After several weeks from the official release in San Francisco, and many many sleepless days figuring out bugs, improvements and general awesomeness, we finally released the new version of our product.

Directly from the changelog:

30/04/2013 – in3Dgallery v1.5

Changes:
1. It is now possible to create an account from scratch, without logging in with Facebook
2. It is now possible to upload pictures from your computer, rather than from Facebook albums
3. Your Library can now contain pictures from mixed albums (Facebook and uploaded pictures)
4. New Facebook Share with real-time gallery screenshot attached
5. Galleries can now be shared via email
6. Galleries can now be embedded in third party websites via custom code snippet
7. It is now possible to edit pictures already included in your gallery
8. Gallery pictures can now be rotated (in addition to being scaled and moved)
9. General bug-fixing and performance improvements

We hope you will enjoy creating your own galleries to share with the world, and if you still haven’t done so, it’s about time you start!

in3Dgallery Major Update: Version 1.5 Online is a post from: Esimple Studios Blog

I know I know, a totally, blatantly, shamelessly personal post but, you know, I usually don’t participate in contests just because I get lost in them: I can’t find time (even though I would have time!), and I generally lose focus after a while.

Timed contests though, well that’s another beast: 24 hours to create a song using samples from M83, Junior Boys, and Nosaj Thing. That sounds like fun! So I spend my last sunday making the song you can find at the bottom of this page.

Is There a Lesson in All This?

I like to think so! Apart from the reason itself, like, you know, winning the contest, what I really learnt is that focusing on specific tasks really makes you work efficiently. If this was any other kind of contest, I know I would just procrastinate and keep telling myself I don’t have time, but sunday I happened to have a full day free and I decided to get things done. And since I had just 24 hours, there’s no excuse like “I’ll never finish this” or “this will take me ages”.

Thinking well about it, giving yourself a strict (even fake) timeline for anything you do and, most of all, believing in it, makes you work efficiently most of the times. Things kept in a sort of suspended state, something like “yeah sure I’ll do that, sooner or later, maybe” are what screws you up: it doesn’t work, no matter what. Plus it’s a lot more engaging to have a time-frame, it’s a sort of challenge, through the whole day I was wondering if I’d get it done, and although it probably isn’t my best work I am quite happy with it (and I’d love to know what you think as well).

All in all, a great chance to really know my capabilities and something fun to do as well.

Back to The Point

So, how can you help me? Very simple:

1. Click here -> http://contest.ableton.com/tracks/919

2. Click on “Login to vote” on the top right corner

3. Login with your Facebook or Soundcloud account (no spam guaranteed, Soundcloud is a very respectable service)

4. When you get brought back to the track’s page, click on “Like” on the top right corner

That’s it!

The contest is kinda smart, you can vote as many songs as you like, but just once per song, so don’t feel limited if you like other songs too. And of course, if you REALLY hate my song, hah, you don’t have to vote, but I still hope you’ll like it

Ableton + Soundcloud: Beat the Clock, Plus Learn How to Really Focus is a post from: Esimple Studios Blog

Take a renewed location, full Silicon Valley style.
Add an exceptional barman, good music, and our people.
Shake shake shake, and you will get a Glass Spring Party!

Friday, April 20th, 2012, 9.30pm.

Celebrate with us the re-opening of our renovated HQs, and find out about all our exciting news.

Don’t miss it!

It’s That Time of the Year Again: Party Time! is a post from: Esimple Studios Blog

2012 has just begun but on the door of Esimple the “work in progress” sign is already up…

What are we doing? We’re Growing!

A 3Dimensions growth, in full harmony with Esimple know-how, through the increase of our staff size with the hiring of some highly qualified professionals, the fulfillment of an important partnership that paves the way for new targets and international projects and an internal overhaul which reflects our increasing professional specialization.

First Dimension: The increase of our staff size

We have just finalized the hiring of professionals who will support us in this phase of steady growth. They already have internalized the basic principles ​​of the way we operate and are ready to “keep up” with the continuous technological innovation of Esimple, our real distinctive trademark.
The commercial department has undergone a little revolution by adding new people to support any market demand in terms of planning and project development.

Second Dimension: Esimple joins the Multicore Sistemi group

Multicore Systems Spa specializes in the design and development of technologically advanced security solutions. With offices located both in Italy and abroad, it has among its clients embassies, government institutions, military organizations as well as with numerous companies throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
The synergies between Esimple and Multicore – sharing a strong focus on technological innovation and, at the same time, the aim to break down barriers between people and technology – open out the way to new scenarios and new markets both domestically and internationally.

Third Dimension: Reorganization within the Esimple group

Net-Style was born in 2001 and it was an unconventional communications agency specialized in graphic design in the widest meaning (internet, press or video) .
Its aim has always been to provide creative, innovative and functional business communication services and can boast about many successful stories with national and international clients.
Through a merger, Net-Style has joined the Esimple group and has shared its know-how to enrich all the other business units of the group.

Stay tuned!

Esimple in 2012… Work in Progress! is a post from: Esimple Studios Blog

It’s that time of the year again (the one when we all eat a lot more, you know) and, of course, it’s also time for our yearly social experiment!

As you probably know, it’s tradition since almost… well this year, really, to experiment a bit with social networks, and this year’s experiment has been selected among a bunch of very interesting projects.

Meet Our New Special Friend

Everyone has Facebook nowadays, right? Well apart me. But that’s not important.

What is important is that one of the main assets in our office didn’t yet have a Facebook profile.

Preposterous!

So here it is, our very special new Facebook friend: our office plants!

Yes, they have a life of their own! You’d never guess that. Anyway, they lack a bit of friend love, that’s for sure. We’re doing our best, but if you like the idea of your own plants having a Facebook profile, friend our plants!

Our goal is to demonstrate that plants have the same rights as  people and they can make as many friends as well!

Friend Our Plants Now

You can visit our plants’ profile by clicking the profile image up there or here -> http://www.facebook.com/verdipiante

By becoming friends of our plants you’ll participate in the wonderful voyage of a group of little innocent plants in this big technological world full of wonders.

So, what are you waiting for?

Warning: no, we will not use the profile to spam you in any way, no worries.

Meet Our New Very Special Facebook Friend is a post from: Esimple Studios Blog

Through the years I came to the conclusion you can’t satisfy all clients, no matter what. On the contrary, it’s sometimes much better to just let a client go than to suffer consequences – beyond what you’d normally expect – because of your stubbornness.

Sometimes you end up under-delivering because, hey, shit happens, but let’s be honest for a moment, it’s not always 100% the company’s fault, and in some situations clients have their own responsibility.

True enough, the contrary can be said as well. Facts are rarely black or white, more often a comfortable shade of gray. We just have to navigate through them to try and understand where and how we fell.

So I end up thinking maybe it’s not the company’s fault, or the client’s fault per se, but more like a mix of the two elements, much like glycerol is harmless unless you nitrate it. Just as two people can date for a while and decide they are not made for each other, two companies can just stay friends without flirting any longer.
It’s no one’s fault, not entirely and not exactly anyway, and the world is full of fishes right?

I know, it doesn’t sound totally right in an economic moment like the one we’re living through, it’s not the best of choices to let go of a client, but it’s sometimes needed, because the mechanics started up by its presence can bring more harm to your company than benefit.
The way some businesses have to manage a consulting/marketing company working for them is just not what you would expect, and this can create malcontent and frustration among the people working for you.
As an entrepreneur, you cannot expect to absorb and be the safeguard of all the negativity of such cooperation, and your employees are in the first line of fire, they feel when something’s just not working right, from the first moment.
This is especially true in small businesses, where the personal touch is felt the most and one starts to wonder if the fault is his, entirely.

So what do you do? You confront the problem, you try to address it, to isolate it, to solve it. Sometimes it works, some other times it’s too much to handle, and you start thinking “why?”.
Well, truth is, there’s not always a why, and you shouldn’t focus too much energy in answering a question that, sometimes, has no reason to exist.

Try to learn from the experience, to learn to recognize the faint alerts signaling that a situation is building up. Try to learn to anticipate said situation, or if need be, to avoid the client entirely.

There’s no shame in that, and it’s perfectly fine to say “no”.

Flirting With Clients, And the Power of a “No” is a post from: Esimple Studios Blog

I am surprised to see how many people still don’t make use of IMAP for their mailing needs. It has several advantages over POP3, especially if you have several devices. I have a desktop, a laptop, an iPhone and an iPad, and if I  accessed my emails through a POP3 server, I would have to download my mail on all 4 devices and remember what I have read and what I haven’t.

With an IMAP access, messages are sync’d on all of your devices, so if you read a message, its status is saved on the server rather than on your computer and it will appear read everywhere you access it.

Google Mail

Since Google’s offer of Google Apps account to businesses, it’s almost been a no brainer to switch your corporate mail over and take advantage of all the functions Google offers, from automatic contacts and calendars syncing to all your computers and mobile devices, to Microsoft Exchange support, to the chance of using your corporate mail to access every Google service like Reader, Youtube and even external OpenID ones like Flickr.

That’s why, as a company, we use Google Apps as IMAP/Exchange server for our email. There’s one problem though, and that is how to manage contact addresses.

Multiple Access

Let’s say, for example, that I have my main corporate email – advertised on my website and all – as info@companyname.it. And let’s say 3 people have access to it, and can download its messages.

If they want IMAP access to it, you’re in some kind of a situation: the first person reading a message will mark it read for the other 2. Now this sucks, so how do you solve it?

I thought about it for a while, but I think I found a reasonably efficient way that you can setup in like 10 minutes of work.

The Solution

1. Go into your Google Apps administration panel, and click on the Groups tab

2. Add a group named, for example, multi.info@companyname.it, and put in it the email addresses of all the people that should have access to the email (the 3 people of my previous example)

3. Go into the email’s (info@companyname.it) settings on Google:

4. In the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, choose to forward a copy of incoming mail to the group email you just created, multi.info@companyname.it. Google will send a verification code to check you really have access to this email, just input the confirmation code you receive and you’re done. Also choose to keep the incoming mail in the original inbox as well, you never know

5. Bam, you’re done!

What Happens Now?

Practically, email sent to info@companyname.it will be forwarded to multi.info@companyname.it, and to all the people inside the group. So if dude1 reads a message, it won’t be marked as read for dude2 and dude3.

The added advantage is that none of them will have physical access to the original email (info@), so no one will be able to send email on behalf of it, which I consider a good thing.

This really helped me solve several issues with out corporate email, and I hope it will help you too.

A Very Practical Trick For Using Gmail in Your Business is a post from: Esimple Studios Blog

Being in the design business since more than 10 years, both from a technical and later from a management point of view, I can really say that user experience is something that is never valued too much. The ability of a user – be it a potential customer or a simple visitor – to experience something unique, valuable but mostly easy is what should be on top of any designer of any product, from the web to furniture to electronic devices to really anything at all.

Ease of use has been the fundament of the whole iPhone ecosystem, a way for users to feel at home even with a device that’s never been experienced before, something so easy and intuitive that even 3 years old kids can use it no problem, because it just feels right, natural.

Sometimes these user experience breakthrough can change a whole lot of subsequent inventions, sometimes they go unnoticed for various reasons.
The worst, though, is when the experience itself is so negative it can seriously punish you for just trying, especially in the case of actual customers.

Examples of this? Think about the whole copy protection industry. You buy a game for 50, 60 euros, and then you receive a key bound to your current system configuration, changing which you will have to ask for a new one. Or you end up with a compromised system. I could go on for a hour but I am sure you know what I mean.

And it’s not limited to software sadly. I recently decided to buy some video tutorial for some music synthesis software I use ’cause I was tired of reading freely available stuff which, for how good, felt kinda limited. So I go to this famous website to buy their video, and seconds before I click all the right buttons, my eye is caught in a little text:

“Internet connection for Downloadable tutorial and internet product authorization required – up to 3 computers. Authorization and De-Authorization permitted to allow moving tutorial to different computers.”

Ok, wait a second. Authorization for a video? How? Simple, the video isn’t a video at all, it’s a program (now the Mac and PC compatibility checklist makes sense) which contains the video. Practically I was going to pay not to own the video, but to own the license of a program running the video. So I can’t watch it on my TV, or iPad, or nothing like that, I need a computer. This is frankly unacceptable, I don’t care wether or not you’re afraid your video will get pirated (because it has been it will be anyway, trust me), these kind of choice punishes the legit users far more than the illegal downloaders.

Thankfully, on the web we haven’t got this kind of behavior right? Not exactly, but we have similar ones, which seem specifically designed to destroy the experience of our visitors. Examples? I’ll give you 7 of them:

1) Flash

Unless you have outstanding reasons to use Flash (which I can’t think of, mind you, but hey let’s admit you do), embrace 2011 already

2) Captchas!

Those are the spawn of the devil, I can understand the reason behind them, and even if some are truly genius, it’s generally a good way to piss people off and turn them away from your website/blog, forever

3) Endless registration forms

Yep I know, we use them too, but I swear we’re moving to a smarter system which require info just when strictly needed. If people are forced to fill in full-page forms, they are much less inclined to end up buying from you, that’s for sure

4) Speaking of registration forms

What about absurd requirements for passwords? I mean, I can live with 6-chars minimum. But why put the max at 8? or 10? Why force me to use a letter, a number and a japanese kanji inside the same password? Inform me my password sucks -> GOOD. Force me to use an insane one -> BAD. Why is it so important? One word: mobile. The quickest way to sign up to a website while on the go is to explicitly choose a lame password, just for quickness, to change it later. I really don’t have time to think something smart and note it down, because I will inevitably forget it

5) HTML resizing of huge images

What does this mean? You have a 4000×4000 pixels image, 50 MB heavy, but you need to put it in a small version on your website. You have two options:

a) You fire up Photoshop or similar programs and you actually resize it, save it, and upload it, voila’

b) You just upload it and force it small with the <img> HTML width and height tags. Hey, it works the same no?

If you selected b), congratulations, you won the Interweb.

6) Implementing smart tricks

Like blocking the right mouse button, yeah that’s totally going to stop me from copying your HTML source, but it will also stop me from visiting your website, just so you know

7) Auto-play music

The problem is so bloody real there’s even a Chrome extension to help you prevent it.

I didn’t put up just 7 reasons because they are the only ones I can find, just because hey, I want to leave you something to do. Any taker?

7 Ways You Can Suck the Soul Out of Your Web Visitors is a post from: Esimple Studios Blog

Google finally unveiled another big chunk of its social project, and judging by the initial feedback from early adopters, it’s hardly going to be another crashed Wave. It’s not surprising to see Google taking this step, as it desperately needed a social layer to add to their search powerhouse.

However, for once there are good chances early adopters aren’t gonna be wrong in believing in this project. First of all, Google has got a whole lot of mistakes to learn from, both from their own side (Buzz, Wave) and from their main competitor, Facebook. Judging by how they tackled privacy with their Circles implementation, it seems like this lesson has been very well learnt.

Several more considerations to make:

On Google’s Defense

- The design of Plus is much, much slicker than Facebook’s. What I mean is, it looks like something made efficiently from the ground-up rather than something adapted and upgraded from an earlier design;

- It’s a lot more privacy-friendly. It includes a feature like Data Liberation that’s aimed to people who really want to be on top of their private information. And Circles are a real killer feature, allowing you to perfectly segment what you share on the platform, and with whom;

- It’s built on a SEO infrastructure. That’s one of the major advantages over Facebook, everything that’s shared and “+1′d” on Google Plus will have added weight on their search engine result pages, expanding the simple “+1″ button feature that was released some months ago. They basically built a self-sustaining system in a single go.

- Its asynchronous approach reminds me of Twitter, you can just add someone to a Circle without the need for them to do the same, rather than a binary “friend/not friend” a la Facebook. Not everyone is a close friend, he can simply be someone you know from some forum community, or someone you simply want to follow. It’s a much more granular system and it just works;

On Facebook’s Defense

- Three words: massive user base. Facebook’s critical mass is long surpassed, and it’s not easy to attack something so huge, Google or not, especially because people, at this point, are just too used – or addicted? – to it. On the other side, if someone has a chance it’s Google;

- Facebook has got loads of partners, just think about the gaming sphere. Hundreds of millions of people play on Facebook daily, they won’t just swap to Google if they have to change their entertaining habits too much. They will have to address this, but talks of a gaming platform are already going. It’s just a beta still, after all;

- They have incredible amounts of money, and with incredible amounts of money you can react kinda fast. Especially the Circles feature can be implemented very fast simply because Facebook already has friends lists, they are just much more obscure and less user-friendly to use;

Plus could be the last way for anyone to tackle Facebook’s domain simply because if people will stop using it, they’ll flock back to Facebook more skeptical than before. They’ll hardly trust another potential competitor. I am not saying Facebook will crumple like a sand castle, it’s very very very much unlikely, but the long-term bleeding is nothing new in the history of social media (Myspace anyone?).

The future is bound to be kinda exciting.

Why Google Plus Could Be The Real Last Chance to Beat Facebook is a post from: Esimple Studios Blog

It seems like weeks since I last wrote something on here. Oh wait, it HAS been weeks. Work has gotten hectic and I’ve been running meeting over meeting, to the point I started to notice where is that most meetings fail, and how to improve them to a whole new level with focus on just getting things done. Time and task management is a real, solid need in my company so we can’t really waste any time with meetings which are less than straight to the point and time-efficient.

So, picture this in your mind: you’re sitting in a meeting which, on paper, makes totally sense, but sooner than later you notice how things start going off track, things fall into chit-chatting and you suddenly find yourself sitting back at your desk with the same doubts you had at the beginning of the meeting.

You do remember the reasons of the meeting, but you’re not so sure all the answers have been given. Who’s to blame? Well, not sure about that, I believe it’s a mistake which is very common in startups or generally unexperienced entrepreneurs / managers. One thing though worked for me and my company, and that’s the #1 rule of each of our meetings since several months:

Before the start of every meeting, decide what problem you want to address

I strongly believe a meeting should be focused around one single subject, even if you “attack” several sides of it. For example, we had a meeting just today about an eLearning platform we are developing and even though we discussed many aspects of it, the main subject remained the same. If you include too many things to talk about in a single meeting you’ll end up sitting for hours and having your head fuzzy when you’re done. Is it really useful to do it like this? I don’t think so and this way proved itself much more time-efficient.

With this approach, it’s not uncommon to have 2-3 meetings in a single day, but when they are all 20-minutes meetings you really don’t feel them as a burden.

In our eLearning meeting the “problem” was deciding how to do things, in what timeframes and who to assign each task to.

Before the end of every meeting, ask yourself: has the problem been addressed?

This is the key point! Too many times we used to get back to work with a sense of “vagueness” (not sure that’s even a word) and uncertainty. Now I ask this question, and if the answer is “yes”, we can go back to work, otherwise, something’s wrong and we address it immediately.

In the eLearning example, the answer was an enthusiastic “yes”, and everyone’s merry and happy.

Mind you, this is a very practical suggestion which I am sure many of you won’t agree with (especially the “one-meeting-one-subject” part) but I can assure you it works.

Just give it a go and let me know.

The Number 1 Rule of Any Meeting is a post from: Esimple Studios Blog