story.

Email

• Cameras are putting out better and better photos which means bigger photos, it’s hard to send a lot of large files in just one email.
• You can’t update an email by adding photos or text, once it’s sent it’s sent.
• Not collaborative.

Photo Apps

• Very focused on the photos with no blogging element.
• Photo apps like Instagram are good for adding photo filters but not built for telling a complete story.

Please let us know how you feel Zapd is different!

It’s all good,
Kelly Smith
Founder, CEO | Zapd

We received a ton of feedback requesting this feature. Now multiple people can collaborate on one shared Zap. The collaboration feature is a simple and fun way to create shared websites. Perfect for all sorts of shared experiences and events like trips, sports events, weddings, parties, etc. It’s still fast and easy to do, here’s a rundown of how it works:

Step 1: Create a Zap

• Login to your Zapd profile and start a new Zap by clicking on the orange plus sign in the lower right hand corner.
• Scroll through the list of themes and choose a look for your new website.
• Create your first post (photo, text or link)
• Customize your Zap by changing the name, categorizing it, adding tags or changing the URL, if you want, in Settings. All of these settings, including the theme, can easily be changed at any time so don’t worry if you aren’t sure what direction you’re going yet.
• Hit “Done” in the upper right hand corner.

Step 2: Invite Collaborators

• Click on the friend icon in the upper right hand corner to add a collaborator. You can search Zapd for users or invite friends from Facebook or your address book.
• Once they receive and accept your invitation you will be notified and you are now able to work together on the new Zap!
• Alternatively, you can collaborate with people you don’t know. If you come across a Zap that you like you can request to collaborate with the creator. They will receive a notification and have the option to accept or decline your request.

Add and Edit Content

• Now you and anyone else who has been added as a collaborator can add content to the shared Zap from anywhere.
• Rearrange the order of posts by clicking the two arrows icon in the lower right hand corner when viewing your shared Zap.
• When you see a grid of all your photos and other posts, just hold your finger down on one and drag it to where you want it to appear.

Share

• Hit the share icon at the bottom of the screen.
• Share your Zap with friends and followers with one click via Facebook, Twitter or email.

Zapd’s collaboration feature makes it easy to create a quick photo album of a party, a summer spent backpacking across Europe, or a classroom project. The possibilities are endless!

Some folks have not been able to invite collaborators via their Address Book on the iPhone.

Here’s the latest about the address book permissions issue:

• If you’re running iOS 5, or if you’ve ever used Zapd on iOS 5, more than likely you won’t have the issue that prevents access to your address book.
• If you’ve only run Zapd on iOS 6, you’re going to encounter this “Sorry Friend” message when you tap the contacts icon.

Why?

Well, the friendly safety patrol at Apple HQ has decided that they don’t want apps sending address book data without users’ permissions, and they’ve chosen a really counterintuitive way of grandfathering app permissions. And since we were developing this app originally on iOS 5, most of us don’t have this particular bug and weren’t really able to see it during development.

What do?

We’ve developed a code fix that checks to see if you’re running iOS 6 and triggers the permissions request for address book access. This will be included in Zapd 2.0.2 release. We expect it to be available in the App Store by the end of the next week (Nov. 23rd or so).

Sorry for the inconvenience,
Brian

Brian Fioca | CTO

We’ve been receiving some feedback from users who can’t upload photos stored on their iPhone to their Zap. This is because their iPhone settings are not allowing Zapd access to the photos. To fix this and upload pictures stored on your iPhone:

1. Open Settings icon on your iPhone
2. Select Privacy
3. Select Photos
4. You should see the Zapd app listed – toggle to “on”

Here’s a short video demonstration of how to do it. Hopefully this clears up some questions!

Please let us know if this was helpful. Please connect with us on Facebook and Twitter for more info and updates as well.

See you on Zapd,

Gavin Donnelly
Zapd Team

Some of our users have been experiencing a bug that causes their Zapd app to crash after about 30 seconds or so. We are well aware of the issue and are sorry for the inconvenience it may have caused. Rest assured, your Zaps are safe! We have identified the cause and have submitted a patch release to the App Store that will fix the bug. Once Apple approves the patch the app will auto-update, but in the meantime you can uninstall and re-download Zapd which fixes the issue in most cases. We expect this to be available in the App Store by early next week (11/19 or so) if not sooner. Here’s a video from our CEO Kelly Smith and CTO Brian Fioca, head of our tech team, discussing the issue:

Over a year ago, we built Zapd as an experiment. We wanted to see how quickly we could allow people to create gorgeous web sites from their iPhones. We weren’t even sure that it was possible with the tiny screen and touch interface, but we knew that the post-PC world was coming and we wanted to see whether we could pull it off.

Needless to say– we did. Since March 2011 we’ve seen Zaps created for trips, parties, weddings, schools, food, sporting events and more. But our experiment definitely had a few missing features and we knew we could do more. Plus, our users gave us pretty amazing feedback on what they wanted to see added to Zapd.

So we’ve re-invented our invention and we’re proud to announce Zapd 2.0! We’d love to tell you a bit more about what we’ve done and why.

First, Zapd is attacking the same vision that it has since day 1. We want to help you capture an experience– whether it’s work or play– and turn it into a website within 60 seconds (all without needing to be a geek!). But with Zapd 2.0, you asked for it to be even easier, prettier, and more social– and that’s just what we delivered.

So what’s new?

First and foremost, it’s easier to do the things you want to do. We’ve streamlined the Zap creation process and added batch image processing– making creating a gallery as easy as a few taps. Check out the screenshot below:

And we wanted to give you the power to make your photos perfect, so we rolled in photo editing superpowers– crop, filter and enhance your photos at will!

But we didn’t stop at just beautiful photos.  We’ve rolled out dozens of new themes to choose from and introduced two gorgeous new layouts– a grid layout and a marquee layout:

And in response to the requests of many Zapsters, we’ve introduced collaboration!  For trips, parties, weddings and more, it just makes sense for a Zap to have more than one author…  You can now invite people into your social website with just a tap from your address book or from Facebook.

And we didn’t stop there in our effort to be more social with Zapd.  Months ago we realized that we were constantly bookmarking awesome Zaps from our most active users…  So we introduced the ability to follow users right in the Zapd app.  Now you see a gorgeous feed of the folks you follow (and the folks we feature, if that’s your thing).

We hope you love the new version of Zapd as much as we do. Check back here to the blog frequently because we’ll post updates, how-to’s, tips, tricks and tutorials each week. We’ve got a few bugs we’re ironing out and a long list of awesome features that we’re itching to build, but we’d still love to hear your ideas for how we can make Zapd even better. Email info@zapd.com or me directly at kellysmith@zapd.com.

Thanks again for the tremendous support.
-Kelly Smith
Founder and CEO, Zapd

SEATTLE, Nov. 12, 2012 – Zapd, the top 10 iPhone app that lets users create and publish social websites directly from their iPhone, today announced the general availability of Zapd 2.0. With no design experience or coding required, Zapd makes creating, sharing and collaborating on a website quick and easy. Just select a theme and then add photos, text or links. You’re done. Zaps are automatically optimized for viewing on tablet, PC, and mobile devices. With Zapd, users can create and share websites for vacations, kids, weddings, sports, classroom and photography projects and more, for free.

“Zapd is about easily capturing an experience – either work or play – and sharing it in a new way, what we call a social website. All this can be done from the iPhone, which liberates millions of users and billions of photos to create themed chapters of their lives,” explains Zapd CEO and founder, Kelly Smith. “Zapd is at the forefront of the changing direction for website creation, design and purpose. Either individually or collectively, Zapd puts website creation literally into the hands of everyday users, in the form of their iPhone.”

Zapd provides a growing library of professionally-designed ‘themes’ to create social and shareable websites in as little as one minute. Friends, family, students and colleagues can build out the same shared site, collaboratively – right on their phone wherever they are. It is so easy that anyone can create instant actual websites – with text, links, and photos – called ‘Zaps,’ with no programming skills.

Some of what’s new in Zapd 2.0:

• Collaboration – invite others to make websites with you
• Easier, faster creation – batch uploads of photos
• Photo editing – filters, cropping and more image enhancing options
• Personalization – a dozen new themed layouts
• Feeds – discover and follow other Zaps and authors
• Easy integration – connect the app with existing address book contacts and Facebook friends

“With Zapd 2.0, iPhoneographers can take sharing photos and interacting through social media to a whole new level,” said Glyn Evans, founder and editor of the iPhoneography blog. “Gone are the limitations of expressing your thoughts in just 140 characters, or capturing and sharing what you see through a square frame. With Zapd 2.0, sharing and micro blogging has just become a whole lot easier.” Glyn adds, “Photography is more than just getting the most likes or followers, it’s about expressing ourselves, capturing those precious moments, the breathtaking things we see, the happy times, and the sad times, and then being able share them with friends and family, and with Zapd 2.0, this is now so much easier to do.”

Zapd offers more than 45 themes for every lifestyle, event, holiday, hobby, mood and occasion, with more being added all the time. It is an amazing social tool for:

• Personal or family blog
• Travelogue for you and your companions
• University classroom assignments and extended learning
• Wedding website where all guests can share photos and experiences before, during and after
• Family site to document graduations, celebrations, and major milestones and events
• Sports collaboration for a single game or throughout the season
• Sorority, fraternity and other club events
• Buying or selling a home
• Promoting a small business
• Anything with memories worth capturing and sharing!

You can also share your website on the fly, going beyond your close circle by Tweeting it or posting it to Facebook, directly from Zapd on your iPhone.

“Soccer fans come to games to immerse themselves and be part of an event,” said Adrian Hanauer, owner and General Manager, Seattle Sounders FC. “I see Zapd as yet another cool way to engage with other fans, family, and friends to capture and share that experience, be it professional games, kids sports teams, and everything in between.”

Creating websites isn’t easy for everyday users and most are never found. Zapd has social engagement built into its core, and the fact that Zaps are delivered directly from the iPhone lets users capture, collaborate, and share personal moments in their life, as they happen.

About Zapd

Zapd is the world’s first mobile social website creation and collaboration app that lets people share their life experiences through pictures, text and links. Zapd has attracted users around the world with its innovative, yet simple website creation platform. Zapd was the iTunes app of the week for two weeks and the fastest growing app in April 2011, ranking in the top 10 in 12 different countries. Zapd’s founder, Kelly Smith, has launched several successful start-ups, including Inkd.com, Imagekind (acquired by CafePress), and RocketVox (acquired by Comcast’s thePlatform). Zapd is backed by investment partners Second Avenue Partners, Madrona Venture Partners, as well as investors Mika Salmi, Mike Slade, Rich Barton and Rob Glaser.

Download Zapd for free on the App Store and visit zapd.com to experience a variety of featured Zaps and useful info to get the most out of Zapd. Follow Zapd on Twitter @zapdapp and like Zapd at https://www.facebook.com/zapdapp

Zapd logo and other media assets available at this link: http://bitly.com/SMTHKG