On Instagram, "picture talking" is very common since the service is completely geared towards pictures but people still want to use words from time to time.
So to express a thought or thank friends, Instagram users have to find a way to put words onto a picture. The most common is to write a note in Notes, take a screenshot and upload that. But on the stylish communication medium that Instagram is, it can look a little gauche. So people will often upload pictures of handwritten notes, etc. which have some class but not everyone wants to go to that much effort.
The easiest thing is to offer a 612x612 template and the ability to show a PNG that users could then save to their Camera Roll and then upload to Instagram. If you can connect with the user's Instagram account and let them upload from Instagram like Chute does, even better!
Disclaimer: been totally cranking on my own words-on-pictures app for the last few weeks — congrats!
My wife has at least 3 different apps that let her drop text on images before posting to Instagram. But everyone uses Instagram on their phone, so a web-app doesn't really work here. And the Instagram API is read only at the moment.
Can't some code screen scrape instagram and then get the picture data that way? I screen scrape using firefox using zc.testbrowser libraries but there's libraries where you don't need a browser. hacking that together in curl or even mechanize would be insane w/ php or python because its so much javascript.
I'm sure instagram wouldn't want you logging in with somebodies account and it would come from your server ip unless you have the scripts use proxies to get the data. If you use fb to login you would run into roadblocking accounts plus asking for a fb pw is stuff that only apps like spotify can get away with.
Love it. I'm sure lots of people will like it too. Very polished. I like it that you provide dummy images so impatient people like me don't have to upload an image to test it out.
I should probably do a better job of highlighting that. If you click on one of the textures at the bottom, you can start one without uploading. Here's a direct link to the wood texture for example: http://www.pinwords.com/start/032fb4c570bf11e18ae1e7074e371e...
That part was clear to me immediately. All in all it was really easy to use.
What might be confusing from a UI point of view, is that the example images on the top right look like a banner you are supposed to click on to get to the main site (to me at least).
If you would have done eye-tracking on me when I was using this, I was first drawn to the face (people always look first at faces), then I went down to where it said "No images? Click on one of these.". That might be because the woman in the picture is sort of looking in this direction. After that I looked to the where the logo is "pinwords, instantly ...".
I had instinctively clicked on the images at the top before going to the textures. Might have been nice to catch these (ED: clicks) (or maybe even hover ?) and highlight them (ED: images at the bottom) in something like the "MacBook sleep light" style. Just the background of the block - glow from the current (dark) to white and back. Would make it even friendlier, I think.
Not a question about Pinwords (good job, BTW), but...
I noticed that this is a repost of a submission originally titled 'Show HN: My side project helps you add beautiful text on pinterest images '. That post garnered just five upvotes and no comments.
Clearly, you've garnered more attention with this post. What prompted you to try this particular verbiage instead? Do you think timing played a factor?
This would be an interesting project: Finding a way to make the time of posting irrevelant. Probably impossible in today's super short span internet. But maybe with a different frontpage and "new page" sorting?
Now trying with pinwords.com, I must upload the direct image (which makes sense, how else would it work to mark up the image) which results as http://pinterest.com/pin/189151253069642015/ The content is shown as coming from thesartorialist.com The content is shown as coming from pinwords.com. Though going into the original pin at pinwords there is no mention of thesartorialist.com in site.
I understand these are how previous bookmarklets have worked for other apps, yet I hate this so much. Not only does it make easier for users to mark up content they may or may not own, it makes it harder for Pinterest to remain mostly true about keeping content creators (the ones who actually produce the content) copyright concerns in mind.
Spent a couple of embarrassing seconds clicking on the text on one of the sample windows until I noticed that I had to push the "Next" button to get to that stage…
I was definitely debating with myself on that particular behavior. On the one hand it lets you preview themes more easily, on the other, it adds more friction / confusion. I'll play around with a "click once" theme browser. Thanks for the feedback.
Uploaded a small picture to test it (the first one I found, about 200x200), the text was so small so I didn't even understand I can re-size it. The words would fit on the image if every word or two goes on each line.
Just something for you to think about, maybe your future users run into this problem also.
After you choose a template and press the continue button. There should be a back button if you change your mind. I realize that you can go back clicking on the tip of the template on the top. Which is cool, but not the most intuitive thing in the world.
Is that bootstrap.js? Looks great! Barley looks like bootstrap, but after I worked with it on a project, I recognize some characteristic elements. How much work was it to make it look like this?
EDIT: Sorry for editing a question into my comment after you already answered. It's a bad habit.
Caught me. This is a side project (doing a real startup as my day job), but I basically put in 20-30 hours a week for the last 3 weeks working nights and weekends.
This is really nice. I've been working on a very similar project in fabric.js this past week (captioning a picture, dragging text around on it and posting to facebook and pinterest).
The live updating as you type is a really nice feature, one that I hadn't even considered yet.
Interesting but I had a few issues (in Firefox). Using the default text resulted in an image with no text and trying to go back and use a different text caused the Continue button to lock.
It was the lightest weight canvas library I could find. Primarily used the interactive features of it. I had to write my own text extension because Fabric's (canvas's) is pretty primitive.
