A simple social memo: Kullect

Recently, according to foreign media reports, today, social networking sites have been deep into people's lives, and here, people are sharing online content and channels more and more, for example, based on different platforms for pictures, videos, geographical attendance, like, tweets and other ideas to share. But all this sharing is about walking on different websites or social networking sites and, more often, storing them on their phones. The problem is how to better manage, back up, and set up these content, so that it also preserves the original context of the contextual dialogue elements. Kullect, which is a simple social memo, is a digital content management application that tries to solve the problem.

Kullect from another English word collect (collection) of homophonic, known as a "social memo" application. Here, you can collect things that you like, such as your favorite restaurants, cute cat maps, inspirational quotes or videos you like, and so on. The content of all users ' collection is a projection of user personalization.

It sounds like a Facebook or blog feature, but Kullect is easier to locate. Users do not have to make any complex privacy settings or learn to use software that publishes blogs. Kullect is a simple and easy-to-use mobile-first application that anyone can use to build their own digital content collection, while preserving contextual elements on the original platform.

Kullect co-founder and CEO Sasank Reddy said, "People generate a lot of online content, but not everything is shared, and some content doesn't have a suitable publishing window." If you post these on Facebook, your friends may get bored, and the Twitter release may soon drown. In addition, you may not want to publish the content on your blog. ”

Kullect's ideas are really practical. For example, sometimes you want to upload some pictures, and feel no need to put on Facebook, but want to have a place to store the content online, and then can continue to add and view, such as your favorite cheese and Big Mac. When you label your favorite restaurant in Yelp or foodspotting your favorite dishes on the menu, Kullect can provide you with a one-stop view of the different platforms and services that are labeled. In addition, users can personalize these collections of content, and others can annotate them, which is more efficient and fluent than content management based on a single platform.

Kullect was jointly developed by Reddy and Jeff Mascia in 2010, and is the work of two people collaborating on the Graduate Research Project (Mobile sensor network) at the University of California, Los Angeles. At present, the application of the user is not much, only thousands of users, that is, kullect the future development of the road is still far, there are many need to improve the place. The bright spot of Kullect, however, is that it provides us with a different approach to the development of social, graphic and discovery mobile applications.

The idea that the mobile end should take care of the network end

The mobile end is the main platform for people to gather or gather information, but it is not the only place. Each set of information uploaded through the kullect generates a related page, after which the user can see a kullect gadget on the relevant website (such as Tumblr or Facebook).

Reddy that "the user enters content by moving the end, while the network side is a better way to browse the content." ”

Filter function is not dispensable for picture application, but must

"People have seen the filter function as a standard," says Jeff Mascia. ”

Reddy said that the user's basic function of existing filters has gradually formed a certain standard of expectation. "We learned that people want some kind of filter that can produce dark lines, and retro filters," he said. It's not a complicated project, it's just a way to figure it out. ”

Kullect team members are not photographic experts, so they develop the filter function they want based on reverse engineering, that is, taking pictures, creating effects through Photoshop, and then studying how to translate this effect into code execution. In addition, the IOS 5 API provides a great help for the code transformation of this image effect.

Developing an Android app is not easy for a startup developer

Kullect was developed with the help of friends and family, so "we don't have a full number of Android phones for application testing, but we've tried our best." We made full use of our friends ' mobile phones for testing. "said Mascia. "We even thought about entering the sprint store," they said, half joking. "But in the end they didn't do it, but there is a fact that many of these mobile developers are encountering many of the same difficulties in testing the Android platform."

Still, Reddy and Mascia continue to develop services based on the Android platform because they don't want to miss out on the large number of mobile customers on the platform. In this, the two people put forward their own experience, that is, do not directly copy the iphone application to the Android platform.

"Two platforms are completely different," Reddy said. "To build different versions of applications is to take full advantage of the capabilities of each operating system." Of course, "You also need to use the system yourself, especially if developers need to have experience using the operating system." ”

Helping users find things that interest them is a magic weapon to keep users

Although it sounds simple, developing a truly powerful discovery system is not easy. Pinterest and Twitter are two services that we can use for reference in user stickiness. "The discovery function is the way forward for us to help people find what they are interested in, figure out what the user likes, and recommend what they are interested in," Mascia said. "As a platform for expressing originality and interest, Kullect needs to help users discover and understand new things," he said. Whether this function can be achieved well also determines the future fate of similar products such as Kullect.