Posts Tagged ‘Early Access’

Update from the Team

Monday, November 10th, 2008

The Team has been quiet for a while and we thought it time to give a formal update as to what has been happening at FocalPower.

The past few months has seen an unprecedented number of economic, market, and political changes. Dave and I have been absorbing the implications of all these changes just like the rest of you have. These changes have definitely increase the challenges faced by FocalPower as a boot-strapping startup. Regardless, we continue forward with even more enthusiasm behind what we are doing because we believe that:

  • the FocalPower vision speaks even louder today to the challenges facing photographers
  • recent changes in the photography market only validates FocalPower’s vision and plan

Dave and I have both been busy with our day jobs (which is what currently funds FocalPower toward our initial service launch).  Yet we still burn the midnight oil working on the FocalPower Photo Asset Management service.  And we are both excited at the continual interest and increasing usage of the Photo Quote Widget, now serving up thousands of quotes daily!

On a personal note, Dave and his fiancé took a long weekend break a few months back to sneak off to elope with a handful of friends in attendance. Congratulations Dave!

Life changes and changing times aside, we have been hard at work executing against our launch plan. As we push toward a public beta of the service, we have expanded our development team by bringing on additional contractors. We are also looking for even more contractors, specifically Flash developers.  Any talented flash developers out there who have a passion for photography or digital media and want to strut their stuff to the world as part of the FocalPower Photo Asset Management service, get in touch with us!

As we march forward to a public beta, we do have early access passes available to those who enjoy getting their hands on the latest technology and understand the rigors of early product release (i.e., working with an evolving service, running a service through it’s paces, providing feedback to help shape the future of a service).

Interested? Send us an email to the contact us address on the main website.  And make sure you convince us of why you should earn the priveldge of an early access pass.  We’ll get in touch with your early access pass.

SEO Tips from WordCamp

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

Today Dave and I spent hob-nobbing with the WordPress jet set.  At WordCamp San Francisco there were WordPress users and developers from across the country–we meet people from Seattle all the way to Florida. With a track for WordPress users as well as developers, there was something for everyone.  It was great talking with all the photographers I meet that use WordPress to power their sites.

For those photographers that use WordPress for their photography blogs or websites, I wanted to share some of what was learned from Stephan Spencer’s SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make (download presentation).  To get the most out of the work you do on your blog, you want to ensure you’re doing what you can to make it search engine friendly.  Besides the great tips and tricks in Stephan’s presentation, he recommends the following great SEO plugins:

If you’re a WordPress user, make sure you check out these plugins and let us know which ones help your blog’s SEO the most.

(Personally, I have been using the all-in-one-seo-pack plugin, which is the one of the top five plugins for the WordPress platform.  I would love see a gap analysis for the list above and all-in-one-seo-pack.  Any SEO experts out there willing to take up the challenge?)

More Early Access Codes Available

We had set aside a group of early access codes to the FocalPower service just for WordCampers.  But we didn’t give them all out!  So anyone out there who is interested in getting one, let us know by commenting on this post (please include your website/blog address in your post).  We’ll give out the access codes on a first come basis until they are gone.  Please Note: FocalPower is still in an Alpha state, some features are not complete and still under development.  We are looking for those who can handle the rough edges, use the system and provide us feedback help us get the features right.