Some users have asked us for a minimalistic way to present albums on their home page that doesn't include the Jalbum header and footer for site navigation. Many of you are professionals who use Jalbum to display your portfolio. We now have a "Portfolio mode" for you! To activate, sign into your page, then go to settings and tick "Portfolio mode" (available on Premium and Power accounts only). Here are some users who already found this new feature:

mikedl pbblloret   pedaal   lisacarmel   Kortman JonsPhotography   alesd   chrispack

 Album "Autumn" by mizzel

Album "Autumn Glory" by enviZioning

Album "Autumn Landscapes" by eyofj

Our friends at Blurb want to help you avoid the rush by getting your photo books made early. Blurb is giving Jalbum users free shipping on any order of up to FIVE books.* That’s free shipping on not one book, not two books, but five books of any size and page count! Simply enter the code that applies to you below at checkout to redeem. Order now, ship your books on Blurb, and relax knowing you’re ahead of the game this year.

Use one of these codes, the one that matches your currency of choice:
BLURBCHEER         (USD)
BLURBCHEER2       (GBP)
BLURBCHEER3       (EUR)
BLURBCHEER4       (AUD)

Start making your photo book today!

* Offer valid through 11/24/09 (11:59 p.m. PST). Offer extends to any Blurb user and covers shipping costs up to $7.99, £3.99, or €5.99 or AUD $12 for up to five books, made by you, shipped to one address. Offer is valid for transactions in USD, EU, GBP, or AUD only. This offer is good for one-time use and cannot be combined with any other offer.

We're mostly hanging at the Jalbum HQ here in dark Sweden, but now we've decided to attend one of the largest photo events, Photo Plus Expo in New York, next week. It is held in the "Jacob Javits Center", Manhattan.

We will network as much as possible with the big guys (Canon, Nikon, HP etc) and other photo communities, hoping to bring you cool offers in the future. We promise to keep you updated in this blog. I bet there will be an album or two too.

Me and Carl will arrive on Tuesday evening, the 20:th and leave on Sunday night, the 25:th. We'd love to meet up with any Jalbumer who is around in New York at the time. Send a message to me,  or Carl.

Are you good at web design? Do you want millions of users to see your design? Then you should become a Jalbum skin developer. Our software has been downloaded more that 5 million times, and over 24 million web albums are estimated to have been published with Jalbum to web sites all over the world! You could rightfully call Jalbum a "FrontPage on steroids" for making web photo albums.

I believe two things make up for this success:

• The albums can be added to any web site
• The albums can have the look and feel you want

It is thanks to our wonderful user community that you get this diversity in presenting albums. Our users make the skins that decide the look and behavior of albums. I'm not just talking of pure design variations to the same functionality as others do, but completely new functionality, like background music, shopping carts and integrations with Google Maps! Skins can be made in plain html or use web technlogies like Flash, Javascript or Java.

To make a skin for Jalbum you make two good looking html pages. These pages (.htt files), will become the base for all generated thumbnail- and slide show pages. The dynamic parts (the stuff that need to change between pages) are made up by special variables and tags. We've gathered all information in our developer center together with an quick introduction on making changes to a skin.

Do you remember how you learned about html? Probably by looking at the source code of other web pages. Making a Jalbum skin is no different. Just base your skin on one that fairly matches your idea of how it should look and behave. Start by inspecting the Tools->Skin developers menu in the Jalbum software. It contains a guide to creating a new skin based on the Minimal skin and has a practical text editor for your edits. When you're done, pack your skin as a .jaskin file (done from that menu too) and upload it to our skin section. Now enjoy feedback from other users and seeing how your skin conquer the world. :-) To accelerate the spreading, put a link to the download page for your skin in the skin, or why not to your own web page?

If you get stuck with some technical problem, don't dispair. Our user forum has a section for developers where we hang out to help each each other. You will find me there and also our skilled and friendly forum admins.

Welcome as a skin developer!

/David

We're overwhelmed by the amount of nice people offering their help to beta test our next big project called Camelot. The great number of people who sent us a note to knight@jalbum.net will receive an e-mail with instructions soon. We're aiming to get in touch within a couple of weeks. At this point the first round of beta invites is closed. Stay tuned for more invites.

Thank you for your dedication! (just look at Sir Davex above)

Do you want to be our knight in shining armor?

We have have started to build the next big project for Jalbum – code name Camelot! So far we can’t tell you much other than it will blow your socks off! We are going to open up Camelot for beta testing soon and we'd love to get your help. Apply for a beta account by sending an e-mail to knight@jalbum.net

Thanks!

The brand new Photojojo book

The other day I stumbled upon Photojojo, a newsletter and shop full with crazy and fun photo projects and DIY ideas. Their site and newsletter is jammed with photo tips, tricks, advice, projects and ideas. A real boost of inspiration! They've recently released a book (see pic above) where they've gathered all these ideas. Check out some examples from their shop:

Seat Belt Camera Straps
Handmade camera straps come straight from the benches of wreck yard automobiles!

The Magnetic Photo Rope
A simple and beautiful cable that comes with 8 magnets you can use to attach photos, postcards, birthday cards and more.

Super Secret Spy Lens
Meant to fit the end of your SLR's zoom lens, this guy has a secret cut-out on the side and a precision mirror assembly inside. In short, you can shoot left, right, up, or down (it swivels 360 degrees), all while appearing to shoot straight ahead.

After speaking with the really nice people at Photojojo, they are giving Jalbum users 15% off in their shop.

Use this code when shopping to get the discount: jalbumpjj

Happenings is a new skin from our pixel magician Laza, the father of the mighty Chameleon skin. The skin has different themes for different kinds of events. The initial release comes with themes for Weddings, Parties and Baby albums. Laza intends to add more themes for other type of events. It's a great way to package an event presentation. Check out this sample album.

You can use your Jalbum albums in many ways. Publish them to your Jalbum account and share them with the community, share them on Twitter or Facebook, or in blogs. Here are a few examples:

The Jalbum blog badge.
Above your albums on your home page, you'll find a button that says "Share albums in blogs", which takes you to your own blog badge. If you have a blog, that's a convenient way to share your albums.

Share an album in a blog post.
On each album thumbnail on the site you'll find a "Share" button. That gives you quick links to share on social networks, but also convenient links to use for e-mails, web sites and blogs. I'll post an album below. It automatically creates a picture with a link to the album. Neat huh?

Integrate albums in your web site.
If you wish to give your site visitors an integrated experience, there are easy ways of integrating Jalbum albums to an existing web site. This travel agency is a good example, check out their integrated costa rica album here. If you'd like to do the same, read this tutorial.