Shazzle hit a bit of a speed bump.  The marketing team went to Miami, and it turned out students on campus couldn’t connect to the application.  Certain colleges have very elaborate proxy server setups.  While Shazzle will run at most colleges (and, we’re attempting to ensure, the remainder of the colleges on the promotional tour), there will be certain unique proxies through which the program just won’t work.  Personally, I wasn’t aware of that fact, and articulated to people that Shazzle would work on their campus.  I was under-informed and wrong.  Sorry to anyone I misled.

Anyway, Shazzle works on a vast majority of internet connections; more than many applications, and it will probably work for you.

Thanks for reading,

Tom

All right so Shazzle’s marketing team has hit the road pretty hard. The tour started Monday, and we’ve already hit Duke and the University of Central Florida. We had some good feedback from some interested parties. I’ll touch on two points here:

Community-Based Sharing

The use-case I’m continually pushing is what I feel is the most powerful way that Shazzle works at this point: community sharing and communication. Public communities and private communities let you share files, share links, chat live…see who’s on-line and browse profiles. You can do all this in private. Private communities, for me, are the most interesting thing about Shazzle. Collaborative projects you might be working on with co-workers or classmates are really strong Shazzle use-cases, too. People seemed to respond pretty well to the potential of this functionality.

Mac Compatibility

The feedback wasn’t all rose-colored. Shazzle isn’t yet compatible with Macs. Unfortunately, Shazzle is built in the Java language, and with the way that we currently implement things and the current version of Java, Shazzle can’t be made compatible with Macs. As soon as there’s a new Java version, I’m told this will be rectified. Until then we’re at the mercy of Sun. We realize a lot of people use Macs. We clearly value every download, particularly as we’re in our infancy and trying to grow the program; it’s not that Mac compatibility and/or Mac users aren’t a priority. It’s simply not in our power, at this point, to create that reality.

The Rub

Thanks to all who gave us some of their time and tried out the app. We really do know that you have a lot of options, and that your time is valuable, and we greatly appreciate you donating some of it to try our product and help us make it better. Feedback’s great: we love any and all kinds of feedback (except criticism of me, personally, or anything I’m responsible for. We hate that kind of feedback).

Thanks for reading, and thanks for downloading Shazzle (if you did, that is…if you didn’t: go here. Now. Seriously: hurry).

Tom Demers

Addressing Some Concerns…

All right so I was over in the forum and we got a real-live question from a real-live person (thanks to Bumble).  The questions posed over there were about encryption and whether or not Shazzle has any “backdoors.”  I thought these were pretty interesting concerns, and I figured I’d address them here.

You guys encrypt? If not: you plan to?

No and yes.  As I mentioned over there, basically: we don’t have encryption yet.  The development team has been…um…I’ll call it clear on the point that they don’t want us to stick features next to dates, but encryption really is high on our feature list, and we hope to have it “soon.”  As soon as it’s in, I’ll announce it on the blog: promise.

What about backdoors? Will you guys broadcast my activities or install any spyware on my computer?

Definitely NOT.  Shazzle is affiliated with Landmark Technology Partners, and Landmark CEO Bob McGill is a major part of Shazzle’s management team.  Landmark produces a sales automation tool called BankBroker.  The tool’s used by a number of very reputable businesses.  We want Shazzle to be used by businesses.  We want it to be a free E-learning tool.  As Bob (McGill) stated “we don’t need a backdoor, because we have a frontdoor.”  It’s a little misleading, because we aren’t streaming any ads right now. 

We will be. 

We’re trying to gain adoption and get some feedback and ideas as to how best to make money, without taking away from YOUR user experience.  We want to give you relevant ads that won’t annoy you.  If we make money, advertisers make money, and you get a product you like, then we have something we scale and sustain.

Thanks for reading, and if you used Shazzle and have questions, post ‘em in the forum, post ‘em in the comments, or shoot me an Email (my first name at Shazzle dot com),

 Tom Demers

Hi again. 

 All right so the marketing team’s very own Sarah Faith has been hard at work putting together the Shazzle Featured Artists Community.  It’s chock full of music, links, photos, and other fun stuff…its a pretty good indication of the community and file sharing potential of application as a whole.  It’s under Music/Unsigned Bands/Shazzle Featured Artists.  Go check it out: everything in there’s free.

Tom

Ultimately, Shazzle’s biggest strength is the application’s ability to make sharing easier. Share files, share ideas; share anything you can move around digitally. One thing you might not intuitively think of as being a thing you can share with a file sharing application is “links,” or your favorite websites. Here’s how it works in Shazzle…

Share Web Addresses and YouTube Clips

• Share YouTube Videos - Say you have a handful of favorite YouTube videos. You’d like to share these videos with your friends; store a bunch of them in one spot. Just create a community. Designate one folder as your “links” or your “YouTube Clips” folder (call it whatever you want). Then just click “add links” and start adding links. Type in the address of the YouTube clips you like and everyone who enters your community can watch the movies in the viewer by double clicking on the link that’s in the folder you just created.
• Share and Sort Your Favorite Websites - When you create a community, you can share a bunch of things AT ONCE…so you have a folder for music, a folder for pictures, and a folder for links/websites. You can share YouTube videos, but you can also set up a folder full of your “favorite” websites. Or a few folders. Your favorite sports sites, interesting political blogs, etc. You can do all that in your personal community too. That lets people get a fuller picture of who you are and what you like.

Personally, I really like the YouTube links. Right now there are a couple of “movie clip” communities up (check out the Shazzle World, the hierarchy right when you sign in, under the category “movies”). Having a place to house all of these movies clips is pretty interesting. Public communities with a ton of people in there’ll be interesting, because you chat and throw the links up, and check out who’s saying what about the movies. You can look up and down a member list, then check their personal profiles really quickly. If you don’t want your community spamed and you’d rather restrict things to you and your friends, wall the thing off by making it a private community; that way, only people you know can see and add to the list of links.

So yeah: go play around with the links and let us know what you think.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Demers

OK so the Shazzle download has been up for a couple days. It’s been given a chance to marinate. If you downloaded the app and played around with it: thanks! Really. All right now to the post…

Shazzle, as an application, does a lot of the things you’re already doing online. We like to think that it brings these things together in novel, useful, meaningful ways. Whether it does or it doesn’t, though: the Shazzle application works a little different than what you’re used to. You can share files with Shazzle, but it’s not exactly a “file sharing” application. You have a shazzle personal profile, but it’s not a “social networking” app, in the strictest sense. Same goes for instant messaging and web browsing. SO, since some of the Shazzle functions are likely to be a little different than what you’re used to, what I thought I’d do today, is ask and answer this question: “I just downloaded Shazzle…what now?”

• Sign Up - This part’s easy. The sign up wizard’ll take you through the process. You’re creating your “personal community” here, too: but don’t worry: you can always go back and edit it (top left hand corner of your screen, yank down your Shazzle drop-down and open up “my community settings”). Fill out whatever you want, but FYI: the college and high school info defaults to 1908, so you’re probably going to look pretty silly if you don’t set a year (unless you graduated high school or college in 1908. If that’s the case: good for you! Email me and we’ll put you in Shazzle commercials or something).
• Start or Join a Community - Most of the stuff going on inside the Shazzle app is happening in communities. Find a community you like an join it, or start your own. Right now, there are Shazzle featured artist communities (go to Shazzle World and check out “music”), right now, there are a couple of “great movie clip” communities under “movies.” You can go check out people’s personal communities, as well…or invite them to join yours. Browse through “Shazzle People” to find out who’s on Shazzle.
• Share some stuff - Start swapping…trade files (documents, PDFs, audio, video…whatever), or trade LINKS. One of the cool things about Shazzle is that you can click on the handy “add link” button and upload all kinds of links into a folder. You can store all your favorite Youtube clips in one place; create a “funny clips” folder and a “news” folder and a “great movies” folder…whatever you want.
• Chat and IM - If you go to “IM sign on” you can sign into pretty much any and all of your IM accounts. Let your friends know what your screen name is on Shazzle, and find out theirs. Then, just click “buddies.” Once you’re in the wizard, click “add.” Now their on your buddy list. You can IM, check out their profile or personal community…whatever. Live chatting is going on within communities, too: personal communities, private communties, public communities: there is perpetual chatting in all the communities.

All right, well that should get you started. If you have questions…support questions, functionality questions, “how can I do something” questions, or if you have some sort of Shazzle suggestion: let us know. Post em here in the comments, or head over to the forum, and someone will answer them there.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Demers

All right well this is the maiden Shazzle blog post, so I figured some decent-sized Shazzle news would be a good idea.  The news is that the Shazzle application has officially launched.  Shazzle’s been in development for about 19 months, and the Shazzle marketing team is going to be embarking on a three month, nation-wide promotional tour starting on February 16th.  For the first time ever, you can go get your hands on the free download over at the Official Shazzle Download page.  If you have questions or input of any kind, feel free to contact us or head over to the Shazzle forum.  Thanks for reading!

 Tom Demers