Spring break may have come and gone, but as graduation parties and summer travel creep up, so will the headache of event planning and organizing.
Gathering photos and videos into one location for later viewing and planning every detail of events has been made easier with “Capsule”:http://www.trycapsule.com, a new site with a “companion mobile app”:http://www.trycapsule.com/cam dedicated to unifying and packaging events into one place.
“When planning events, you end up using like 10 different services,” said Cyrus Farudi, co-founder and CEO of Capsule.
“There is a ton of email exchanging beforehand. Then, when you’re at the event, people are text messaging and taking photos with digital cameras and other programs on their phones. When you get back, there are a ton of emails asking for photos, people posting pictures to Facebook (and) others using Instagram or Picasa.”
In short, the founders realized this is enough to make event-goers crazy, and set out to find a solution.
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“It just didn’t make sense to us, and there was nothing to unify the experience,” Farudi said.
Capsule is a space where people planning an event can communicate, share content and store memories all in one place. With an intuitive interface and easy navigation, one can set up a capsule with the title, time and location of the event. Inviting people using email or Facebook ensures that only those who are uniquely picked can view the content and share posts. All of this communication is captured in a “stream,” where members can pin, like or dislike comments, post photos and send group messages.
“It keeps chronological history of all of your events, with all its associated numbers, media, photo and conversation all packaged together,” Farudi said.
But what makes this different from other social network sites? Omri Cohen, co-founder and CTO of Capsule, said that Capsule is not an exploratory network where you discover new people and see news as it pertains to one person; rather, it is more around a shared experience. It is designed so that only your actual friends are included in the communication, and not merely acquaintances.
“The point is to connect with people you’re sharing an experience with. It could be a development group, an online photography club, a local biking team or a campus organization. The idea is it revolves around an experience.” Cohen said.
Capsule lets members send out RSVP’s, post photos to Facebook or Twitter and offers a group text number or email to which everyone can send their messages. Ultimately, the user or members of the group get to decide who can and cannot see the content — a big advantage compared to other social networks where it is hard to control the content, the founders explain.
“Capsule is private. There’s no auto sharing, no pulling information in from other sites,” Farudi said. “It’s all based on what you decide to share with whom you like.”
CapsuleCam is the site’s companion mobile app that is available for iOS as well as Android users.
CapsuleCam solves the problem of post-event photo sharing that inevitably arises when many people are using different devices to take pictures at different times. Pictures taken with the CapsuleCam app are automatically synced to the trip capsule photo album. The application then pushes it in real time for everyone in the capsule to see.
After the event has passed, users can go back and relive the experience moment by moment as it happened. Using Capsule, there is a way to collect all the fun, hysteria and emotion of an experience — all without having to scroll through a news feed that gives information about every person you ever met, according to the founders.
“Once you realize how fragmented your life is, you can see where other social networking sites don’t really work. Here you can organize how you know people, where you’ve met and other experiences,” Cohen said. “It really allows you to walk down memory lane, so to speak.”