You can now sign up for and log in to ThingLink using your Facebook account. We’re making use of the 600+ million user network to make the process of signing up and logging in to ThingLink as easy as possible.
You’ll notice that above the username and password fields, there is a new “Log in with Facebook” button, which will allow you to sign up for or log in to your ThingLink account using your personal Facebook username and password. If it’s the first time you’re signing in with Facebook, you’ll see a pop-up window asking you to allow ThingLink permission to access your account. Follow the ensuing prompts and you’re brought to ThingLink’s dashboard. To start tagging you only need to do a simple install and you’re set to go. It’s that simple!
San Francisco, March 8, 2011 — ThingLink, the provider of image interaction tools, and SoundCloud, the fast-growing audio platform, today announced an innovative collaboration of technologies that enables anyone to add sound and music directly to their images. For the first time, it is possible to link a SoundCloud waveform player to any photo or picture, thereby connecting the subject to sounds, music and effects, voice annotations and narrations.
This collaboration means that SoundCloud’s more than three million registered audio creators will be able to bring additional context, interactivity and meaning to both their sounds and the images that inspire them; whether it’s to a promotional flyer, a memorable photograph or an album cover artwork. By simply scrolling over the uploaded image, a series of ‘hotspots’ appear, each one linking to a sound that can be played directly from within the picture. By using Thinglink, users can also include links to social networks, blogs, news and commerce web sites, as well as email.
“Images and sound are a natural combination and really compliment each other,” said Ulla-Maaria Engeström, ThingLink CEO. “Context invites clicks, and sound adds a new dimension to images, be it fan shots, fashion photos, or family albums.”
Alexander Ljung, founder and CEO of SoundCloud said, “This simple concept of linking sound to the images that are meaningful to you opens up endless opportunities to audio creators. Not only will it change the way artists promote themselves, their music and their live shows, but it will also allow people to add narrative to their holiday snaps, verbal descriptions to their designs or funny soundbites to their illustrations.”
An example of how this new collaboration of technologies is already being embraced, includes: Paper Garden Records, a NY-based record company and music promoter, who has created an interactiveflyerfortheirbandsatSXSW. They use ThingLink tags to link the flyer to their music samples on SoundCloud, as well as website, party venue, Facebook page and sponsors. When flyers are shared onwards via Facebook, Twitter and email, the interactive hotspots follow and bring traffic back to Paper Garden Record’s website. Further sound-filled images, including Moby, Beck and The Smashing Pumpkins, can be viewed at gallery.thinglink.com
Want to add your sounds to your website’s images? The process is quick and easy:
ThingLink, launched in 2008 by Ulla Engeström, develops tools for image interaction that allow content sharing via online images. ThingLink technology changes the way people interact with photos by transforming them into a surface for advertising, commerce, entertainment, search and social connection. Brands, publishers and bloggers utilize ThingLink in their images to share links, drive traffic, and set up image-based advertising campaigns.
About SoundCloud
SoundCloud, launched in 2008 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, is an audio platform that enables anyone to create, record, promote and share their sounds on the web, in a simple, accessible and feature-rich way. SoundCloud allows sound creators to instantly record audio; upload large files; share them publicly and privately; embed sound across websites and blogs; receive detailed analytics, plus feedback from the community directly onto their waveform player.
For more information, please contact:
Neil Vineberg (ThingLink)
631-377-1494
Email: neil (a)ThingLink.com
Alice Regester (SoundCloud)
+44 7758 834 646
Email: alice(a)soundcloud.com
Christopher Buttner (Vineberg Communications)
415-233-7350
Email: chris (a)vinebergcommunications.com
First of all: thanks for all the good questions we have received by email in the past months! To make sharing questions and answers easier, ThingLink now has community support on Get Satisfaction. Our community page allows you to post service- and feature-related questions and comments to us directly, and check how other questions have been answered.
You don’t have to create an account to post your questions. However, by creating an account you can get updates on when your question was answered, and you too will be able to answer questions.
Just hover on the image below to see some of the features that the community forum offers:
Looking forward to see you on the ThingLink community page!
Thinglink is collaborating with The Scandinavian design house Artek to add interactive, in-image links to historical images in the Artek Open Archives. The project is aimed at building Artek’s online community and driving user engagement.
Artek has an exceptionally rich image database depicting interiors, exhibitions, installations, and diverse projects dating from 1935 to now. Artek has now made these images accessible to everybody in the Artek Open Archives, an image database showcasing past and present Artek interiors from around the world.
“Our collaboration with Artek is an example of transforming a rich, historical image archives into a fun interactive viewing experience with social features that are also benefit the business,” said Thinglink CEO Ulla-Maaria Engeström.
Thinglink image interaction technology in the Artek Open Archives will enable these features:
In-image tags as points of navigation
Images will feature interactive Thinglink in-image tags – interactive hotspots that reveal contextual information about the venue and time period as well as more detailed product information.
Easy sharing
Thinglink will make images shareable in two ways: anyone can share a favorite image via Twitter and Facebook, and bloggers can freely copy an image (in the interactive format with tags) and use it in a blog post.
Image statistics
Thinglink will provide real-time statistics on user interaction with images.
The Artek Open Archives will be launched at the Stockholm Furniture Fair on Tuesday February 8th at the Artek display A10:30. Visit Artek Open Archives online to see it for yourself.
1. An image can directly serve the objects it shows
Every image tells more than a thousand words. The most common question asked is, “What’s in Your Photo?” What is this object? Where can I get it? Who else knows about or likes this? Images can answer these questions and more. They can become a new navigational surface for search.
2. An image can serve advertising, commerce, information sharing, social connection, and shopping
According to Forrester, by 2014, 53% of total retail sales (online and offline) will be affected by the Web, as consumers increasingly use the Internet to research products before purchasing. Consumer purchasing decisions are being made based on images and user preference and ratings: Should I read this article? Should I reserve a room at this hotel? Should I meet this guy?
We make decisions based on images. Search is becoming image-based. And in-image interaction tools developed by Thinglink are enabling image-based advertising, commerce, information sharing, social connection and shopping.
3. Images entertain and drive traffic
Advertising is, at its best, art photography or photographic art. Image ads constitute half of the content of major fashion magazines with the best photographers shooting the best models wearing clothes and accessories from major brands. What if all these image advertisement became interactive with links to retailers? Images would become the new point-of-sale.
4. A good image is the least irritating advertisement.
Online banners ads are quickly losing their effectiveness. There is way too much inventory, ads looks the same and prices are falling. Thinglink aims to recreate banner ads with interactive links, better call to action links and user preference data that provides increasing value to marketers.
5. New vocabulary: Image Inventory and Image Interest Factor
Publishers need to start asking: Do your images serve your business goals? How much of your image inventory drives traffic to points of sale? Does your image inventory enable robust user interaction? How much of your image inventory drives reader retention?
In sum, images are being transformed by in-image links to relevant information for advertising, commerce, entertainment, and social connection. With photos constituting perhaps 20 per cent of web real estate, the hundreds of billion of photos online offer rich opportunities for in-image links to engaging user experiences that will revolutionize and transform image interaction. That’s an incredible opportunity that we are very excited about sharing.
Enabling Thinglink for WordPress is very easy with the Plugin. The plugin is made by ThingLink together with an external developer RJW and then developed further. Go to WordPress and use the plugin directly or follow this path to enable Thinglink with the plugin:
1. Login to your WordPress account and choose plugins from the left hand side menu
2. Click on Add new and add Thinglink as a search phrase
3. Make sure that it is the newest version of the plugin and click on Install (Here it shows as Installed)
4. Activate plugin
5. Choose settings, add your Thinglink ID which you can find from here
Now you are all set. Once you browse your blog images, you will see the Thinglink icon in the left hand corner of your imges, click on that an you can edit your tags.
UPDATE: Does ThingLink work on WordPress.com?
Thinglink works with sites using WordPress.org. However, enabling Thinglink for blogs hosted on WordPress.com is unfortunately not currently possible.
This is due to the fact that WordPress.com does not allow plugins that contain Javascript code. At this point we do not have a solution for this. However, we are looking for ways to enable Thinglink on WordPress.com as well, and hope that this will be possible at some point!
We’re delighted to announce that Janne Jalkanen will join Thinglink as its new Chief Technology Officer on May 10th, 2010.
By training, Janne is a physicist and rocket scientist. During the past eight years he has held various positions within Nokia. Most recently, Janne was the leader of the Services Early Technology Validation team. His previous positions include the Program Manager for Near Field Communications and a technology specialist for Corporate Strategy and the Nokia Ventures Organization. Prior to Nokia, Janne worked as a Software tester for Space Systems Finland, and a Virtual Reality Researcher for Helsinki University of Technology. As his highest achievement Janne counts a piece of code which is orbiting the Earth aboard the ENVISAT-1 spacecraft.
Janne has several academic publications and holds 51 patents in various technical fields. He is an active Open Source developer, a member of the Apache Software Foundation, and a contributor to Apache JSPWiki and Priha.
As CTO, Janne will be responsible for planning and executing Thinglink’s technology strategy as well as preparing the Thinglink production environment for launch.
For us Janne is one of those rare friends in Helsinki who have been hands on the Internet of Things for as long as we can remember. We have debated about unique product codes since 2005, produced podcasts about web 2.0 as well as explored the possibilities of tagging things with NFC technology. We are therefore excited to welcome Janne in the team and look forward to having lots of fun in the Internet of Things!
