Creative Arts

EWC Presenter: A Web Content Creation and Management Platform that Simplifies the Way Users Develop and Maintain Content for Web and Mobile

April 17, 2013 By admin Leave a Comment

EWC Presenter is a web content creation and management platform that simplifies the way users develop and maintain content for web and mobile.

We had a very insightful and interesting interview with Mr. ‘Payman Taei‘; Founder and President of the US (Frederick)-based start-up “EWC Presenter”.

“EWC Presenter” is a web based platform to create, edit and enhance thousands of users web presence.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Taei’ regarding his internet start-up company “EWC Presenter”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “EWC Presenter” is all about?

I am the Founder and President of EWC Presenter (www.ewcPresenter.com), a web content creation and management platform that simplifies the way users develop and maintain content for web and mobile. We’re all about creating efficiency and simplifying the way users interact and manage their web presence. Our service is geared towards anyone with little to no technical knowledge who wants to take charge of their website be it creating, editing or adding engaging features to their websites.

2. When has “EWC Presenter” been founded? And what stage is “EWC Presenter” currently at?

EWC Presenter is an extension of Easy WebContent which was founded in late 2008 as a simple website editor geared towards anyone who wanted to easily manage the content of their websites without coding knowledge or changes to their existing website. In 2010 we extended our system to allow site owners to add various interactive features to their site and today we have leaped into creating an easy to use yet powerful site builder that gives non technical users the ability to develop and maintain their web presence.

And today with EWC Presenter we are changing the way engaging content is created.

3. What is “EWC Presenter”‘s business model and how does it work?

EWC Presenter is currently free to everyone; We aim to continue supporting our freemium model long-term and offer an extended version of the service under a premium subscription plan as we have already done for our HTML Editor and Site Builder.

EWC Presenter is a cloud based system; giving us the ability to scale and serve our users growing needs deploying regular upgrades and features to users without the need to manually update or pay upgrade fees for new version releases.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

Our team comes from different walks of life. I would say that we are extremely diverse both in culture and skill. It’s a great cohesion with each member and whenever we conduct meetings it’s always a creative mission. Our team met at our Web Development company HindSite Interactive, an award winning web consulting company which incubated and supported Easy WebContent from the start. Without HindSite Interactive we likely wouldn’t be here today.

We have members that work in the Easy WebContent office and some that work from the comforts of their home, so communication is key to our functionality and success.

We use a few different modes of communication depending on the task at hand. Design oriented tasks are often done in person between our design team; while development oriented tasks are handled through our CRM system, email and sometimes skype or chat. We’re quite open and flexible and open to all communication means; whichever best serves the purpose.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

Our goal is not to give users every possible feature you can imagine. It’s about giving them features and capabilities that most users need in a easy to use and user friendly manner.

Additionally although some users want out of the box solutions, we find that many also want to have a certain level of control and flexibility. For example you may like a certain theme we offer but you want to make it your own by changing colors, graphics and even minute adjustment such as border, spacing and margins.

Our offering give you these abilities while eliminating the headache of any coding and design experience.

Airwalk-Design.com: A Creative Social Platform for Sharing Design Inspiration

April 9, 2013 By admin Leave a Comment

Airwalk-Design.com

Airwalk Design is like Pinterest for designers, a creative platform for sharing design inspiration.

We had an insightful and in-depth interview with the young entrepreneur Mr. ‘Daniel Schwarz‘; Founder & CEO of the England (London)-based start-up “Airwalk Design”.

“Airwalk Design“ is a creative social platform for sharing design inspiration.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Schwarz’ regarding his start-up company “Airwalk Design”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Airwalk Design” is all about?

Airwalk Design is like Pinterest for designers, a creative platform for sharing design inspiration. We also have fresh, undiscovered writers with specialist knowledge in certain genres of digital design. We call them our ambassadors! Our mission is to inspire and spark thought-provoking reactions in the minds of designers worldwide. The very best of the user-submissions will be published in our magazine.

2. When has “Airwalk Design” been founded? And what stage is “Airwalk Design” currently at?

We began right at the beginning of 2013, and we have already launched our website this spring, including Dropbox integration and our new Google Chrome app that lets you share design inspiration with no more fuss than a single click. We are currently accepting sign-ups and encourage users to submit their favourite design inspirations.

3. What is “Airwalk Design”‘s business model and how does it work?

We plan to monetize our platform with niche-topic advertising using the BuySellAds network and also through the sales of our monthly e-magazine. If the inspiration strikes us, we will also publish books by either myself or our onboard, handpicked writers specializing in specific topics such as dark-art and surrealism.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

I am the only person in my team! I do everything, from design to development to marketing! It’s a tiring role, but an exciting and fulfilling one. Not too much cost-effective! We do have onboard writers, however they have signed up as volunteers. Their benefits include discovery, experience and reputation.

We don’t really have many competitors, or you could say that we have a lot. Photoshop blogs, Pinterest, the Behance network or deviantArt…we’re taken inspiration from so many things but we like to think that we’re unique and incomparable. We’ve integrated with Dropbox, we have a Chrome App, really put the effort in. Our writing focuses on intense, thought-provoking topics that are sure to inspire. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Creative Arts, Design, Online Social Networks, Web Based Applications, Websites Tagged With: art, creativity, Daniel Schwarz, design, inspiration, Social

Explainify: An Animated Explainer Video Production House that Create Remarkable Videos for Businesses

February 20, 2013 By admin 1 Comment

Explainify.com

Explainify (explainify.com) is an animation and video studio specializing in the creation of short, to-the-point stories – Explainer Videos.

We had a very interesting and in-depth interview with Mr. ‘Eric Hinson’; Founder of the US (Arkansas)-based start-up “Explainify”.

“Explainify” is an animated explainer video production house.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Hinson’ regarding his start-up company ”Explainify”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Explainify” is all about?

Explainify (explainify.com) is an animation and video studio specializing in the creation of short, to-the-point stories – Explainer Videos. We work with anyone that has a website, idea or business on awesome videos that are less than 90 seconds – the average attention span of the viewer.

Explainer videos are the hot new thing for businesses. They increase sales and conversion rates dramatically! It’s the easiest way to give your perfect “elevator pitch” every single time to millions.

2. When has “Explainify” been founded? And what stage is “Explainify” currently at?

We launched in January of 2012, but didn’t actively look for explainer video work. It was more of a means to pay the bills by doing some agency work that a friend had. It gave me some much needed time to get everything ready for things to be successful once I hit it hard. As far as stages go, we are building a network of great clients and trying to knock out killer videos for them.

3. What is “Explainify”‘s business model and how does it work?

Explainify offers multiple video packages. Our projects are customized to tell each client’s story most effectively, so pricing is often quoted to match the project priorities and creative direction. We start by discussing our client’s needs. Then, together we decide what would work best for them. We have a specific process that helps us and clients know what to expect.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

The team started with just my wife and I. I met her at an awesome bookstore her family owned. We’ve added one more since – and he’s a huge help! I worked with him at Rockfish, the agency I was at before launching Explainify. He’s a super fun guy, we get along great and make things happen together. My wife’s main focus is scripting, concepting and design. Stuart does animation and sound design. We all really do a little bit of everything and we love it that way. We all have a hand in every part of the project. We feed off each others strengths and creative abilities to come up with the best solution for our clients. It’s kind of like a being in a band. You may write an awesome sounding riff by yourself. When you bring that riff to rehearsal the other bandmates take it and expand on it making it even better than it was before.

The biggest thing is that we don’t make long explainer videos. We 100% believe there is no need to go over 90 seconds with our videos (and there’s tons of research to prove it). If we can’t tell your story in under 90 seconds, we’re probably not the best fit for each other.

We’re fortunate enough to be able to say no to people that we don’t think would be a good fit for us to work with. It’s not all about money – we want cool projects, awesome clients and most importantly – to have fun. We’d rather make less, enjoy ourselves and have a more successful result for our client.

Render.st: An Easy to Use and Affordable Online Render Farm, with a Great Customer Support

December 18, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

Render.st

Render Street is an easy to use and affordable render farm for 3D projects with very good customer support.

Today we had an in-depth and insightful interview with Mr. ‘Sorin Vinatoru‘; Co-Founder and CTO at the Romania (Bucharest)-based start-up “Render Street”.

“Render Street“ is a global provider of rendering services.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Vinatoru’ regarding his technology start-up company ”Render Street”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Render Street” is all about?

Render Street is an easy to use and affordable render farm for 3D projects with very good customer support. Using our services, the customers can speed up their rendering speed up to hundreds of times in case of large animations. We have recently entered the closed beta stage and are currently supporting only the blender 3D modelling software.

2. When has “Render Street” been founded? And what stage is “Render Street” currently at?

Our startup was founded in May 2012. We are currently in the closed beta stage. At this stage, we accept selected customers in the beta program, so they can test our platform and provide feedback on what works and what can be improved. We are looking at opening up the open beta at the beginning of the year. Usage of the site in closed beta is free of charge for a limited time.

3. What is “Render Street”‘s business model and how does it work?

We have opted for a “utility” business model, in which the customers pay exactly for the resources they use. The customers can choose one of the three paid plans, depending on the complexity of their work and the resources they need to allocate. In the open beta, we will offer a limited amount of free credits so people can test our site without needing to pay.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

We are a team of 3. The CEO (Marius Iatan) and CTO (Sorin Vinatoru) have worked together since 1999 in 4 different companies and met at the first company they worked together. They both have a technical background, but have been running businesses as well in the past. The 3rd partner (Oana Vinatoru) is responsible for Product and Community Management and is Sorin’s wife since 2000.

We identified a need for our product some time ago when Oana was in need for a render farm to render a bigger project she had. The current offering in the market is extremely difficult to use, has bad customer support and is either expensive or uses outdated hardware. What we do better than the current market offering is:

- have a very easy to use interface
- have great customer support by 3D professionals
- have affordable prices or top of the line hardware

KindCritic.com: A Social Platform that Allows you to get Crowdsourced Feedback on your Creative Projects

December 1, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

KindCritic.com

KindCritic is a social platform where creatives can give and get crowdsourced constructive feedback on their creative works from real experts in their field of interest.

We had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. ‘Jeff Callahan‘; Founder of the US (Austin)-based start-up “KindCritic”.

“KindCritic” is A Social Platform that Allows you to get Crowdsourced Feedback on your Creative Projects.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Callahan’ regarding his internet start-up company “KindCritic”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “KindCritic” is all about?

KindCritic is a social platform where creatives can give and get crowdsourced constructive feedback on their creative works from real experts in their field of interest.

Users can post images, links, writing and music publicly or incognito. They can then track their creative posts and the best feedback gets voted to the top.

2. When has “KindCritic” been founded? And what stage is “KindCritic” currently at?

KindCritic was founded in May of 2012 with a MVP being launched in late July. After extensive feedback and further development we just launched a much improved version and are currently working on more exciting features to enhance the user experience.

We are pre-revenue, self-funded, but are open to meeting with potential investors.

3. What is “KindCritic”‘s business model and how does it work?

Eventually we will integrate an advertising model for both advertisers and users and are considering a licensing option.

Users will be able to pay for sponsored trends to get more exposure as we build our user base. We will also allow advertisers to buy space on the site.

We will also allow users a chance to pay for feedback from expert critics. For instance, I am an aspiring song writer and I want to get feedback from a real record producer in Los Angeles who was worked with big name bands. I can pay a small fee to get his feedback on my music and we collect a small fee.

We also are considering licensing the platform to Universities and schools with creative departments for students to have a place to easily critique each other’s work.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

There are two of us who have worked to bring this product to life. We actually met online and have been working remotely since the beginning of KindCritic.

I am the business, marketing, and designer side of the business. I do a little front end as well. I also work with a very talented developer who built out the entire back-end.

There are many forums online to post your content, but most succumb to cyber-bullies, trolling, or flamers.

KindCritic is a site exclusively for constructive criticism where negativity and bullying is not a part of our community. No other site is solely dedicated to getting/giving constructive criticism.

Also. no other site ranks critics. Using our scoring system we assign you a Critic Score. So, you can finally put your money where your mouth is.

It is the perfect place for aspiring creatives to really hone their craft and learn from vetted experts in a positive environment..

Pajap: A DIY Mobile Apps Service embedded with a New Technology that Allows you to Create Full Featured 100% Native and Hardware Accelerated Mobile Applications

November 11, 2012 By admin 1 Comment

Pajap.com

Pajap provides an innovative mobile service, which provides new routes in native mobile application development, end user experience and advertising methods.

We had a very interesting in-depth interview with Mr. ‘Giannis Zaoudis‘, Co-Founder and COO of the US (Delaware)-based start-up “Pajap Inc.”.

“Pajap” is a DIY mobile apps service with a new technology that allows you to create full featured 100% native and hardware accelerated mobile applications.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Zaoudis’ regarding his start-up web-based development company “Pajap”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “Pajap” is all about?

Pajap provides an innovative mobile service, which provides new routes in native mobile application development, end user experience and advertising methods. Specifically, using Pajap a high-quality native mobile application, worth of many thousands of dollars, can be created in minutes by everyone without a single line of code. Furthermore users of this app don’t have to install it on their phone. They just open it using Pajap market, QR code scanning or just tapping a web link from their browser. Applications are updated on the fly without any update process. Pajap aims to make the creation and use of native applications as easy and as seamless as websites without compromising any of the advantages of native apps. Pajap technology can lead to the next generation of super-rich, dynamic, interactive mobile ads.

2. When has “Pajap” been founded? And what stage is “Pajap” currently at?

Pajap Inc. has been founded just a few months ago, in May 2012 and we are currently building some strong relationships with current and future clients. Furthermore, we are developing the next generation of our library which will support even more great features such as camera and more. Finally we are in the process of creating a strong board team in order to design next years roadmap.

3. What is “Pajap”‘s business model and how does it work?

Pajap is subscription based and the business model is freemium. Applications made with the free tier will display ads from Pajap ad network and other major ad networks (such as AdMob). The freemium model will also work as a conduit to increase the reach of Pajap ad network to a more extensive user/application base. For enhanced application capabilities, features and larger user capacity a higher tier will be needed with a monthly fee.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

Pajap currently consists of three software engineers, John Papadakis, Giannis Zaoudis and Stefanos Mpliatsios. We met 7 years ago at the university when we came to Patras to study Computer Engineering. All these years, we have been close friends and we have worked together in many IT projects. The fact that each one of us had experience in a different field of expertise but most importantly that we’ve been friends all these years and had worked together many times, made clear to us, that we were the right persons to join the team and work together on this project. So we believe that we have a great level of communication, which will help getting this project done, that wouldn’t be easy to find in another team no matter what their knowledge and expertise is.

John Papadakis is the person, which initially had an idea, which after almost a year of discussion and planning took the form of Pajap. He is currently involved in the client side of Pajap that has to do with android development and with server infrastructure. He has three year experience in developing android applications. The applications, that he made, exist in the market currently and they are some of the best rated apps. Ioanni’s novel ideas and vision was the motive for him to create our team and work on this project.

Giannis Zaoudis is working on the server side of the project and he is in charge of the web designer along with the servers’ setup and administration. He is the person with the most experience in web technologies and web development. He has been working on web projects for 5 years, thus having a deep knowledge of how a web oriented system is structured. His experience was crucial for the team, since he had a major role in designing the web part of the project. He helped us decide which technologies and frameworks will be needed for this project.

Stefanos Mpliatsios is the all in one player of this team. In the one hand, his deep understanding in databases and on the other hand, his experience in mobile application development made him integral part of the team. He is responsible for all the backend aspects of our project, whilst in parallel he is responsible, with Ioannis Papadakis, of the UX of the mobile application.

The most important thing, which we believe makes this team strong and able to produce a high quality product is the commitment, of each one of us, into this project. All three of us believed from the start in the project and made clear that we would be available to dedicate as much time is needed building this project. Our top priority is to build a high quality product and in order to achieve that, we rejected other opportunities and offers for jobs. Furthermore we have adjusted our working space and transformed it in to a house where we are working full time in this project. As far as skills that the team is missing we would say, that there is lack of experience in the finance field, which is crucial for a business but nonetheless can be overcome.

We have found the common ground between native and web applications!!

Users browsing Pajap-based applications can either open an application or “pin” an application as a shortcut. Opening an application requires an active internet connection, only for the first time. When a user opens an application, for the first time, it launches (“installs” and opens) in less than a second, depending on the network speed. The experience for the user is like opening an already-installed application. This feature provides a novel way in the use of mobile application. Until now, such an experience can only be found in the way websites operate. Usually, users have to go through a time-expensive process of installing an application. The whole process actually consists of the following parts, Market search ->selecting an application -> confirm permissions -> confirm installation. Furthermore applications occupy space at the device, thus a user, who wants an application just for one-time use may choose not to install that particular application. On the other hand websites, which don’t require installation, are way more user-friendly at this.

“No installation” is a Pajap innovation, which allows leveraging the application usage to an entirely different way. A user may open an application for a local store, restaurant, which in any other circumstances may never have installed. A website link or a QR code can be linked to a Pajap application that opens instantly to the user’s mobile phone. Moreover, native applications have other disadvantages like updating them. Users have to update their mobile applications, which is a procedure that many users tend ignore, since it is as time-consuming as the installation. Additionally, with Pajap, every time a user opens a Pajap-based application will be delivered with the latest version of that application. Modified layout, new product offers, new album covers, new top stories new UI layout, or even entirely different functionality of an app will be delivered instantly to the users of that application as the publisher intended. The update process of a Pajap-based application is entirely transparent to the user, since it happens when opening the app. In conclusion, this is the most innovative feature of Pajap, according to which applications can be modified daily in order to share a better experience with the end-user.

Pinning an application is the equivalent of installing an ordinary application. A shortcut is created at the mobile‘s home screen giving the illusion that this app is installed on the device. When the Pajap application-shortcut is selected then the specific application will open as any other app. The specific app will be opened as a stand-alone app and will be performing as top quality native apps are performing.

Pajap applications can be extracted as different apps so that developers can publish to the markets for themselves. These apps will exist also in the Pajap market, in order to exploit its features like geo-apps, which will be explained thoroughly later. Users that find these apps from the regular marketplaces will have to install that app as usual but they will not have to update it.