We are pleased to welcome you to the new User Manual for uSeeToo, that among other things discusses, how you can create collages from photos.
This functionality might be useful for all sorts of visual imagery creation eg. a comprehensive picture of your products, or just for FUN! Check out further examples here.
We used our own photos taken in Florence and San Gimignano in Toscana.
We have also updated the look and feel of the interface, made the download smaller, added save-chessboard-to-file functionality, and fixed a few bugs.
August 15th, 2008
We have been very happy to notice that our uSeeToo visual communicator for Skype has been voted the best of all Skype plugins (”extras”). The list is here. This is a dynamic list; sometimes a newcomer overtakes uSeeToo so when you look our photo, drawing, games sharing program may not be #1, but hopefully it will be within the first few entries. Monthly downloads of about 800 increased to 1,300 in July. This great progress encourages us to hard work on improving your experience with uSeeToo. The version now available for download sports a refreshed look, fixes a few issues, and its download size is smaller. A User Manual introducing new features is coming soon (check later this week).
August 12th, 2008
After describing our less than poor experience with Verizon on our move to Cambridge I checked the next day whether Google had already indexed it and entered query terms “Verizon sucks.” I had no idea… The query brings back many pages of very relevant hits, sometimes whole blogs devoted to the subject, for years. Many megabytes of horror stories. Apparently they don’t care anyway. Oh well, time to write about something else.
August 12th, 2008
We have just completed our move to Cambridge, Massachusetts and we love our new location. What spoiled some of the pleasure was the total absurdity of dealing with Verizon. They represent some of Forces of Darkness in the 21st Century. Lets start with what seems like obvious truths:
- people in the USA move from one home to another, it is nothing unusual
- Internet access has become something fundamental, a basic need not unlike electricity; we use it for EVERYTHING everyday: banking, googling around, maps, etc.
- Cambridge, MA is a VERY civilized place, home to MIT and Harvard, both walking distance from our new home office. In fact, the history of the Internet is linked to Cambridge, MA, MIT continues to host the World Wide Web consortium, etc.: getting Internet connection here should be quick, easy, obvious and painless
Ensuring continuity of Internet access had been very important for us as we run a software business: we need to respond to customer email, some of our software accesses internet all the time. Even if our work didn’t demand it as much as it does, internet access would have been extremely useful during the move for checking maps, finding local stores, etc. Enter Verizon!
Back in Framingham, MA we enjoyed Verizon FiOS, ie. the technology itself, not the confusing billing complete with systematic overcharging (we guess they count on people not noticing spurious charges, or procrastinating on calling them to get rid of the charges). We got FiOS with a 2-year contract based on the idea that we could count on Verizon’s broadband after we move to another V’s served location. Turns out Cambridge doesn’t have FiOS, so back to DSL. We called Verizon about the planned move and our desire to move both the phone and internet services with us, stressing the importance of the continuity of service of both. A really nice lady, a Verizon representative, said “no problem,” she gave us a new phone number and said the DSL modem would be sent still to the old address as there was enough time. We believed her, didn’t make Plan B and continued with other chores of the move. It all sounded simple, just as it should, and in agreement with our belief that the whole thing is indeed simple.
But then… as the modem DID NOT arrive we called and found out that not only it hadn’t been shipped yet, but it was NOT GOING TO be shipped until the line is “qualified for DSL.” What? Don’t they have relevant data in their databases?! OK, even if they don’t, especially if they don’t, what keeps them from quickly checking things out? To our horror we had learned we had to wait almost THREE weeks to get connected. We spent hours on the phone with the Verizon representatives all the while wondering how was it possible that
- they had so much time on their hands to waste talking to customers about the simplest and most obvious of matters for a communication company
- no information was retained from one conversation to another, so each one started with “how may I help you?” and our recanting the story from the beginning
We heard inconsistent information from the representatives, they seemed unable to really do anything (including rescheduling phone technician’s appointment with us: he came when we were absent and wasted his time. Our feeling was it was all about wasting a lot of everybody’s time and effort through totally disorganized, irrational operation. While in general we have found the technicians to be truly great and competent (while very concerned about chaos in “the office”), our DSL technician showed some signs of the Verizon Disease. He came, fiddled a bit with some outside wires for a few minutes, said “all set” and was preparing to depart. We asked, “What do you mean, all set? Can we connect to the internet now?” Well, of course not. The new modem hasn’t arrived yet, the old one (from our previous home) didn’t seem to work, we didn’t know where we were in the process. Another couple of calls revealed that the modem was sent (UPS ground, 4 days travel time) — but to the old address! Even if we had it in our hand though, that would still not help: the magic Service-Ready Date hasn’t arrived yet. Where did this arbitrary date came from, we have no idea — the issue is: NOBODY can change it once its generated.
We ended up with the feeling that EVERYTHING (Murphy’s Law?) went wrong with Verizon moving our internet service 30 miles in the Greater Boston area. Who will pay us for time lost on conversations with Verizon, correcting every step they mistook? We never had the feeling anybody really cared. Online order status services are frequently “experiencing technical difficulties,” are sorry and “please try again later.” And yet Verizon is a 100 billion dollar company with enough money to erect skyscrapers in big cities. We’ll try to forget this unpleasant experience now.
April 11th, 2008
Check out our Amazon music catalog browsing demo at Ambrosoft, Inc.
Should we port uSeeToo to Android?
March 7th, 2008
I have recently admitted my fear of smart people; smart people can kill any great idea with lucid, convincing arguments. The programming language Java was almost killed by smart and influential technologists at Sun Microsystems. Heroic, historical efforts of people you don’t even know about saved the language to enable a decade of progress in computing. Today, Java enjoys another life extension as the programming language for the great Android mobile phone platform from Google and alliance. When Tim Berners-Lee came up with WWW at CERN, smart and experienced people fought with his projects. The birth of the Web was anything but easy. I am sure arguments against WWW sounded real good!
Here’s another observation. Smart people can understand a working software design very fast, sometimes in a matter of seconds; the question is: would they come up with these designs from scratch themselves? In my whole experience that is exceptionally rare! There is a German saying that goes like ” Jeder schwimmt am Ufer,” which means “everybody swims close to the shore” — most people do not genuinely inovate, they stay close to what they currently understand.
March 1st, 2008
This is an exciting time for uSeeToo on many fronts. Soon we’ll be moving from Boston to San Francisco; during the move our responsiveness to user communication will be low. At this time, however, we do enjoy talking to actual users: we really want to know how people would like to communicate graphically, what do they like about uSeeToo, and what frustrates them: we make notes and update our TODO list. We encourage you to use uSeeToo’s “Feedback” feature to tell us what you’d like to see in the program.
At this time there is still less than 1000 registered users, which gives us opportunity to communicate with some of them. From a recent communication we learned that some anti virus software can significantly slow down image (and/or data) transmission. Data can travel very fast one way, and frustratingly slow the other way. To measure effective bandwidth you can experiment by just sending files (the same file back and forth) while talking on Skype.
November 28th, 2006
We are over-excited to be working on the cutting edge: collaborative content creation in the context of the revolutionary Skype communication technology. It is a great feeling to have users around the globe; yesterday we welcomed South Africa. It must be exciting for you, our users, too 
Please bear in mind that this is all work in progress. Skype changes quickly, “Skype extras” developers like us and many others are trying to keep pace, and not everything works smoothly as in the case of mature technologies. Here are two issues we would like you to know.
A user alerted us to the fact that when Skype informs a user that “Another program wants to use Skype,” the Publisher is erroneously shown as Sun Microsystems, Inc. This is NOT OUR INTENTION to (naively) impersonate Sun (where, by the way, the uSeeToo author has worked for 10 years at SunLabs), this is just a consequence of Java’s reporting ITS publisher (uSeeToo is written in Java, so that the same program can run on Windows/Mac/Linux/Solaris/etc.)
Another user noticed that after she installed and started another Skype plugin, uSeeToo stopped working… There is not much we can do, except we will inform Skype about the plugin interference and likely conflicts.
You, our users, are a part of the adventure: this is cutting edge, not yet a smooth ride… We will be happy to hear from you as we contemplate future features to support specific professional (eg. medical, eLearning, architectural) uses. Enjoy, have fun, meet new international friends, and let’s learn together!
November 23rd, 2006
Yesterday I had a uSeeToo session with a young person from (east) China. This is almost as far as you can get from Boston, USA where uSeeToo is developed: practically on the opposite side of the globe! The session was so exciting! My new friend showed me photos of his his city and I responded with views from my neighborhood. The Internet and Skype worked flawlessly across some 20,000 km, we could qulickly exchange photos, show things on the photos with (smoothly moving) cursors, we drew and wrote, I was so excited I couldn’t go to bed before 5am30! The graphical communication worked better than I expected. I am also happy to have met a new friend who would like to help with uSeeToo development.
Since then new users have registered from Russia, Indonesia, Colombia, Vietnam, Serbia, Australia, Latvia, Chile, Lithuania, Brazil, all European countries (with many German, British and Polish users), USA, Canada, South Africa! Nothing is more rewarding to hard working programmers than seeing one’s work used around the world Seeing that it matters to people.
A reminder to users: just like with Skype itself, you normally need a partner to communicate with, who also has uSeeToo running on his/her computer. Next, you need to connect (”Contacts” menu). To show photos just drag and drop them onto the uSeeToo window. We owe you much better documentation; we are painfully aware of this need. The program already does a lot more than what we documented. Please stay tuned!
November 22nd, 2006
Yesterday, after 3 months since public launch, uSeeToo was finally added to Skype’s new “extras” gallery. We have enjoyed a steady stream of downloads since August 2006, but the presence on Skype’s official website makes a lot of difference!
A lot has changed in uSeeToo since the initial launch (help pages for new functionality still need to be written). You can now show photos to your friends much faster than before: just drag and drop photos onto the uSeeToo window and they will be sent over to your friend as quickly as your Internet connection allows. Each new photo will open up a new “board” for you and your friend. You can point to detail on the image with your cursor and/or create drawings, add text, etc. You can also SAVE board contents as either a JPG image, or an editable UC2 file.
Please note that in general you need someone else to “uSeeToo” with: a Skype contact who is online and has uSeeToo running. One of you will need to select the other from the Contacts menu to start the image sharing session. Only after you are connected he/she will see your photos and drawings. But you can also work alone: create images off-line, say annotate photos, and view them with your friends later. For instance you can load a photo, add text + drawing annotations, and save the file. Later you will be able to open it within a uSeeToo session with your contact.
Performance: the quality of your Internet/Skype connection makes a lot of difference for the experience of the program. We have experienced both ends of the spectrum: sometimes photos take long (20 or more seconds) to get transferred, sometimes you can show each other a lot of images within one minute.
November 17th, 2006
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