Back in April I posted about a website called Radar.Net. I had heard about it on the Scobel Show. A couple of weeks ago I got to sit down and chat with Ian Jeffry from Radar.net at CollegeFest. We did a little interview on UStream. The video came out pretty bad so I’m not posting it here. However I would like to thank Ian for spending the time with me to discuss how Radar.Net worked.

When I first discovered Radar.net I invited my friend Kevin from FuelMyBlog to check it out and use the service with me. We didn’t quite like it however. But then again we were trying to put Radar.net into a niche that it didn’t belong.

Radar.net is about sharing moments through camera phone photos with your friends. It is not about taking camera phone photos and posting them to your blog. This is a more personal service for you and your friends. Sure you can decide to post your photos to your blog but that is not the primary intention of the service. And that is how I approached Radar.net back in April. At that time there wasn’t a way to put the image on my blog. Now that option is available.

Getting started with Radar.net
Go to the website www.radar.net

You will then register with Radar.net. Below are the fields that you would need to fill out to start your membership (free of course) with Radar.net

Enter
1.) Radar Name
– 3 to 12 characters.
– No spaces.
– Letters and numbers only.
– At least one letter.
– Can’t be changed later.
2.) Password
– Up to 30 characters. No spaces.
– Letters and numbers only.
3.) Confirm Password
– Up to 30 characters. No spaces.
– Letters and numbers only.
4.) Real Name
– So your friends will know who you are.
5.) Email
– Don’t worry. We’ll never sell your personal info.
6.) Time Zone

Once you have a membership and you sign in you can update your settings. this way you can provide Radar.net with some additional information so that you can use Radar.net in multiple ways. And believe me there are many ways to access Radar.net.

In the setting section there are settings for your profile

Profile Tab

1.) Radar Name
– This is view only, once created cannot be changed.
2.) Real Name
– A required field but you can change it.
3.) Email
– A required field but you can change it.
4.) Mobile Number
– Radar will recognize the number and attribute the photos you upload to you.
5.) Time Zone
– a required field but you can change it.
6.) You can also decide if you would like to receive occasional email announcements about new features and promotions.

Password Tab

You can change your password under this tab.

Privacy Tab

Privacy

Here you can choose what friends of friends can see, you put a checkmark next to the different fields.

Friends of friends:
– can see my real name.
– can see my email address.
– can invite me to be their friend.

Invitation code tab
You can use this code to invite friends to Radar.net. If they use your invite code they will automatically become one of your friends on Radar.net. You can customize the invitation code to whatever you would like it to be.

Posting address tab
This is where you get a special e-mail address which you can use to send photos to Radar.net from your computer, or your camera phone. Yeah, you don’t have to use your camera phone all the time but it is the quickest way to interact on Radar.net.

Updates Tab

Email Updates –
Here you can determine if you ant updates to go to your e-mail address as often as once a day, twice a day, every other day or even once a week.

AIM Notifications –
There is also an option to get a notification from Radar.net to your AIM when friends upload or update photos. That way you will stay connected to the conversations while online.

Okay, now that you have set up your settings lets try and upload an image.

Check out this video that shows you how to do so.

Here is the image I uploaded. The quality of the image is due to my crappy cell phone.

Now go check in to Radar.net to see your photo. Here is the Radar.net interface screen. This is the screen you will see when you click on the word, pictures.

As you can see on the left I am in All My Friends’ Pictures. That section that I am in is going to be reflected in white text. The other links are the ones in light blue. So right now I have these choices.

These two are groups

All My Friends > – A default group
RadarTeam – A group I created that has the members of Radar.net

These five are my friends as well as myself.
BenSpark (me)
fuelmyblog
fugu
ianmtl
scottalk

If I click on any of those links I will see only those pictures from those people.

You can also see that you can sort pictures by Latest Pictures, Latest Comments, My Conversations. You can also further sort what you see by comments from: Everyone or your Friends.

So here are some photos I took. And uploaded.

With the images you can interact in a couple of ways. First off I clicked on the Show all 6 Comments link for the maggie photo. this will expand the page to show you all of the comments on your picture.

You can see all of the comments that people have added to your images. You can see how many people have viewed you
r image and how many people have marked it as “Like it”. Like it is a way of favoriting the pictures from your friends so you can go back to them quickly. You can also edit the title of the image, enter a new comment or send a whisper (private comment to the person who took the photo.) This is a quick way of interacting with the images. You can also do a little bit more with an image when you click the image itself.

The screen will change and be dominated by your image, the comments will move tot he right side.

Okay you can see picture at a larger size. And under the picture there are a few options. The first option is Share. This is where you can take one of your photos and decide to share it with a larger audience. You can make a link to it public or you can grab the image and embed it on your blog. Now, this is going to showcase the versatility of radar.net and the control you have over who your audience will be. If you try to share an image that is not public you need to change the permissions of who can see certain pictures. Your options are Just Me, Some Friends, All My Friends or Public. So in order to share the image with the wider world you must make the image public.

When setting permissions you can also determine down to particular friends who can see and image and who cannot. So if you have made specific friend groups it is easier to block or allow certain people from seeing image.

You can decide to e-mail the picture to other people without making the image public and this will also allow you to send an invite to friends. There are many ways to invite friends and the experience of Radar.net has real impact when you are sharing moments with your friends.

The next option is to view the image full size. And when you choose this the image pops up in a lightbox feature. This is great if you have a higher megapixel image. My images are awful because my present phone is terrible.

If you like and Image you can click on the “Like It” option. Then you can rotate the image to the left and to the right, if the image is your own you can delete it and you can also report an image if it violates the TOS of Radar.net or if it is offensive.

Back to the top of the page, next to pictures there is a link to comments. this re-opens the list of images but this time it is sorted by photos that have comments. The next option is channels. this shows you all the latest photos from all of your friends but they are organized differently so you can see all the images and you can choose any image to click and comment on. As your mouse moves over each image the title and the number of views and comments on the image appear. You can also choose to hide the photos from some friends from your view and choose to view others. Just click the carrot next to your friend’s name.

Back to the top of the screen again. this time if you click on friends you can manage your friends on Radar.net. Here you can great special groups of friends as well as drop friends and invite more friends. Friends are the key to enjoying Radar.net, the purpose is to share those moments of life with your friends. Also on the top of the page there is a the Invite link. This is what you think it is, a place to invite friends and family to participate in Radar.Net.

Radar.net is constantly innovating the things that it offers. There is now an application for facebook where if you are using facebook you can see the all new images and comment on them. And they have a help section with many of the frequently asked questions where you can comment as well as get more information.

Radar.net also has a blog where they talk about all the new cool things that they are coming out with. For one things they have a very cool application called friendly that lets you see how your friends are connected. You can also grab one of the globes and drag it around to see things in a much more strong light. And you can then capture an image and post it to your channel on Radar.net. Check out mine.

Okay, there is still even more stuff for Radar.Net. For one thing if you have a great phone that has Internet access you can use an online application to post and comment directly from your phone. It doesn’t work on the Verizon network yet, at least that was what Ian told me when I talked to him but Radar.net is constantly changing so it might be now. I think that Ian was using T-Mobile and he could do so many very cool things on his cell phone. You can do the same things with the mobile app that you can do online at the website and using the mobile app you have that instant connection to friends. You can also share video if your phone and e-mail system support the sending of video.

I spent some time talking to both Ian Jeffrey, the Director of Marketing of Tiny Pictures, Inc as well as John Poisson, the Founder and CEO of Tiny Pictures, Inc. They took much time out of their schedules to talk to me about the great features of Radar.Net. Ian also sent me a box of cool swag. Some shirts, sunglasses, postcards, and high powered LED key chain flashlights and stickers. Very cool stuff. I really appreciated it. Thanks very much and good luck with a very cool application. I will be using it more often and inviting my friends and family to participate.

Here is a great song about radar.net