Sosauce: Sosauce User Guide Journal

How to Get Your Own Sosauce URL

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:44:20 GMT

Want a personalized link so you can easily post and share your Sosauce content? We've got you covered in two different ways.

Option 1:

The first opportunity you have is while registering. When you select "Join Sosauce" the following image will be shown on the first page that appears.

You can make your custom name anything you'd like, as long as it contains 4 or more letters/numbers. If it's not taken it's yours!

Option 2:

If you already have a Sosauce account then simply go to your Profile Gallery and select "Edit Profile" on your profile sticky.

In the window that appears, under account settings, you'll see a "Custom URL" field (shown below). Selecting "Get One Here!" will walk you through the same process mentioned above.

That's it! By creating a custom URL you will now have your own personal link availbale to post and share with people.

To protect your privacy, those who click on your link will only be able to see your public content (unless they're your Sosauce friends).

Happy customizing!

The Spankin New Guide to Buying Prints on Sosauce

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:38:06 GMT

Ever since we started working with EZ Prints, we've been looking forward to the moment when we have a great collection of pro quality products in our Store. And the moment has definitely arrived! (for what's in our Store, click here)

EZ Prints is the leader in fulfilling pro print orders online. They offer professional, tremendous quality paper and products at low prices, and they handle each customer order with great care. As a result, we are able to pass the value to you, so you can get great prices and premium prints.

Ok, enough promoting. I'll let the Store and products speak for themselves, and I'll just take you through how the buying process works.

If you want to go to the Store page to compare prices and check out all the products that we offer, the Store page is in the Header, right around the Search box at the top right. This is what it looks like:

If there is an item you want, you can go to your photos from the Store page directly, or you can go to your album where your photos are.

When you are at your album's photo thumbnail page, look for the green Print button on the right. Select the photos you want to print, or use for another item, by clicking them (see the blue box around the photo below?), and then select Print.

You can do the same when you are in the big photo page.

Check out the Manage Photo link below the big photo on the right. Clicking on that link opens this:

See the Add to Shopping Cart link? You can click on that to add the photo to cart as well.

After you click on Print or Add to Shopping Cart, you can keep shopping or go to your cart. It's totally up to you!

Now, let's take a look at your Cart!

If you are ordering just 4x6, 8x10 prints, or postcards, and center crop is good enough, all you need to do is to hit Checkout. If you want to adjust crop, hit the Customize link (the link would only show up when you've specified a quantity.

The Customize window looks like this:

The customizing is pretty straight forward. You can drag the photo around to adjust your crop. You can click on your photo to bring up some other adjustment options, like Zoom and tint.

On the left, you can switch your aligment from vertical to horizontal, and vice versa. After you're done, click on Save & Add to Cart, and your adjustments are ready to go! After you're taken back to cart, a Preview link will appear next to your selection, and you can see your crop there.

There are obviously lots more great stuff available. Say you want to shop for a Stainless Steel Travel Mug! Click on the More Cool Products link for your photo in the Cart. And you'll see:

Now click on Merchandise, and you'll see:

You can use the blue scroll buttons on the sides to browse around, but if you have your heart set on the kickass travel mug, you can punch in a quantity (an extra one for your travel buddy maybe?) and hit Add to Cart. You can also Customize here. After you customize, you'll also be taken back to your cart with your item automatically added. Note that some stuff require customization, but if you forget, there wll be a message that pops up to remind you, so no worries.

Alright, now let's get ready to check out. Look for and click on the Green Checkout button at the top or bottom of your screen, and you'll see:

Here, all you have to do is to fill out your address info and hit Use This Address. If you already have an address saved, you can just select it and move on.

Then, pick a shipping option, and it would spit out a estimated arrival date. You can specify a billing address if it is different from your shipping address.

After you've verified your totals, go ahead and click on Continue to Paypal.

Paypal is neat because it allows you to pay with credit cards or with your Paypal account. It is secure and safe obviously. To use your Paypal account, just login. To Pay with Credit Card, just fill out your credit card info, your email, and click on Review Order and Continue. Confirm your payment and view your statements, and that's about it!

Have fun shopping!

If you have any questions, write us at:

concierge@sosauce.com

Go Premium!

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:41:27 GMT

Introducing the Premium Account! The Premium Account is a combination of exclusive features, store discounts, elimination of ads, and unlimited storage.

For a value price of $19.95 a year, you will receive:

Free unlimited photo storage
10% off of all items, all the time, in the print store
Full access to all the group features - group album, group journal, and group trip. This way, you can pool things with people on the same trip or to the same event easily
The spankin' new portfolio view for large photos
Full access to the photo editor
The exclusive 'PWR' label next to your name, because you're special
And of course... no ads whatsoever

In the future, we will offer more useful and powerful features for premium account members, so it's definitely worthwhile to PWR up. And upgrading is easy. Right next to your Updates feed at Home, you'll see your storage meter for your basic account. Just click on Upgrade to get premium. Or as always, if you have questions, send an email to concierge@sosauce.com. We’ll be happy to help.

If you are looking for the extra strength Sosauce provides, Premium Account is perfect for you. However, if you're not quite ready to make the plunge, don't fret. We will continue to offer 1GB photo storage for free, and your original photos will always be available for download.

Follow & Broadcast

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:00:20 GMT

More and more Sosaucers are finding each other, and there are a lot more content to look at everyday. We have also been getting quite a bit of feedbacks about people wanting to see more stuff in their updates feed before they actually friend people. So we did a couple of things to make consuming content easier than ever.

Follow

As you wander around Sosauce and coming to content you like, look for the Follow link or button next to it:

Or if you click through to the profile of the person behind the content, also locate the Follow button at the top:

If you Follow someone, you can see the person's new postings in your Communite Updates at Home. You don't have to be friends with the person. With one click, you now have the ability to subscribe to content on the go. It's a powerful way to see, bookmark, and get updates on content and people you care about fast.

Broadcast

For any piece of content on Sosauce that is Public (for everyone to see), you can Broadcast it to all your friends if you stumble upon it.

Look for the Broadcast button next to the content:

Click on Broadcast and you'll see:

Here, you can add a comment to your friends if you want. When they see the broadcast in their feeds, they will see your note along with the content.

As always, we are here to serve. It's great to hear feedback and to be able to do something about it.

If you have more questions, feel free to write to concierge@sosauce.com

Enjoy!

The Trip App for First Time Sosaucers

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:00:46 GMT

Welcome to your Trip App

The Trip app is at the core of the Sosauce experience. It allows you to recreate your travel adventures simply, but in great detail, with interactive maps, photos, videos, journals, tips, reviews, and points of interest.

To create a trip, you can do it from any page by using the Header. Just click on the Write New Trip link to get you started.

You can even start creating a trip from your Home Updates. Try the Add Content button:

If you are already at the Trip app, you can use the Write New Trip link, which is present on all the Trip app pages:

Then, you'll be prompted to enter a name and select privacy of your trip...

After you enter the name, you'll reach the main trip page...

Everything you do to create and view this trip will be on this page. You'll never have to leave or move around!

The main organization of the trip is the itinerary (on the left of the page). All photos, journals, etc. that you add flow through the destinations you put there.

Remember to also check out the trip summary for a quick excerpt of the trip, and add a cover photo for the trip at the top left next to the trip name.

Adding destinations to your Itinerary

Adddestinations via the green Add Destination button. Once you'vecompleted your itinerary and added all the destinations, select a destination by clicking on its name(for example, Geysir). This will open a new panel in whichyou can enter journals, photos, tips, reviews and more related to thisdestination. If you want to record the dates of travel, you can simply click into the date boxes under each destination.

If you have already pinned a bunch of places using Footprints in your profile, then you can import the pins into your trip itinerary. To import, look for the Blue button next to the Add Destination button.

After you click on the Blue button, you'll see:

Here, simply pick the destination you want to add and click on the green Add button next to its name. You can add as many as you want here, and just click on Finished when you're done.

Adding your Journals, Photos, Reviews, and More...

This is the destination panel you'll use to add content to each destination.

Using the tab acrossthe top, you can select which information to enter. Just follow thebuttons under each tab for instructions. And because Sosauce Travel isas flexible as you are, all tabs that you don't use will be grayed outfor the visitor - no need to worry about empty areas.

Points of Interest

And, if you're so inclined, you can even go in greater depth at each destination by adding Points of Interest, or POI's. An example of a POI would be the Eiffel Tower within the destination of Paris.

POI's appear on the itinerary under each destination and in the Local Map of each destination. As an example, if you added Bangkok, Thailand, to your itinerary, you can see the local area by selecting the Local Map tab on the left side of each destination panel.

On this screenshot, you can see a few pins already added (in yellow, green, and gray, with little numbers). These will also appear in your itinerary:

POI's are mainly good for adding reviews, tips, and photos. One of the main features of the Trip app is the fact that reviews are funneled between the Trip app and the Guide app. Here is an example of a completed Review of a POI in Bangkok (the Paragon Mall):

Editing anything related to the POI follows the same process as the destinations.

Inserting Stuff into your Trip

Things you can insert into your trip are reviews, photos, and journals/blogs.

Reviews

If you've already wrote a review in the Guide, your review can be automatically inserted into your POI in the trip. Just make sure that your POI spelling is correct, then when you click into the Review tab of the POI, you'll be prompted to add your review from the Guide automatically. Simply confirm the prompt, and you're all set.

Photos

You can insert photos all kinds of ways to your trip, destinations and points of interest. All you really have to do is to click the buttons in the Photo tab. There is a button for Add from Albums. To upload right here, click on Upload. If you want to insert your videos, click on Import from YouTube. If you already have photos inserted to your points of interest and are feeling lazy, click on Import from POIs to copy them over.

Journals/Blogs

The easiest way to insert text is to copy and paste. But if your entries and posts happen to on Sosauce, we're making it even easier. In a destination or point of interest's Journal tab, click on Link to a Journal Entry above the writing box to link to an entry or post. Click on Dump Entry into Space Below to automatically copy writing of a post into your trip. Nifty? I'll say so.

Okay, that summarizes the main features of the Trip App.

Once you're finished you can share your trip in a variety of ways, including email, linking, posting, and even embedding!

If you have any further questions, check out our Help section at the top or bottom of any Sosauce page. If you need to reach us, please use the Send Feedback link at the bottom of every page.

Enjoy!

The Guide App for First Time Sosaucers

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:05:27 GMT

Welcome to the Guide!

Thinking about taking a trip? Want to find some honest opinions about the places you want to go? Or just curious about other parts of the world or what's going on around you? The Guide app on Sosauce is the place to look.

With the Guide, there is an easy way to see what others are saying about travel or local destinations and points of interest. You can now use this knowledge and information to help make your upcoming trip more rewarding.

While looking for information, you have the opportunity to meet those behind the reviews who share similar interests. You can also see all the reviews by the same person on one page. Fromthe Guide, you can contribute to the pool of knowledge as wellby adding reviews, points of interests, and destinations.

In the Guide, there is a Q&A forum for people to fire off questions about places and help people with questions to answer them. The answers to questions you ask would be fed to your Updates steam, and you can check out a digest of interesting questions in your Updates (Forum Q&A tab) or in your Flavors of the Week email.

Get to the Guide through the top Header, and let's start exploring.

Finding Information

Let’s say you’re interested in finding more information about Queenstown, New Zealand. When you get to the Guide, use the left panel called Navigate the Guide to go to New Zealand (mouse over Oceania and click on New Zealand). You can also type in New Zealand into the Search box or change the search selection to Destinations and type in Queenstown into the same Search box. Don't forget to hit Search of course.

When you're at New Zealand, use the list of destinations at the top to browse for Queenstown, or you can search for it in the search box as well.

Note: If you can't find a place that you're looking for here, you can always add it by clicking on Add Destination. The place that you add may take a while to show up because the site would need to confirm it first.

In New Zealand country page, there are also some useful information at your disposal. You can find popular destinations as well as useful facts (such as currency, languages, electrical outlets, time zone, and calling code) on the right. In the middle are recent reviews followed by related trips and photos other Sosaucers have taken.

Now let’s say you are looking for a particular place or point of interest in Queenstown, such as the Kawarau Bridge because you want to bungee jump. Once on the city or destination page, there are a number of fun ways for you to find the point of interest you are looking for. Youcan of course browse around, but don’t forget the Sort options in adropdown above the points of interest listed to give you somealternative ways to display information. You can also use the different tabs, such as Sleep, Eat, etc. to find points of interests organized by category. Search is available here as well. Enter the point of interest name in the Search Box at the top and click on the Search button to search. Moreover, don’t forget to use the Page input box to get to your results quicker than flipping every page.

When you are in a category such as Sleep, notice the Apply Filters button on the left of the reviews. If you click on that, you can fine-tune your browsing with additional criteria such as Eco-friendly.

If you are a pretty good speller, take your chances by searching for "Kawarau Bridge." Sure enough, results appear!

Contributing to the Guide

Ifyou would like to contribute to the Guide by adding points of interest and writing reviews, you are absolutely welcome.

Adding a Point of Interest

Let’s say you want to add "Christchurch Cathedral." Simply go to the destination where your point of interest of Christchurch Cathedral is located (in this case: Christchurch, New Zealand). Then, find a link called "Add a New POI & Review to Christchurch" at the top of the page:

Or a big orange Add a New POI button at the bottom of the page:

Click on the button to open a window called the Choose your Point of Interest.

In the window and under the Search the Map heading, type in the point of interest name (ex. Christchurch Cathedral) and click on the Search button to see if the point of interest is in the Sosauce directory but no one has discovered it yet. If the point of interest is in the directory already, you will see it listed with a Go button next to it. Clicking on the Go button will allow you to add the point of interest to the Travel Guide along with your review for it. This point of interest and your review will now be available for everyone to see.

But if on the other hand, the point of interest is not in the directory, you can pin it yourself. Look for the “Can'tfind what you are looking for? Free Pin!” instruction text at thebottom of the window and click on the button next to thetext.

Simply follow the instruction and double click on the right location on the map to pin the point of interest. Once you pin, you will enter the point of interest name, write a review for it, and submit it. This way, you have just added a new point of interest to Sosauce directory! Once we help you to double check the point of interest, it, together with your review of it, will become available for everyone!

Adding a review to an existing Point of Interest

At the point of interest page, scroll down to the bottom of the page and find the orange Write a Review button.

Clicking on the button will open an Add POI Review window. In this window, you will need to select a category, such as Sleep or Eat, for the point of interest as well as complete all the ratingsbelow (if you don’t, you will get a message). You can also select the Cost or price range to give viewers a sense of how expensive the place is. Youcan add a photo for your review and edit the contact information (byclicking on the Edit Contact Info button next to the contactinformation). Last but not least, you can of course write the review by clicking in the text area below the Your Review heading. When you are finished, be sure to click on the Submit Review button at the bottom right of the window to save your review.

Have fun using or adding to the Guide! If you have any questions, check out our Help section at the top or bottom of any Sosauce page. If that's not sufficient, please use our Send Feedback link at the bottom footer and ask us questions. We’d be happy to help!

Enjoy!

Photo for First Time Sosaucers

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:14:47 GMT

Welcome to Photo!

For those of you who take interesting photos and appreciate good photos when you travel or around your neighborhood, the Photo app is really ideal. It is a unique combination of good design, quality images on screen, ease of use, and powerful functionalities.

( Press Play to see some sample album covers)

The principle behind the Photo app is that, quality really matters. Your photos are in high resolution on screen, original photos are kept, and you will have a nicely designed slideshow with different templates. You will be able to tag and rename with one click all your album photos, getting rid of the nasty DSCXXX for good. Your photos are protected not only by privacy settings, but by Creative Commons as well. Free drag to sort and dump into tray to manage photos across albums. Put videos along side photos in your album. Easily insert photos to Journals and Trips (above and beyond geotagging). Share your photos to Sosaucers and people outside of Sosauce alike by emailing, link posting, embedding, Facebook Connect, and public, customizable URLs. We think that these are your unalienable rights when using the Photo app on Sosauce, or any web photo service for that matter.

Beyond your photo rights, it is our burden to keep innovating for you, so you can enjoy the most advanced and easiest to use features on the web. For premium account members, we have a couple of useful and fun features for you. If you and friends go on the same trip or to the same event, you can use the Group Album to pool photos into the same album, and then everyone can copy the same album and share photos. A fun, easy, and powerful Photo Editor is also integrated for you to add fun effects (ex. graffiti, stickers, etc.) as well as do basic editing.

Also, all Sosaucers can order Photo Prints from the printing services of EZ Prints, and we are able to expand the offerings to post cards, folded cards, framed photos, matted framed prints, Lustre finish, larger format prints, canvas, posters and framed posters, eco-friendly notepads and cards, stickers, and travel products such as stainless steel mugs, luggage tag, magnets, playing cards, etc. If you had photos already on Flickr, you can now Import from Flickr as well.

Let's walk you through some things you'll find useful and fun - Uploading & Managing Photos, Original Photos, Videos, Sharing, Group Album, Photo Editor, and Ordering Prints.

Uploading & Managing Your Photos

Upload

To Upload photos, there are quite a few places to help you get started. When you are at your Home Updates, use the Add Content button and select Upload Photos.

You can use the Header, where you'll see links to upload, new album, and import video under the Photo app. Within the Photo app, use the orange links at the top, under the page heading:

After you selected some photos to upload, you'll have the choice of uploading to a new album, an existing album, the Purgatory, or a Group Album. Let's get to Group Journal in its own sectionlater on down in this Guide. The difference between a new and an existing album is easy enough. Existing album is an album that you have already created and most likely has photos in it. The Purgatory is a place for unorganized photos. Photos in Purgatory are always for your eyes only (Privacy = Private) and can be organized into albums later.

For now, let's click on A New Album to create a new album!

When you see this screen below, put in a name for your new album. You can alsochoose the album's Privacy. (Private = for your eyes only. Friends = forfriends to look at only. Public = for everyone to share.) Done? Let's continue with uploading!

If you're uploading high resolution and big file size photos, give it a little time and take a coffee break. Remember, the speedier uploads on some sites come at a heavy price - your photos look like crap.

Now that you're done uploading, you can use Describe Your Photos to rename and tag all your photos with 1 click. Or you can go straight to your album and enjoy the photos.

We'll get to the Add Contributors in the Group Album section of this guide.

For now, let's explore and take a detour to Describe Your Photos!

Describe

After clicking on Describe Your Photos, you'll get to the Describe page.

At the top of Describe, you can choose to rename, add multiple tags, and apply Creative Commons licenses to all your photos. Choose what you want to do in the drop down menu, type in the names that you want in the textbox, and click on Apply. With one click, you can effectively rename all your photos and free them from the nasty DSCXXX naming that they were bounded by. Don't forget to Save your work of course.

You can of course also write names, descriptions, and tags to your photos individually. Oh, and be sure to separate tags with commas. When you Save and Close, you will go back to your album, and now let's look at all you can do with your photos.

Manage Photos

Inside your album, you'll see thumbnails of your photos and management options. If you want to see big view of your photo, double click on the thumbnail. In the blue panel at the top right, the things you can do are all for the entire album. So you can upload more photos, describe again, reset your album privacy, import from Flickr, make it a Group Album, share it (post link, embed, or Facebook Connect), relate or link it to another cotent, or delete the album.

The interesting feature here that is worth highlighting is the Relate button. If you click on the Relate button, you can start linking different albums, journals, and trips together. The linked content will display at the bottom of the page as you or friends are browsing. With this, you can create an entirely new alternative navigation - hopping from one item to the next.

Next to and under the album name, you'll see a button for slideshow, the chili pepper for rating, a Share button to post links or embed, RSS, as well as view and comment counters.

Now, let's see what we can do with individual photos.

If you mouse over a photo thumbnail, the above is what you'll see. Double clicking on thumbnail or clicking on the Target icon takes you to the big view of the photo. The curvy Arrows are for photo rotation. The Pen takes you to the Photo Editor, which we will spend more time in its own section. The Album below the Pen allows you to set the photo as Album Cover. The Album with Minus Sign below removes the photo from album. And the Trash Can deletes the photo from Sosauce for good! If you mouse over each of these icons, instructions will appear.

Drag & Drop Sorting

In addition to your regular ways of sorting photos, like taken time, upload time, by name, etc., there is another. And that is to sort by however you want to sort! To do this, mouse over a photo thumbnail, click, and hold. The highlighted thumbnail is framed in blue. Then, drag it to the place that you want to drop, between 2 photos, and you'll see a thick blue line. Once you see the blue line, let go of your mouse, and you'll see your photo order reshuffle instantly.

Note! When you are dragging and sorting, be sure to be at My Sort as the sorting option. If you want to turn another sorting option into My Sort, easy. You'll see a Save button next to Sorting. Click on Save and whatever sort option you are at becomes My Sort.

Photo Tray - Management Across Albums

There are times when you might need to take photos from different albums to form a new album, to buy prints, to describe, to delete, or even to email these photos out as a separate collection. For these occasions, you now have the Tray at your disposal. If there are no photos in the Tray, the functions at the right panel are still available for any photos you select (blue framed).

But with the Tray, you can do things across albums. For example, try putting some photos into the Tray, and go to another album and put more photos into the Tray. You'll notice that all the photos are still there. They will be there until you either Clear Tray or perform an action on them, such as putting them into a new album.

Big Photo Viewing and Management

The big photos are 625x on screen, and if you want to check out different photo sizes including the original photo, use the More Sizes drop down just below the photo. On the right of page, you can navigate between photos with a slider. You can also open Manage Photo as well as Share Photo functions. Below the photo, you can edit the name and description of the photo. When you edit, just mouse over the text area, click, and start typing. When done, click away and your typing is automatically saved. Below, you'll see Tagging, Creative Commons, and Photo Information. To the right of these functions, you'll find all the comments people left you.

Note: If you want others to access and copy your photos, even the original photos, all you have to do is use Creative Commons. If you assign a proper license, the viewer of the photo will be able to get the original photo. This way, we honor Creative Commons licensing while providing ease of use for people to share photos.

Portfolio View for Premium Account Holders

With an Upgrade to Premium Account, your big photo view would default to the Portfolio View. This is a cleaner, sleeker layout to present your photos. All the management functionalities are the same. Photo Scroll calls the slider and allows you to skip ahead. Fun Options contain Slideshow, More (photo) Sizes, and all the Sharing functionalties. Description and Comments give you all the photo information.

Original Photos and Copyright

At Sosauce, we keep your original photos. So if you ever need them, you can download them pretty easily. Also, when you order prints, having originals makes a big difference in the quality of prints.

Keeping your originals DOES NOT mean that others can freely copy them or have rights to them. Sosauce partners with and adheres to Creative Commons so that you have the power to assign rights to your photos. You get to see your original photos at default, and all photos that you upload to Sosauce are All Rights Reserved to you at the start. People who come to view your photo in large view also cannot right click to save your photos. We built in a feature to disable right click saving in large view where it matters. If you don't grant people rights or disallow others to see your photos by way of Privacy Settings, others would not get to see or use them.

If you do decide to assign Creative Commons rights to your photos and allow others to use them, just set the Creative Commons licensing to the level that you desire. Then, others will be able to copy your photos by using the More Sizes options below your large photo on page.

If you feel that someone is infringing on your copyright in any way, you should use the site footer link called Copyright Information to raise the issue right away.

Videos

In your photo albums, you can have videos alongside your photos. So if you've taken both photos and videos on a trip or at an event, you can now showcase a more complete experience. With your videos, you can insert them into your Journals and Trips on Sosauce as well! We partner with YouTube so that you can store your videos on YouTube and display them on Sosauce. The process is pretty seamless for you, and just needs a few clicks of the mouse.

For how to add videos, click here!

Sharing

Half of sharing on Sosauce is actually to help you take your photos elsewhere. So some friends and family can getemails, people on other social networks such as Facebook can get linked posts orembeds, and you can feed your photos to other social mediaor content sites.

Emailing

Seethe Envelop Share link above? With it, and by selecting Send Message, you can email your albumto friends outside Sosauce by typing their email addresses or using your webaddressbooks (ex. Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and MSN).

They will receive a post card design in the email, and when they click on it, they canview your photos without having to log in.

Posting Links & Embedding

To see how Posting Links and Embedding via the Share button work, click here! Whatthis allows you to do is to take advantage of the fun and powerful Photo app to showcase and manage your photos, and then take the photos to otherweb communities that you belong to.

Exploring Sosauce

The other half of Sharingis to explore within Sosauce, which is really fun as well. Obviously, you get to see lots at your Home Updates already. But there are also additional pages at your disposal for more exploration.

Let'stry going to the Photo Home by way of the Header:

Hereyou'll see the latest, most interesting photos and photographers on Sosauce. From here, you can jump to the featured photos or visit the photographers' pages.

If you really like the photos that you are seeing, you can hit the Broadcast link to feed them to all your friends' update streams. When you Broadcast, you can also leave your friends a note.

Inaddition, you'll have pages dedicated for Friends' Albums and your Group Albums.

Group Album

For how to setup and use this, click here!

If you have a premium account, the Group Album is a one of a kind feature for you to pool photos with friends and copy friends' photos. Withit, you can share travel photos with people on the same trip or event photos with those who went together by uploading to the same online album. Thepossibilities are pretty much endless. So no more receiving 5 different emails from 5 different sharing service with no way to consolidate, or swaping flash drives. Giving you the ability to create a Group Albumis another way Sosauce can help you to relive your experiences and findthe easiest and most fun way to share with those you care about.

Photo Editor

For how to use the Photo Editor, click here!

Photo Editor is another benefit for premium account holders. With a totally integrated Photo Editor, you can now cut that annoying bystander out of your photo or make the color of a photo more vibrant. With the Sosauce Photo Editor, you can do the standard adjustments, such as crop, exposure, rotation, color, and sharpness. But it is also a place where you can have some fun! Trythe Artistic section with different effects, such as black and white,sepia, and pencil, or try the Fun section where you can graffiti aphoto, add fun stickers, and insert text/word bubbles.

Ordering Prints

Now on Sosauce, you can buy prints using the print processing service of EZ Prints! EZ Prints has the highest print quality, and we have expanded the offerings to post cards, folded cards,framed photos, matted framed prints, Lustre finish, larger formatprints, canvas, posters and framed posters, eco-friendly notepads andcards, stickers, and travel products such as stainless steel mugs,luggage tag, magnets, playing cards, etc.

To buy prints, select the photos you want and look for the Print button at the top right of your album page.

When in the big view of a photo, look for the Manage Photo link and the Add to Print Queue link when the menu of functions appears.

These links will take you to the Shopping Cart.

At the Cart, you can select quantity, size of prints, and more print products such as post cards and framed prints. You can also select which kind of print paper, such as the Lustre pro finish, you want. You can Empty your Cart or Continue Shopping, which is to return to your photo or album to browse more. Your sub-totals will be tallied here as well.

Note: If you see a triangle with an exclamation mark next to a print size of a photo, it means that this photo lacks the resolution to produce a high quality print at the print size. You can still buy the print of course, but it may not look as nice.

The cart has a memory, and it would only be cleared if you tell it to. Otherwise, if you close the browser or log out of Sosauce, your items in the cart will still be kept. This will definitely make it convenient for you to remember what you picked to buy.

When you Checkout, you'll be selecting or editing your shipping and billing information. You can save addresses and select an address as a favorite. You can also select a shipping method (estimated shipping price is listed right next to the method), which would automatically estimate the arrival date for you as well.

Sosauce uses Paypal to handle your credit card transactions, and the advantage is that, you can also use your Paypal account if you want to. After all is done on this page, click on the green button at the bottom of the page to go to Paypal. After you are finished with billing, you will get a confirmation page and emails about your order for your record.

Import from Flickr

For how to import from and export to Flickr, click here!

With this feature, you can now grab photos from Flickr for your albums, trips, reviews, and journals. This way, you don't have to upload your photos again, which can be painful. The photos you import to Sosauce from Flickr are your original photos, so you don't have to worry about your photos losing quality.

This concludes our tour of Sosauce Photo! If you have questions or suggestions, you can always write a comment to this guide orwrite the Sosauce Concierge (concierge@sosauce.com) a feedback. In themeantime, take it easy and have fun using Sosauce Photo.

Journal for First-Time Sosaucers

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:20:17 GMT

Welcome to Journal!

If you write journals/blogs on your travels or local experiences, the Journal app is perfect for you. It has a conventional blog layout, but in a different layout, it can also writes and reads like a journal book. If you pick book, you can customize with lots of book cover designs. If you blog, you get to enjoy what a good blogging tool offers. If you don't blog and just want to write as if you are writing you travel diary or journal, the Journal app is also tailored for you.

Unlike other blogs, Journal at Sosauce has a few advantages. You get instant writing and previewing so you don't have to save and come back all the time. If you make your posts look like book and chapters, you get comments side by side with the writing, so people can interact with you easily. Multiple blogs are allowed here, and it's super easy. If you upgrade to premium account, you can create a Group Journal so you and your friends can write together in the same book. In addition to RSS Feed, you can subscribe to others' books within Sosauce through Subscription. Want to take your writing to fuel other places of your web existence? No problem. Sharing on Sosauce includes emailing, link posting, embedding, Facebook Connect, and public, customizable URLs. This blog as journal design got endorsement and support from Mashable, a leading web blog, so it's pretty safe to use.

Let's walk you through some things you'll find useful and fun - Writing with Journal, Multiple Journals, Book Design & Customize, Conversations, Group Writing, RSS & Subscription, and Sharing.

Writing with Journal

If you want to start writing, there are quite a few places to turn to. When at your Home, you'll use the Add Content button and select Write a Journal Entry.

Within the Journal app, use the orange links under the page title:

You can write a new entry for a New Journal, Group Journal, or Existing Journal. Let's get to Group Journal in its own section later on down in this Guide. For now, if you are creating a new journal, let's click on New Journal.

When you see the screen below, put in a name for your new journal. You can write a description or intro for your journal if you want, but it's optional. So don't confuse yourself with actually writing here. You can alsochoose the Privacy. (Private = for your eyes only. Friends = forfriends to look at. Public = for everyone to share.) Done? Let's start writing.

Using the Journal Editor

When you see the editor below, you can basically start typing. When you type and hit Enter, your writing will show in the preview pane on the right. This way, you'll get to see exactly what you type in pretty much instantaneously. So no more saving and previewing, saving and previewing like you would on other blogs, which can get pretty painful.

Be sure to give your writing entry a Title! And you can also have some fun with the subject, weather, and mood. The text editing works like a simple and light version of Word, so use it how you would with Word formatting. Feel free to add tags to help others as well as yourself find your writing.

Alright, ready to insert some stuff to your writing? Clicking on the dropdown brings up all the options you have - Photo, video, album, and trip. Once you pick what you want, hit the Insert button. For video, since we're partnering with YouTube, you can store and attach videos straight from YouTube here.

A note about Save vs. Publish. When you want to save, you might want to save your writing as a draft so you can keep working or fighting through writer's block before you are ready for other people to see. In this case, click on Save. When you are ready for people to see, click on Publish, and your book chapter will be out.

Multiple Journals

Sosauce Journal is about creating as many blogs or journals as you want. It doesn't limit you to just one. Even easier than writing actual diaries or journals, you can start a new one just by clicking a big button. Each blog can be decorated and customized differently, and each can take on a different personality.

And the blog URL that you use will always update to your latest piece of writing, so with one URL, people will always see your latest! This way, people will be able to easily identify with you and what you write.

Book vs Blog Layout

Within your Journal application, you have two ways to look at your writing. If you click on Journals, you'll see it organized by journals/blogs, and from there you can easily manage your journals/blogs. If you click on All Entries, you get direct access to your entries so you can manage them fast! On the right of All Entries, all your different journals/blogs are still listed, giving another navigation alternative.

Each journal/blog can have a book layout or a regular blog layout. To switch back and forth is a piece of cake. Look for the View as Book or View as Blog button at the top of your journal/blog:

Once you pick the layout that you want, it would be what you see, and what others see.

The blog layout looks like this:

The top banner you can customize through Journal Settings and have a little fun with.

The book layout looks like this:

Look for the Settings button to decorate your blog or book.

In Settings, you can add a cover photo for your book, change title or description, and play with the Themes, which are designs for the blog banner or book. There are some interesting choices here, so play, try, and have fun!

Please note that we use the same Settings for both Blog and Book layouts, so that you can do everything at once. Keep in mind that if you select a cover photo, it is for the book only.

One more word on the book design. After you are done writing, you'll notice that you have comments side-by-side with your writing. This is an advantage of the book design, that you can have conversations right next to writing.

Group Writing (A Premium Account Feature)

(for how to setup and use this, click here!)

Group Writing is a one of a kind feature for you to write with friends. With it, you can share thoughts on a topic, work on a project together, or have a very private conversation with a select few. The possibility is pretty much endless. Giving you a way to create a Group Journal is another way Sosauce can help you to relive your travel experiences and find the easiest and most fun way to share with those you care about.

RSS & Subscriptions

With RSS, you can subscribe your favorite journals via RSS feed. For how to use RSS, click here!

In addition to RSS feed, we also have a Subscriptions service within Sosauce.

When you want to Subscribe to a journal you like, as you dive into the journal and read, you'll notice the Subscribe button or link at the top left of the journal. Click on it to Subscribe to the journal. It's as easy as that!

Now that you've subscribed to something, go to your Subscriptions page. The easiest way is to use the Sosauce Header and click on the Subscriptions link in the drop down menu.

Ok, at your Subscriptions page, you'll see all the journals you subscribed to. If you don't like a journal anymore, click on Remove Subscription next to it, and it's gone from your list.

If other people subscribe to one of your journals, you can know about it. And you can choose if you want others to subscribe in the first place. You can do both these things at Settings.

You can use the Allow Subscriptions checkbox to decide if you want people to subscribe to a journal.

See the Manage Subscribers button above? Click on that. And you'll see:

If there are subscribers that are giving you trouble, you can kick them off of your subscription list by click on Remove here.

Sharing

A big part of sharing on Sosauce is actually to help you take your writing elsewhere. So your anti-social networking friends can get emails, friends on other social networks can get linked posts or embeds, and you can feed your stories or thoughts to other social media sites if you want.

In addition to RSS that is just mentioned, you can share your content outside of Sosauce through emailing.

Emailing

At an entry, click on the Share link and select the Send Message option. Then you can email your entry to friends outside Sosauce by typing their address or use your web addressbooks (ex. Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and MSN). They will receive a book cover design in the email, and when they click on it, they can view what you write without having to log in.

Posting Links & Embedding

To see how Posting Links and Embedding via the Share link work, click here! What this allows you to do is to take advantage of the easy and powerful Journal app for your writing, and take the writing to other communities that you belong to.

Exploring Sosauce

Sharing within Sosauce is pretty fun as well. Obviously, you get to see and explore lots at your Home Updates already. But there are also additional pages at your disposal for more dedicated exploration.

Let's try going to the Journal Home via the Header:

Here you'll get the lastest and most interesting on travel and local writing. In addition, you'll have pages dedicated for Friends' Journals, Subscriptions, and your Group Journals.

Ok! This concludes our tour of the Journal app. If you have questions or suggestions, you can always write a comment on this entry or write the Sosauce Concierge (concierge@sosauce.com) a feedback. In the meantime, take it easy and have fun writing.

Home for first time Sosaucers

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:45:55 GMT

Sosauce is a seriously powerful site, with many tools and community features designed to help you explore your outer world, and inner travel geek.

So to tie all those capabilities together, we needed a seriously powerful home interface. We'd like to introduce you to that interface now.

Welcome to your new Home!

The main component of your Home is your Updates.

This is the default page you reach when you login to your account, and it can be reached anytime by hitting the Home link or the Sosauce logo at the top Header.

The other main part of your Home is your Profile Gallery, on which you display all the things you create and add to Sosauce for visitors.

In addition, within the Home you have 3 mini-apps: Footprint, Events calendar, and Messages.

Home Updates

Your Updates has some useful filters:

Before you invite or make some friends on the site, we'll point you to all our interesting and new community content, under the "Community Updates" tab.

When you Follow (receive content updates without being friends) someone, their latest content will also show up here.

As you gain friends, or people whose content you find compelling, you'll see their updates fill in under Friends Updates.

Local Updates are reviews fed into your updates based on what you pick as your Current Location. To pick a location, look for a box like this in the right panel on the Updates page.

You may need to scroll down to see it.

The Forum Q&A tab gives you a digest from the Q&A forum in the Guide app.

You might notice all the notifications on the right side of the page. These underscore useful information, such as Sosauce store, news, contests, popular destinations, and this guide. If you have a basic account, the Sosauce Store panel tells you how much storage you have left and gives you a link to upgrade. It also features the latest from the sotre. Expand Your Circle gives you quick links to friend list, followers, and invite.

Next, let's take a look at the links below the page heading:

Profile Gallery directs you to the aforementioned display of your profile information as well as your content. Invite allows you to others, and Add Content gives you shortcuts to creating content.

When you hit Add Content, you'll see the following window:

From here, you have all the shortcuts you need to add new things on Sosauce.

Profile Gallery

Your profile gallery is the public place on Sosauce in which you can display everything you add or create on the site, in an attractive and totally customizable manner.

The Profile Gallery is composed of a number of "stickies," which are widgets that you can freely arrange. These represent major features on the site (such as Trip, Guide, Photo, or Journal), and a few are simply self contained fun features (such as Poll).

One of the great things about Sosauce is that you really only need to display the things that interest you - adding and removing stickies from your profile is as easy as opening and closing them using the Sticky Gallery on the bottom of the page. For instance, if I love Sosauce for the Trip feature alone, I can close all the stickies on my Gallery except for, say, my Trip sticky and my Profile sticky.

And like we said, everything is totally customizable. Arranging the stickies on your page is as easy as clicking and dragging, and you can even change the size and background of the stickies using the customization options accessed through the buttons at the top right of each sticky:

Footprints

Another feature at your Home is Footprints. This feature gives you the ability to pin everywhere you've been on a map. You can search for places, or you can free pin by double clicking on the map. There are also sorting options to display the places. You can create trips from the places you pin here. Once the pins are associated with trips, they will turn blue. From these blue pins, you also have shortcuts to various trips you create.

Messages

One last feature that deserves a mention is Messages. In addition to commenting, you can message friends on the site, andcheck and reply messages. Each message thread can be replied to and has a message history.

Note: Whenever you feel like editing profile and account information, click on the Edit Profile link in the Header. Aside from editing profile information, you can also add a customized URL and screen name, upgrade to premium account, or deactivate your account.

So that's your Home in a nutshell! If you have any further questions, check out our Help section at the top or bottom of any Sosauce page. If you need to reach us, please use the Send Feedback link at the bottom of the page.

Enjoy!

Mesa3D Moving to Muse Games (www.musegames.com)

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:37:12 GMT

Continue the 3D Fun on Muse Games!

Starting next week, the 3D experiences on Sosauce will be moved to a new home called Muse Games (www.musegames.com)! For those of you who have customized and decorated your Apartments and characters, we'll migrate and save all that you've done for you, so you can use your Sosauce account to log in. Soon, you'll be expecting more fun and wacky 3D games from Muse, and the Apartments will eventually expand into a neighborhood. Just don't expect anything conventional though.

For anyone who is just discovering the 3D fun, we'll keep the introduction here just in case.

Play 3D Casual Games, such as Extreme Sledding and Hyper Pong, and expect more games to come.

You can design your own personal 3D Apartment:Chooseyour furniture and character, and then turn your Apartment into a 3Dgallery by adorning the walls with your photos. Afterward, join upwith friends, check out their Apartments or galleries, and chat in realtime... allinstantly inside your browser.

Then, get ready for exploration on Ross Island, Antarctica. Interact with penguins, explore the frozen landscape, and visit historical destinations. Meet others who are interested in off-the-beaten path.

To play games in 3D, you will need to download the small (approx10-20 seconds), completely safe, and virus free Unity Player (no need to restartyour browser), and then you're set to go!

Since games are pretty straight forward, we'll give you a bit of a sneak peak into the Apartments:

To quickly familiarize you with the controls and buttons:

Your character is controlled in two ways:

Use the arrow keys to control your movement, or double-click on any floor surface to have your character go there.

Chatis located in the bottom right hand corner, and appears as asemi-transparent white bar. Click on it to chat with those nearby!

Mainly, there are four buttons/menus available to you:

Friends

Friendsis simply a list of all your friends with links to their Apartments. Also, if they're online, it will show their location so you can jointhem!

Locations

Locationsare links to other 3D games, such as Extreme Sledding, the fastest multiplayer racing game on the web. In the near future this space will be filling up with allsorts of wild and imaginative places for you to visit and play in!

Character

This allows you to customize all sorts of aspects of your character, including hair style/color, clothing, and body art!

Stuff

Inyour Apartment, you'll probably use this the most. It allows you toplace all sorts of furniture, change the wall color and scenery, and turn your apartment into a gallery by posting pictures.

We'll quickly cover two popular things you might want to know in your Apartment:

Placing My Pictures on the Wall

Toadd a picture to your wall for example, first hit Stuff. On the menu that appears,choose Posters. Once in Posters, you'll have four size options tochoose from. Choose you size and hit the Add button. Now turn yourattention to the apartment. Wherever your mouse is hovering, you'll seea green square representing the future position of your poster. Choosea spot on the wall and click to select.

Awindow will now appear asking you which photo you'd like to use (or ifyou dont have any photos yet, to upload). Make your selection andyou'll see your photo appear on the wall. Adjusting its place is aseasy as clicking and dragging it to a new position.

Customizing My Character's Appearance

Charactercustomization is incredibly easy in the Apartments. Just hit the Character buttonto reveal a menu of appearance options. Cycle through the categoriesand select any item to preview it on your character. Keep in mind yourchanges will not be saved until you hit the Save button. To changethe sex of your character, hit the Change Character button.

If you have questions in the future about anything Muse, there is help on the site via the Help and Feedback links.

Navigation

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:12:34 GMT

Navigation on Sosauce is mainly at the top and bottom of the pages.

From the Header, all the Sosauce applications and offerings are listed out on the left next to the logo (which is another convenient way for people to go back to their home pages. Mousing over the names of each application opens all the pages within the application.

If you are looking for an easier way to get to creating and adding content, the Header is now a great option.

For photos for example, you can click on the Add Album link here to make a new album, on Upload to start uploading right away, or Import Videos to connect with YouTube.

Notice the Friends link? This gives you a way to go to any content and any one of your friends' pages in pretty much one click - an easy way to hop between friends and browse for interesting and new content,

On the right of the top Header, there is the Search Box where you can type anything in, and then filter based on content types, people, and a number of other options. Underneath it, there is Help on the way, quick access of your shopping cart, and a shortcut to invite friends.

At the bottom of the page, you have the standard site terms of use information, but you also have access to the ever useful and entertaining Sosauce blog. You also have links to Help and Send Feedback whenever you need.

We choose this screen shot above to show the footer to point out the Relate Content feature. At the bottom of each Trip, Album, and Journal, there is Related Content. This is a fun way for you to select and link which other content something is related to. You can link to as many things as you want. This way, you, and whoever is viewing your stuff, have an alternative, direct, and easy way of navigation to hop from content to content.

For more on navigation, please visit the Help section at the top or bottom of the page. If Help is not enough, please contact us using the Send Feedback link at the bottom footer.

What is Facebook Connect?

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:06:57 GMT

Sosauce has enabled Facebook connect making it easier for you to find your Facebook friends who are on Sosauce and for them to find you. With Facebook connect, inviting friends just got a whole lot easier too! Even better, posting your photos, journals, and trips to Facebook is now only two clicks away.

For those of you that have already joined Sosauce, and didn't register through Facebook, you will notice a big blue button on your Updates page that looks like this:

By clicking on this button a Facebook window will appear asking you if you'd like to connect Sosauce to your Facebook account.

Simply click on the "Connect" button and you're all set!

Now, you can see which of your Facebook friends are already on Sosauce, invite your Facebook friends who aren't on Sosauce, and easily post your Sosauce content to Facebook.

Finding your Facebook friends who are already on Sosauce

To see which of your Facebook friends are on Sosauce just click on the Invite button on your Updates page. In the window that appears, you'll see all your Facebook friends who are on Sosauce.

To add them as your Sosauce friends just click them, or select "Add all contacts" at the bottom. (Note: You must be logged into Facebook for this window to appear. Not to worry though, if you're not logged into Facebook we'll prompt you!)

Inviting your Facebook friends to join Sosauce

You can invite your Facebook friends to join Sosauce through the same window mentioned above. Just click on the Invite button on your Updates page. In the window that appears, you'llalso see all your Facebook friends who aren't already on Sosauce.

To invite them to join Sosauce, click the checkbox and then hit "Send." Each person will receive the invite in their Facebook notifications.

Posting content to Facebook

Let's say you want to post one of your photo albums on Facebook. Just go to your albums page and select the "Share" link for the album you'd like to post.

This will highlight the "post link" tab on the left and bring up a window with a big ol' "Post Album to Facebook" button. Simply click on that and you're all set.

(Note: For journals and trips, just click on the "share" button as well. All content posted to Facebook must be public so if you don't see the "post link" option available, make sure your photo, journal, or trip is public.)

That's it! With this feature, Sosauce and Facebook are officially "in a relationship". An "engaged" may be coming soon. You never know ;)

Ordering Photo Prints

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:05:25 GMT

Print Products

Nowon Sosauce, you can buy high quality prints by the industry leading print process of EZ Prints as well as premium Kodak paper!

In addition to the stardard print sizes of 4x6, 5x7, 8x10, and Wallet, there are larger size formats such as 11x14, 16x20, and 20x30.

The Lustre pro finish is the standard on Sosauce, and there is always Matte and Glossy to fall back on.

Of course post cards and framed prints are in the mix, we're a travel site after all The framed prints come in both wood (Flat Top Black, Honey, and Rosewood) and aluminum (black and silver) finishes. The black frames really make the photos look sleek.

The matted framed prints come with prints already matted and framed. With a flat top black wooden frame, you have choices of white, off-white, and black mattes.

Posters, and especially the framed posters look stunning. The framed posters are also durable and water resistant. The canvas prints present your photos like paintings on canvas

In the Other Products category, there are also eco-friendly folded cards and note pads, stainless steel travel mug, stickers, playing cards, magnets, luggage tag, and address labels.

CD and DVD backups are also available in the cart. When ordering, we automatically pick the lowest pricedoption and combination for you, so you'll never spend more than what isnecessary.

Ordering Prints

To buy prints, select the photos you want and look for the Print button at the top right of your album page.

If you scroll down the page, not to worry! The Print button will follow you around.

Whenin the big view of a photo, look for the Manage Photo link and the Addto Print Queue link when the menu of functions appears.

These links will take you to the Shopping Cart.

Atthe cart, you can select quantity and size of prints. You can alsoselect which kind of print paper you want. Look for the All Products link at the bottom right of each photo and you will see post cards and framed prints. CD or DVD backups are available. Look for the options directly above the Checkout button. For CD and DVD backups, we will automatically pick the lowest priced option and combination for you, so you'll never spend more than what is necessary.

You can Empty your Cart orContinue Shopping, which is to return to your photo or album to browsemore. Your sub-totals will be tallied here as well.

Note: If you see a triangle with an exclamation mark next to a print size ofa photo, it means that this photo lacks the resolution to produce ahigh quality print at the print size. You can still buy the print of course, but it may not look as nice.

The cart has a memory, and it would only be cleared if you tell it to. Otherwise, if you close the browser or log out of Sosauce, your itemsin the cart will still be kept. This will definitely make itconvenient for you to remember what you picked to buy.

Whenyou Checkout, you'll be selecting or editing your shipping and billinginformation. You can save addresses and select an address as afavorite. You can also select a shipping method (estimated shippingprice is listed right next to the method), which would automaticallyestimate the arrival date for you as well.

Sosauceuses Paypal to handle your credit card transactions, and the advantageis that, you can also use your Paypal account if you want to. Afterall is done on this page, click on the green button at the bottom ofthe page to go to Paypal. After you are finished with billing, youwill get a confirmation page and emails about your order for yourrecord.

Enjoy the prints! If you have questions, please check out the Help section at the top and bottom of every Sosauce page. If you need to reach us, please use the Send Feedback link at the bottom footer.

Photo Editor (Premium)

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:49:15 GMT

Ever wish you could cut that annoying bystander out of your photo? Or change the color of a photo to make it more vibrant? With the Photo Editor, now you can!

However, that’s not all. With the Photo Editor, you can do some standard adjustments, such as crop, exposure, rotation, color, and sharpness. But it is also a place where you can have some fun! Try the Artistic section with different effects, such as black and white, sepia, and pencil, or try the Fun section where you can graffiti a photo, add fun stickers, and insert text/word bubbles. Also expect more effects in the upcoming releases!

You need a premium account for the Photo Editor, so Upgrade now! To use the Photo Editor, simply find the Photo you want to edit. You can access the Photo Editor when viewing either the thumbnail version or the big version of the photo.

For thumbnails, when you mouse over the thumbnail of the photo you want to edit, you will see a pen looking icon/button. To make sure you are looking at the right button, after a second of mousing over the icon, you will see the label “Edit Photo with Sosauce Photo Editor” appearing. Click on the icon/button to open the Photo Editor.

When on the big photo page, look for the Manage Photo link to the right of the big photo. Click on it would open a menu of functions. Click on the first link under Edit Photo called “Photo Editor" to open the Photo Editor.

Now that you opened the Editor, this is what you see:

With the Photo Editor you can do the following:

Crop

To crop your photos, click on the Crop button in the left menu to open up a number of crop options. If you just want to free drag to the size you want to crop, simply grab a blue corner of the crop area you see over your photo and move it to the size you want. If you want to move the crop area itself, simply click inside the area, drag, and move it. After you are happy with the crop area and size, click on the green Apply Crop button to apply the crop. If you don’t want to apply the crop, then simply click off to another option, like “Rotate” for example.

The other crop options, such as 3x5, 4x6, 5x7, and Square, lock the area to preset dimensions. These crop options are useful if you want to imitate print sizes. You can still drag and resize, but the area will always be some multiple or fraction of the preset dimensions. If you want to go from a horizontal to a vertical crop, just drag the blue corner vertically, and you will see the crop area automatically adjust.

Rotate

To rotate your photo, all you have to do is to click on any of the 4 rotate buttons: Rotate 90 Left, Rotate Right, Flip Horizontal, and Flip Vertical. If you want to go back to how you had it originally, click on the Reset button.

Exposure

Exposure has two dials, Brightness and Contrast. Each dial is set to the middle. To make your photo brighter or have more contrast, drag the dial to the right. For darker or less contrast, drag the dial to the left. To go back to what the original photo looks like, click on the Reset button and return the dials to the middle.

Color

Color also has two dials, Hue and Saturation. Hue covers the color spectrum, and Saturation is how rich you want the color to be. Each dial is set to the middle. Drag the dial to the right or left to adjust hue or saturation. To go back to what the original photo looks like, click on the Reset button and return the dials to the middle.

Blur/Sharpness

The Blur and the Sharpness dials both start at the left. To make your photo more blurry, drag the Blur dial to the right. For more sharpness, drag the Sharpness dial to the right. To go back to what the original photo looks like, click on the Reset button and return the dials to the left.

Fun Editor

Here you can draw graffiti, put stickers on, and add text bubbles. To draw graffiti, select the Graffiti option. Then, just hold your mouse down and drag it over the photo to draw. To change color, click on the Color Box (default in red) to open a palette with a bunch of colors to choose from, and then click on the color that you like. To change the thickness of your graffiti, use the Size dial. If you don’t like what you just drew, click on the Erase button to clear your drawing and start over.

To add some fun stickers, select the Stickers option to open up a menu of sticker categories to choose from. Say if you want to add a mustache to someone in your photo, click on “Face,” and then you will see some stickers appearing on a panel to the right of the menu. To apply the one that you want, you can click on the sticker once for it to appear over the center of the photo, and you can then click on the sticker to drag and resize to wherever you want. You can also drag the sticker from the panel to the photo to apply it. To clear a sticker, click on it over the photo so that the border lines and corners appear, and then hit the Delete button on your keyboard.

Adding some texts to a photo is always fun. To do that, select the Text option and some default text, “your text here,” would appear over your photo. To change the text to what you want to say, look for the textbox just below the Text option in the left menu. You can type in what you want to say in the textbox, and as you do, you will see your writing appear over the photo as well. You can use the Font dropdown to change fonts, and click on the Color box to change font color. If you want to resize, move, or rotate the text you entered, click on the text over the photo to display the border lines and corners, and then drag to resize, move, or rotate. To resize and rotate, look for the stretch or circle arrows when you mouse over the corners. To clear your text, click on it over the photo, and then hit the Delete key on your keyboard.

Artistic Editor

This is where you choose and apply different effects, such as black and white, sepia, and pencil, to your photo! To use this, simply click on Artistic Editor and select the effect that you want. If you want to go back to the photo’s original look, simply click on the Reset button.

The Photo Editor also enables you to zoom into and out of your photo for more detailed editing. At the bottom of the Photo Editor, look for the Zoom dial on the left. Simply drag the dial to zoom in and out. The changes you already made, such as stickers and texts, will also adjust with the changing zoom.

At any time, if you feel like you made a mistake or did something you didn’t like, you can click on the Undo button at the bottom of the Photo Editor to remove the last thing you added. You can basically just click on Undo to remove anything added all the way to the very beginning, and click on Redo to recover any changes.

To save your work and exit the Photo Editor, click on the green Save and Close button at the bottom right of the Editor. While you are saving, if you change your mind, you can always click on the Cancel button (also at the bottom right that appears after you click on Save and Close) to cancel. You will then be taken to your edited photo in big photo view to appreciate it.

When you save an edited photo it will not write over your original photo. It will simply save your new photo, with edits, as an additional photo in the same album (or Purgatory). The new photo will be placed at the end of the current album and will enjoy all the management and sharing features on Sosauce, just like the original photo.

(Note: The newly created photo is 1024x in size to make the photo editing manageable, so it is not meant for large size photo prints.)

Have fun editing your photos, and if you have any questions, check out our "Need Help" section at the top of any Sosauce page. If that is not sufficient, please use our "Feedback" link at the top of the page and shoot us a question. We'd be happy to help!

Enjoy the Photo Editor!

Group Photo Albums (Premium)

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:29:09 GMT

Ever wanted to pool all your friends photos together from the same party? Or share an album with a select group of friends, so everyone can copy the photos? With Sosauce's Group Albums feature, now you can! (Note: Group Photo Albums are a premium feature)

Pooling Photos Together with Friends:

Let's say you and your friends went to the same party. All three of you brought cameras and want copies of each other's photos. You would have had to exchange CDs, flash drives, or emails from a bunch of different sites. No more! Now you can pool photos together into the same album, and then grab each other's original photos with Sosauce's Group Albums.

Create a new Group Album:

If uploading new photos, select A New Group Album as your upload destination and name your album.

Name your album and select your album privacy.

Then, click on the Add Contributors button. In the window that appears, choose the friends on Sosauce whom you'd like toprovide the ability to add photos to or copy from this album. If you want todisable these friends from copying your photos from the album into one of their own, simplydeselect the checkbox at the bottom of the window (see below).

Notice the "Invite more friends to join?"link? This is useful if you have friends outside of Sosauce that youwant them to join your Group Album. From here, you can invite yourfriends via Facebook, web mail addressbooks, and email address.

Once your friends join Sosauce through yourinvitation, they will automatically become your friends on Sosauce, andyou can then add them to your Group Album. Easy enough.

You just created a groupalbum that friends can add photos to, and copy photos from.

Your Group Albums, both those you create and those you can contribute to, are on your Group Albums page, so let's go there. Click on the Group Albums link from the top Header.

Change an existing album to a Group Album:

Simply go to your albums page, where it shows all of your albums (Note: These are your individual albums not your group albums) and select the Group Album icon. This will bring up the Manage Contributors window shown above.

Adding photos to a Group Album created by a friend:

Now let's say your friends wake up the next morning all excited to add their photos to your Group Album.

The first thing they need to do is go into that album, which can be found on their own Group Albums page. The easiest way to acces the Group Album page is to use the Header. Once in the group album, the next step is to select the Contribute Photos button at the top right of the page.

Your friends will then be prompted to either upload or add photos from another album into your Group Album.

The photos your friend adds will be placed at the end of the album. As the album creator, you have the ability to change the order of how the photos are displayed, just like a regular Sosauce Photo album.

On another note, the group album is bounded by Creative Commons licensing to protect copyright. When others view the group album, they'll also be able to tell who the original photographer is. If someone contributed to your group album, their picture and name will show up when viewing that photo in it's largest view:

Copying photos from a group album into your own album:

Similar to adding photos to a group album, The first thing you need to do is go into that album, which can befound on your Group Albums page. Go into the album you want to copy and click on the Copy Photos button on the top right of the page.

This will bring up the window shown below where you can choose the location to copy these photos to.

Select 'OK' and the photos are yours!

Share an Album with Only a Select Group of Friends:

Now let's say you went to the beach with your closest friends. Maybe you had some wild and crazy nights, or maybe you don't look as good in that bathing suit as you wish. As a result, you want to share your photos with only the friends you traveled with and not all of your Sosauce friends. No problem! Sosauce Group Albums provides the solution you need.

Simply make the album Privacy Private, and then add your friends as contributors. Now your friends will be the only other people who can access the album, add photos, copy photos, comment, or rate!

Have fun with Group Albums and if you have anyquestions, check out our Help section at the top or bottom.

Ifour Help section isn’t sufficient, use the Feedback link at the bottomof the screen and shoot us a question. We’d be happy to help!

Enjoy Sosauce Group Albums!

Group Journals (Premium)

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:27:50 GMT

Ever wanted to keep a private journal with just a few friends? Or allow other people to write to your journal about environmentalism? Now you can! Welcome to Sosauce's Group Journals!

Co-Author and Share a Journal with just a Few Friends:

Let's say you joined the Peace Corps and upon returning to the US, you want to keep in touch with your closest friends. You want to share your intimate thoughts, feelings, and lives with one another but with no one else. All you need to do is create a private Group Journal on Sosauce. (Note: Group Journals are a premium feature)

To create a private Group Journal:

Let's first create a new journal. Mouse over Journal in the Header at the top, and click on New Journal Book.

Then, click on the A New Group Journal button.

Once you click on A New Group Journal, you'll see:

Let's give your Journal a name, and you can write some optional descriptions for your journal cover as well. Select the Journal privacy, which is default public for everyone, and then click on the green Add Contributors button at the bottom. In this case, you'll want to change the privacy from Everyone to Private.

Now you can add your friends on Sosauce to co-author this journal with you. Simply begin typing their names in the text box.

Notice the "Invite more friends to join?" link? This is useful if you have friends outside of Sosauce that you want them to join your Group Journal. From here, you can invite your friends via Facebook, web mail addressbooks, and email address.

Once your friends join Sosauce through your invitation, they will automatically become your friends on Sosauce, and you can then add them to your Group Journal. Easy enough.

Once you add your friends to the Group Journal, they will be notified via Sosauce Updates and email. And you will be taken to the place where you can start writing your entry. Now you and your friends can write, read, rate, and comment upon entries in this journal. Enjoy!

To write in a Group Journal created by another friend:

Go to your Group Journals page from the Header. This is how:

Click on the Group Journals link and you're there.

Then, find the Group Journal you want to write to, click on the orange Pen Button on the right, and you're all set to start writing.

That's it! Have fun with Group Journals, and if you have anyquestions, check out our Help section at the top of the page.

Ifour Help section isn’t sufficient, use the Feedback link at the footer and shoot us a question. We’d be happy to help!

Enjoy Sosauce Group Journals!

Group Trip (Premium)

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:30:47 GMT

Went on the same trip with others? Now you can designate them as your Co-Trippers with the Group Trips feature and allow them to copy your trip itinerary so that they don't need to pin the map again! (Note: Group Trip is a premium feature).

Here's how:

To add Co-Trippers and turn a trip into a Group Trips:

1. Open your trip and click on the Group Trip icon:

2. Add friends as Co-Trippers by typing your friend's name:

Notice the "Invite more friends to join?"link? This is useful if you have friends outside of Sosauce that youwant them to join your Group Trip. From here, you can invite yourfriends via Facebook, web mail addressbooks, and email address.

Onceyour friends join Sosauce through your invitation, they willautomatically become your friends on Sosauce, and you can then add themto your Group Trip. Easy enough.

3. And your done!

To copy trip itinerary from a friend's Group Trip:

1. Navigate to your Group Trips page from the Header:

2. Open your friend's trip in your Group Trips list that you want to copy from and click on the Copy Itinerary button:

3. Give your new trip a name and you're done!

For more details, please visit the Help section at the top or bottom of the page. If you have more questions, please contact us via the Send Feeback link at the bottom of the page.

Enjoy Group Trips!

Import your Photos from Flickr

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:30:57 GMT

For any travel or personal album that you have, you can now import your photos from Flickr in original size and resolution. Then, you can insert them easily into your trips, reviews, and journals.

Import Photos from Flickr

To import photos from Flickr, go into your album and to the thumbnails page. At the top right, look for the "Manage This Album" panel.

Here, click on Import. You'll be asked by Flickr to grant Sosauce permission to grab photos. Click on the yes/approve/grant button to grant Sosauce permission. Note that you only have to do this once. After you grant Sosauce permission once, you can freely import without being prompted again in the future. Then, you will see:

Here, you can choose your Flickr Set and select the photos you want to import. Please note that in this Flickr API, you can't select your Photostream, so it either has to be from a Set or from rest of the "Photos in no set." When you are done with your selections, click on the DONE button.

Then you will see:

This is saying that while your photos are being imported from Flickr, you can continue and not have to sit and wait. The photos you import will automatically show up as soon as they are imported. So just click on OK here and you are done!

Export Photos to Flickr

You can also export your photos to Flickr. This is another way we are striving to make it easy for you to enrich your web existence.

To do this, go back to the thumbnails page of an album. Select the photos you want to export to Flickr by clicking on them (You'll see blue frames around the photos you select.). Then, click on the Export button under Photo Tray.

Once you click on Export, you'll see:

Then, click on OK. If this is the first time you export to Flickr, you'll need to grant permission to Sosauce. After you grant permission, you won't be prompted to do so again.

After you grant permission, or if you've already granted permission earlier, you are all set.

You will see a confirmation:

This means that you can click OK and return to do whatever you wish. Sosauce will automatically transfer the photos to Flickr in the background without any disruption to what you are working on.

If you need any additional help, remember to use the Help or Feedback section located at the very top of every Sosauce page.

Enjoy!

Add YouTube videos to Trips, Journal Entries, and Albums

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:09:08 GMT

You have the ability to import your YouTube videos to Sosauce. Once imported, these videos will be stored just like your photos, in your Sosauce Photo application, either in your photobox or in the albums of your choice. They will have all the management characteristics of photos, and can be rearranged and edited at will. An example of how videos appear in albums can be visible here:

Importing your videos for a Trip:

To add videos to a trip destination, select the destination from the itinerary. Under the tab Photos & Videos, you'll find the button Import from Youtube. At this point you'll be presented with two ways to import videos:

The first is via the URL or embed code. To import a video with this method, simply copy and paste an embed code for any video.
The second is by syncing with your YouTube account. This will allow you instantly to pull all the videos that you've already uploaded to YouTube onto your Sosauce account. This option is available as a second tab in the screenshot above (Your YouTube Account).

After you insert the videos in your trip, they will also be placed in your albums. From there, you can manage them as you would any photo.

You can also import videos directly into albums using the Upload arrow icon in the upper right hand corner of each album list page:

Importing your videos for a Journal:

Importing into Journals follows a similar process. Once you're editing a journal entry (i.e. composing a new one, or editing an old one), just select Video above the Insert button and hit that button. This pulls your video either straight from YouTube, or if you've already stored it, from your albums or Photobox.

All the rest of the same rules as Travel apply!

Importing your videos into Photo:

As mentioned before, you can add videos directly to your photo albums using the arrow Upload button in the upper right hand corner of each album page.

Once the Choose Photo / Video window appears, select the Import from YouTube options, and from that point on the rest of the same rules apply, except this time, your photos will be inserted straight into whatever album you are viewing.

That's it! Have fun with these features, and if you have any questions, check out our Help section at the top or bottom of the page.

If that's not sufficient, use the Feedback link at the bottom of the screen and shoot us a question. We'd be happy to help!

Enjoy having your YouTube videos on Sosauce!

Using the Share Link

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:13:30 GMT

For every piece of content that you have on Sosauce, such as a trip, album, photo, or journal/blog entry, there are a variety of ways to share it with those outside of Sosauce. Almost all of which are available together through "Share" link.

The Share icon looks like this:

...and is present wherever you can view a particular piece of content. For instance:

Trip

Photo

Journal

Once you open the Share link, you have a number of methods to share your content:

Post it to the Facebook feed, so your friends on Facebook can see it. (For all Privacy Settings)
Post this link to other websites. (For all Privacy Settings)
Email it to your friends by typing in their email addresses or by importing their addresses from web mail addressbooks. (For all Privacy Settings)
Embed it (For Privacy Public Only)
Post link and embed for the entire Jounal or blog (This applies to the Journal app only, and it is for Prviacy Public Only)

This is what you'll see for posting to Facebook, post linking, or embed:

And this is what you'll see for emailing to friends:

What do these functions do?

1. Posting to Facebook

Posting to Facebook is quite straight forward. It is basically posting the content to the Facebook news feed, so your friends on Facebook and see it when they check their feeds. If you click on the Post entry to Facebook button when you share, you'll see a window that appears, and all you have to do is to hit Post at the bottom, and you're done!

2. Post this link to other websites

Posting links to other websites is becoming an increasingly popularway to share interesting content on the internet. Popular sites forthis type of activity are Digg (a social news site, where userssuggest interesting stories) or Facebook. Using the links in the share panel will automaticallytake you to the right place to finish the sharing process to thesesites!

3. Email

Emailing is also straight forward. Just type in your friends' email addresses and/or insert them from your web addressbooks (such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and MSN). You can write in a subject or message before you send. Your friends will receive a nice post card like design in their email, and they can then get to what you wanted to share.

4. Embed this piece of content

For the layman, an embed is merely a method of taking a piece of content and inserting it as a self-contained unit on another website.

To embed, for instance, a journal entry, simply copy and paste the provided code wherever you are able to access or edit html on an outside webpage. Given the diversity of site behavior in this regard, we recommend you consult their help directories should you have trouble.

Have fun with these features, and if you have any questions, please check out our Help section at the top or bottom of the page.

If that's not sufficient, use our Send Feedback link at the bottom of the screen and shoot us a question. We'd be happy to help!

RSS Feed for your Sosauce Journals!

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:33:50 GMT

Following your favorite Sosauce journals just got a whole lot easier! Now you can subscribe via RSS Feed*!

(*RSS Feed is only available for public journals!)

-------------------- What's RSS Feed? --------------------------

RSSis a standard format that most websites use to syndicate content. Using this format, Sosauce can send "RSS Feeds" to any "RSS Reader" or"RSS Viewer" you prefer to use. Most web browsers (Firefox, InternetExplorer, Safari) have built-in RSS Reader capabilities.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

For Firefox Users:

You can subscribe to your favorite journal by clicking on the RSS Feed icon on top of each journal.

Alternatively, you can also click on Follow this journal (RSS) on the Table of Content page of that journal.

Once you've clicked on the button, Firefox will ask you where you want to save the "Live Bookmark" -- just click on Add and accept the default settings.

And it's done! Now you can easily access your new RSS Feed subscription via your Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar!

For IE7 Users:

You can subscribe to your favorite journal by clicking on the RSS Feed icon on top of each journal.

Alternatively, you can also click on Follow this journal (RSS) on the Table of Content page of that journal.

Once you've clicked on the button, IE7 will show you take you to the Feed Reader. Click on Subscribe to this Feed!

Then it will ask you where to store it, just click on Subscribe to accept its default setting.

Now you're done! You can easily access your new subscription via your IE7 Favorites menu:

Embed your Trip, Journal Entry, Album, or Photo

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:41:26 GMT

Ever wanted to take your public Sosauce content (trips, journals, albums, photos) and post a beautiful preview of it on another site? You can do it with Sosauce Embeds!

Previews of Photo, Journal, and Trip embeds

So what exactly is an embed?

For the layman, an embed is merely a method of taking a piece of content (photo, video, journal entry, trip, etc.) and inserting it as a self-contained unit on another website such as your personal blog, or Facebook.

How do I embed a trip, journal, album, or photo?

To obtain an embed code (embedding requires you to copy and paste a section of html code) you must click the Share button found on the viewing page of any piece of content on Sosauce

To learn more about the Share button, including its specific locations, view this entry).

Keep in mind the privacy of this content must be public in order for the embed feature to be available.

The above panel will appear when you click the Share button, and you can see the embed code and a link to a preview of what the embed will look like. Simply copy the code in order to paste it on a third party site.

Wherever you are able to access or edit html on a page, you can insert a Sosauce embed code. Many sites even provide fields in which you can directly insert an embed code. Given the diversity of site behavior in this regard, we recommend you consult their help directories should you have trouble.

Ok That's it! If you have more questions, please check out the Help section at the top or bottom of the page. If that's not sufficient, use the Send Feedback link at the bottom of the screen and shoot us a question. We'd be happy to help!

Happy embedding!

Emailing your trips, photos, and journals

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:00:49 GMT

Do you have trips, photos, or journal entries that you want to share with your friends or family, but they're not on Sosauce or social networks that support link posting?

No problem! Look for the Share button on or in your content:

After clicking on Share, you'll see a window opening. Select the Send Message option on the left:

Then, you can either type in the email addresses of the friends you want to email to, or import their addresses from Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, or MSN.

Please note that for photos, youcan email an entire album or any photo you select.

The best things about email sharing are:

Email recepients can see that you send regardless of privacy settings.
No need to sign in to view! Once the recepient receives the album, photos, journal entry, or trip, they can view it right away.

How to Find Interesting Content on Sosauce

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:27:18 GMT

Sosauce is all about interesting content and we've developed a lot of ways to help you find it. In addition to everything you see at your Home Updates, here are a couple of them:

In Application Homes

Look for the application homes under each application name in the top Header, and you'll find the latest and most intesting content.

The Sosauce Search Engine

TheSosauce Search Engine is one of the most robust search tools on theinternet. It finds you interesting content across the board -- trips, photos,journals, and people, through one search.

SosauceSearch is conveniently located on top right of every page. Just typein whatever you want to search and hit enter. Once you're at the resultspage, you can further tweak the criteria and find exactly what you'relooking for.

Events Mini-App and Sticky

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:35:04 GMT

Sosauce introduces both an Events Mini-App and an Events Sticky! Use the Events mini-app to keep track of all yourfriend’s birthdays, keep your own to-do list, or create an activity. Then use the Events Sticky to let your friends know of that backyardBBQ you have coming up!

How to Create an Event

Youcan access your Events Mini-App via the Header and at your Home.

From the Header, all you need to do is to mouse over the Home link and click on Events.

At your Home (ex. Updates or Profile Gallery), click on the Events link underneath the page title:

Once you're on your Events page, you can add an event to any day byclicking on the "Add Event" button that appears when you rollover thedate on the calendar itself.

Clicking "Add" will bring up a few fields for you to fill out. Asfar as information about the event, only the event title is required,everything else is optional.

Let’s say you are planning a backyard BBQ for Labor Dayweekend. After adding in the details your event and selecting 'Save This Event' it will look something like this:

The event will now show up in different places on your calendar. The first is on your ‘Upcoming Events’ list and the second is as ayellow sticky note on the calendar itself.

One of the best attributes of the events you create with your Events Mini-App is that you have options regarding their exposure. One important note is that no one else can see your Events Mini-App,not even your friends. Like the Messages, the Calendar is foryour eyes only.

However you do have privacy options for the Events Sticky at your Profile Gallery like all other Sosauce Stickies.

If you can’t find it and would like to add it, simply select Events from the Sticky Library at the bottom of your Profile Gallery.

Events followthe same standard privacy categories of private (only you can view),friends (friends and you can view), and public (everyone on Sosauce canview). To set the privacy of an event, simply open the event by clicking on the event name on theyellow event design in your Events Mini-App.

The privacy setting is found at the bottom left. You also have theability to allow others to copy the event to their own calendar.

If you allow copy privileges, anybody who sees the event cancopy it to their own calendar. Just so you know, people who copy an event cannot modify the event.

Your Events Sticky

When you create an event, it willappear on your Events Sticky in your Profile Gallery. As mentioned before, whether or notother people see this event depends on the privacy settings you set. Your Events Sticky has two views, List and Flyer. The default view is List, and the events will appear on your Sticky as shown below.

You can change the display to ‘Flyer’ view by clicking on thecustomize icon (top right of the Sticky; third icon from the right) andchanging from ‘List’ view under the Sticky Size / Content menu.

Flyer view looks like this:

That's it! Have fun with these features, and if you have anyquestions, check out our Help section at the top or bottom of the page.

If our Help section isn’t sufficient, use the Feedback linkat the top bottom of page and shoot us a question. We’d be happy tohelp!

Enjoy Events.

Privacy on Sosauce!

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:31:05 GMT

On Sosauce, there are 3 levels of privacy for you to control who can view your content -- Public, Friends Only, and Private.

You can choose a privacy level on content you upload/create on Sosauce, including trips, photos, and journals.

"Public"means viewable by all internet users, with or without a Sosauceaccount. Once you have set something to Public, you can post links andembed onto other sites, such as blogs, Digg, Del.icio.us, Facebook, etc.

We want to encourage travel geeks to share their experiences, and for this reason, Public is also the default privacy setting.

"Friends Only" is only for your Sosauce friends to see, and they have to log in to their Sosauce account.

"Private" is only for yourself to see. No one else can see it.

In addtion to your trips, photos, journals,etc., you have privacy settings to the most personal information inyour Profile via Edit Profile. So if you don't want people to knowyour age or birthday, you can easily set it to Private!

How to Enhance Color of Images on your Firefox 3 Browser

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:06:34 GMT

There are times you may notice that the images you upload to the web using Firefox 3 just don't look as colorful as they are on your desktop. It would look like colors are washed out and not as vibrant as you would like.

To correct this, type in:

about:config

in your Firefox 3 address bar.

Then, you'll see:

Just click on the "I'll be careful, I promise" button. You are safe, and this specific settings change would not harm your browser, as it is a native setting in the browser to begin with.

Then, scroll down to find the item:

gfx.color_management.enabled

And double click where it says "False."

This will turn the setting to "True."

Now, close your Firefox 3 browser to let the change take effect. When you open Firefox 3 back up, you should see richer colors!

Enjoy.