KinKast Blog

A rose by any other name...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:12:05 -0800

The line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet goes, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” While we certainly agree with William that the essence of something doesn’t change there is something to be said about making your brand easy to spell. So, we’ve changed the name to “Kincast.”

What, don’t see any difference? We know it’s subtle. Here’s a hint. We dropped the second “K.” We always wanted to spell Kincast with a “c” but couldn’t get the domain name until recently. While the double-K had visual appeal, whenever we asked people to spell Kincast they used the “c.”

What does this mean to you. Well, really not a whole lot. Everything should have transitioned seamlessly, including all your shared links. Hopefully this will help more people find Kincast and we can continue growing and improving the Kincast experience.

The right way to ask for customer reviews?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:36:05 -0800

For an iPhone App it’s no secret that a great way to help your app show up on App Store searches is to have a ton of current and excellent reviews/ratings. (Also helps to have a lot of downloads and keywords in your meta data that are popular and consistent with your app.) Besides the holy grail of being featured by Apple, we’re convinced the next best way to get your app noticed is through App Store search.

Prospective users also like to see a bunch of 4 to 5 Star ratings and reviews. It gives us confidence that we’re not wasting our time or money. Amazon and TripAdvisor have been the best at leveraging reviews to “close a sale.”

So, if reviews are so important what’s the best way to get them?

The theory goes that if users love your product (or are really pissed off) they’ll go to the marketplace or site and write a review. But that takes a lot of steps. I wouldn’t be surprised if 95% of people that thought of leaving a review (either positive or negative) never get around to it. We all have too many to-dos. Stuff gets in the way.

(Recently there were was some press about companies giving away their product in exchange for reviews. I’m all for incentives but that just feels wrong. You’re basically paying for a review and I sure hope that backfires for companies that try that.)

So what to do? Amazon will send you an email after a few days of receiving the product asking for a review. Like all email, most of it doesn’t get seen or acted upon. But Amazon just makes it up on volume. What’s an aspiring boot-strapped start-up to do?

One advantage of iPhone Apps is that you have the user’s attention while they’re using your app. You could time your ask for when the user has experienced some delight. For us, that’s sharing video. So for free users we’ll ask for a review after your 2nd, 5th and 8th share. After your 12th share and every 3rd share after that we’ll give the user the “No Thanks” option so they’re not asked again.

For paying users we’ll ask after your 2nd, 6th and every 3rd share after that. Starting with your 6th share we’ll give you the “No Thanks” option.

Here’s how it looks:

If you tap “Rate Now” you’ll be taken to the App Store review page and we’ll stop asking for a review whether you leave a review or not. (We don’t know either way.) On the 3-button version if you tap “No Thanks” we won’t ask again. When we release a major update (likely every 9 months or so) we’ll reset the count.

We’re trying to balance:

making it super easy for folks to review us in the moment
getting reviews so we show up on searches
not annoying users

Time will tell if we got this right. What do you think?

When more is less - What's wrong with iPhone 4S video

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:39:28 -0800

We’re big Apple fans here at KinKast. Love the attention to design and prioritization of the user experience. My co-founder is one of the first to buy the latest Apple anything. His friends now eagerly await his “throwaways.”

I’ve always loved how Apple moved to where the experience should be. From floppy disks to flash drives. From mice to touch. And, with the iPhone camera they prioritized color and light processing for better image quality while the rest of the industry just added more megapixels regardless of resulting image quality.

However, Apple has stumbled with the iPhone 4S and video. Don’t get me wrong. The video quality is excellent. (It was already excellent on the iPhone 4 too.) But with the iPhone 4S they more than doubled the size of video files. So now, a one minute video is approximately 188 MBs. So, what’s the big deal? Well, most people want to share their video or at least get it in the cloud. (Apple even promotes this.) Uploading a one-minute, 188 MB video file takes about 24 minutes over a 1Mbps upload connection - what you may get on AT&T 3G. (Many folks don’t even get that.) That’s almost a half hour and a lot of battery power.

iPhone 4S video at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels (aka, 1080p) gives you more pixels than the iPhone 4 at 1280 x 720 pixels (aka, 720p). But is the 2.5x file size increase worth it? Will the video look that much better on your 55” flat screen TV?

Well, Apple doesn’t seem to think so. Look to iTunes and Apple TV. iTunes HD movies come with a 720p resolution (and 3.5 Mbps bit rate) and they look great on the big flat-screen. Heck, the standard definition iTunes movies look great on the big flat-screen. Why did Apple go with lower resolution video for their streaming movies? It’s simple, they didn’t want you to have to wait too long to start seeing the movie and heck, who can tell the difference anyway. They totally made the right user experience trade-off here.

On the iPhone 4S they made the wrong trade-off by choosing more pixels over ease of sharing.

If you’re a KinKast user we’ll take care of you with our upcoming 1.8 iPhone App update. Your videos will be recorded in a resolution that will look great on your smartphone, tablet, laptop or TV and will be optimized for quick sharing and fast uploading to the cloud.

Why Facebook will never be private

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 01:01:05 -0700

We recently did an interview with Robert Scoble, (@Scobleizer ). You can see it here. Robert was very gracious with us. That’s despite him not being a great fit for KinKast. If you’ve read Scoble, you know he is in the business of discovering cool new things and building a public brand. He lives his life publicly. That’s cool.

Where we disagree is on the assertion that Facebook is the place for “folks to talk to their PRIVATE families and friends.” One of the things that makes Facebook great is how easy it is to be found and “friended.” I especially love reconnecting with an old classmate or colleagues. Even if the conversation is only 3 or 4 short messages and usually ending with me not answering yet another open-ended question, I still love it. I don’t know. I think I love the nostalgia of it. I also like having some way to get back in touch with my old classmate or colleague, even though I know I never will.

The consequence of this is that my friends list grows. It’s no longer my “private” family and friends but a superset of really close friends, old work friends, new work friends, kinda friends, not really friends anymore and close family and not so close family. I could un-friend folks but frankly I like seeing what they post. Naturally, this affects what I post on Facebook. I now have a semi-public persona/brand on Facebook. Not Scoble-scale, but still large for me. It’s definitely not an intimate place with unconditional acceptance and trust, like you have with family and close friends. (According to Facebook, the average user has 130 Friends.) So, I end up treating it like it’s public and that affects what I post.

Is this Facebook’s fault? Not at all. And they’re doing astronomically well with this model. It just doesn’t solve all my social networking needs. Especially the more special ones.

Facebook recently released simpler privacy controls: Friends, Public or Custom. I applaud them for renaming “Everyone” to “Public.” But in my experience Friends pretty much equals Public (for the reasons listed above). I could go into the Custom controls but that’s a lot of work. And frankly the opportunity to mistakenly not remember to hit Custom when posting is too high. Yes, you can go back and change the privacy settings on a post, but jeez, that’s a lot to manage. It’s just too much to have to think about. Wouldn’t it be better to have a social service that’s dedicated to my “really close” family and friends.

Facebook makes it’s money selling ads (it needs a ton of page views) and getting a cut of transactions (mostly virtual goods in games), so it needs people to have big friends lists. No surprise that it’s experience is optimized to encourage large friends lists. Again, that’s ok. It’s a great product for what it does: casual sharing and gaming amongst casual friends. It’s just not good for the private sharing of my kids’ lives. That I want to keep private, special and forever. (More on that later…)

Who doesn't love the sun?

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 03:56:24 -0700

Well if you’ve been using KinKast outdoors it hasn’t been easy. Dark colors on an iPhone screen are basically washed out in sunlight - our bad. We’ve fixed this in our latest iPhone App update available today.

Download it here. Then go outside and record some fun and fear the sun no more.

Did they get it?

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:40:08 -0700

Seems everyone wants to know if their friends “received the video.” (In our case it’s an email with a link.) We’ve had questions on this and we’ve observed users sending “test” share emails to themselves (either the same email address or an obvious secondary one). We’re beginning to think they don’t trust us. All kidding aside, it’s very real that users don’t trust a new service and will test it first.

We’ve had a “cc” option on share emails from the web app and everyone used it. So now were rolling out Share Confirmation emails for all users. It will include who you shared with and thumbnails of the videos that were shared.

To see the whole email, check out the “laptop” version here: http://on.fb.me/qdh21u

(We also like that we’re getting some air time for Kobe, our sea otter.)

So, what’s the next question? From our research it’s pretty clear: Did they watch the video?

Extend your videos stay

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:54:53 -0700

Hi KinKasters,

Today we’re introducing subscriptions. As you may have read on our website or App Store page, KinKast gives every video 30 days of free online storage.

We feel 30 days is enough time to let your friends see your shared videos.

However, many folks have asked to keep their videos permanently stored online in the KinKast Cloud. This is a great way to ensure your videos are safe forever as well as instantly available to you and your trusted friends.

How safe? Well, every video uploaded to KinKast is processed and stored in three separate geographically-located data centers. This helps guard against not only physical hard disk failures but also regional natural disasters. It’s really the best and meets our need to provide you, our customer, with peace of mind.

What will this cost? For unlimited online storage we’re charging $4.95 per month or $49.99 per year. That’s basically two cups of fancy coffee a month. We figured a straight forward subscription plan made the most sense for us as a business and for you as a consumer. We’ll make money and you’ll have a stable video partner that isn’t relying on risky advertising schemes.

Whether you upgrade to a Premium Plan or use us just for “30-day” sharing, we’re delighted to have you onboard. We’ll continue to treat your videos with the same care we take with ours and look forward to delivering you more exciting innovations.

On behalf of your friends and family, thanks for sharing. And, thanks for using KinKast!

All the best,
Raul…

p.s. Feel free to reply with questions or feedback. Also check us out on Facebook. Liking us there would be nice too :-)

When less is more

Fri, 20 May 2011 12:16:52 -0700

We track a lot of stats at KinKast. It gives us the best window into how people are using the product.

We also strive for simplicity.

Let’s look at our Share form. We provide default text and visually prompt the user to enter a Subject and Message. Pretty standard stuff, right.

Well, we found that while 80% of users personalize the subject or message. Almost no one personalizes both the subject or message. Sounds like an opportunity to simplify.

So, in the next KinKast iPhone app update we’ve removed the subject field. What will go in the subject line of the emails? LIke web mail services, we’ll include part of the message. (This should also improve our “don’t mistake us for spam” profile.)

In hindsight this is terribly obvious. And we beat ourselves up a little for not starting this way. But we’re happy the stats showed us the way and we have a better user experience. (Of course, now we’re worried about what else we’re missing!)

Thoughts on Flip's Demise

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 20:00:05 -0700

This may sound odd coming from the co-founder of KinKast, which makes a great video recording and sharing iPhone app, but I think there may be a place for pocket camcorders.

It’s true that the smartphone + video recording app pretty much replaces the pocket camcorder’s functionality. And being able to share right away and upload videos wirelessly in the background is awesome.

However the smartphone’s versatility is also it’s weakness. You use it so much that at some point you run out of battery. This happened to me this week.

We were at an amusement park. I recorded several short videos and shared them right away. Before I knew it I had about 8 minutes of video that had been uploaded. Uploading video sucks up battery. (Disclaimer: this experience happened before updating to iOS 4.3.2 which is expected to increase battery life by 2 - 5x)

By three o’clock I got the dreaded “20% of battery left” alert. And I still needed to use my iPhone for texting, email, maps and maybe an emergency phone call. Would’ve been nice to have a pocket camcorder for the rest of the day.

Now, we could get smarter about battery usage in the app like turning off uploading for the day when reaching a battery threshold. And, iOS 4.3.2 improves wireless battery usage greatly. But, I’m not recycling my pocket camcorder just yet.

Phone first, Laptop second

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:38:31 -0700

We’ve always designed emails for nice big laptop monitors. But increasingly we found we were reading email on smartphones. And KinKast emails looked terrible. Fonts were too small and everything looked cramped.

What are our users doing? About 30% of our emails (user or system generated) are read on smartphones. Yikes, that means a third of our users are getting a poor experience. We had to fix this. (Of course we decided to improve our emails at the same time with less copy, less graphics and wider email-client support.)

Creatures of habit that we are we designed the new email templates for the laptop and then altered them for the smartphone. Well this created a bunch of copy, graphic and layout re-work as we then edited the laptop templates to accommodate smartphone space constraints.

When designing for an 870 pixel wide template you make many different choices than for a 320 pixel wide screen. You can even say you get lazy when you have so much real estate. Lazy delivers a bad user experience.

From now on were designing first for the smartphone screen. Trying to squish 870 pixels into 320 gets you tired eyes or tons of horizontal swiping. Going the other way by displaying 320 pixels on an 870-wide template works much better. And if you’re smart with wrapping it can look good without a bunch of coding.

We’re getting better but still learning how to design and code emails so they look good on both platforms, work on the major email clients and don’t require a major programming effort.

You can check out screenshots of our latest email templates at: http://on.fb.me/i7Kyvk

Here’s the first one:

A Comfortable Thumb

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 11:15:16 -0700

So you know we like to record video on the iPhone with one hand. It’s why we introduced the Flipscreen feature in 1.5. But we noticed our thumb was never happy. The poor thumb has to contort itself unnaturally to reach the record button on the bottom of the screen.

So, we’re moving the record button higher up the screen. It’s easier and more natural.

Finally, some relief for the thumb!

(Coming soon in v1.6. For an “Early Look” see screenshots on Facebook.)

Arggh, Skinny Video!

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:10:00 -0700

I love my iPhone 4 and it’s become the video camera I use. In fact at KinKast we’re banking that tons of people will use their smartphones as their primary video camera. But there is one thing that really bugs me: Skinny Video!

Let me explain.

Even though Apple “tutors” you to hold the phone in a landscape position to record video, no one does. It’s just not comfortable or natural. And you really need two hands to do it.

I hold my phone with one hand and I want to take video with one hand. The problem is when you view the video on the web or TV it looks terrible. It’s a skinny piece of video in a widescreen world.

We’re doing something about it at KinKast. In our latest app update (that’s 1.5), we’re introducing our FlipScreen feature. You’ll be able to hold the iPhone vertically (aka, portrait position) like it’s designed to be held but still be able to record widescreen video. We’ll get the video all the way to a 1.5 aspect ratio which is way better than the current 0.5 aspect ratio. If you want to get the full HD effect of a 1.7 aspect ratio, then rotate the phone to the landscape position and we’ll support it.

We’re hoping Apple eventually fixes this. But in the meantime, you can finally record widescreen video with one hand!

Download the KinKast app and check it out: http://iphone.kinkast.com

Why KinKast?

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:00:00 -0800

Hello World! Thanks for checking out KinKast. We hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoy creating and evolving it.

So, why did we create KinKast? Well, doesn’t it seem that it’s harder than ever to involve the people you really care about in your lives? You know, not broadcasting to every one you know, but the people you really care about. The close friends and family that you feel bad about when a month or two have gone by and you haven’t connected in some way. And, isn’t it ironic that this happens even though there are great social networks like Facebook that everyone uses.

Including the people you care about in your lives is not easy and it’s emotional. We’re all busy and have tons of distractions. Time races by. We feel we should do more. But like exercising more, we don’t and just muddle through — never totally happy.

At KinKast we want to change that. We aim to make it effortless to include the people you care about in your lives.

We’re starting with video. Video can be easy, impactful and immediately gratifying for everyone. But what’s the hardest part about sharing video? It’s remembering to hook up your camera to your PC and uploading it to some website. So with ourKinKast for iPhone app we’ve removed those steps. Record your video and instantly share with your friends and family. We’ll handle the uploading automatically for you!

So try it out. Feel free to tell us what you like and maybe more importantly what you don’t like. We hope to serve you for a long, long time.

After this post we switched from DISQUS to Facebook Comments. Here are the original comments in an image.