Smilikiti

We’re finally starting to pick our heads up and prepare to emerge from private beta with new applications, a new polished site with some incredible innovations and completion of our first dedicated Aviary tutorial book, by our very own Meowza! But in the mean time, some quick news updates:

Welcome to our newest staff members Amiee Jacobsen and Mo Boehm!

Amiee is joining us as our community manager - she previously headed up Splice Music in that role, where she caught our eye based on the fantastic job she did cheerleading that community. She also has a strong presence in Flickr and Second Life, and will be helping us plan the design of our 3D modeling tool to make it easy for Second Lifers to use. If you need anything at all on the site, don’t be shy to message her (username: thaumata).

Mo is actually a long-time friend and colleague, having previously worked with Iz and me during the initial development of Worth1000 in 2001. He’s a master DBA and systems architect and will help scale out our system so it can optimally handle heavy loads. Aviary has some very unique requirements, database-wise, due to the recursive way that file permissions need to be tracked and inherited through generations. If anyone can master scaling on a system like ours, it’s him.

Both will update on our idea blog, so you’ll have a chance to get to know them. Mo already has begun making the rest of us look bad, here.

Aviary in the New Yorker

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to engage in a witty riposte with the infamous New Yorker magazine. Barak Obama may hate us now, but at least my mom is proud.

Aviary toolbar

If you’d like to help alpha test the new Aviary Firefox extension that opens up a whole range of functionality into the Aviary suite that isn’t available by default in Flash, please indicate so in the comments below (or private message to Thaumata).

We’re adding:

- screenshot grabbing (full and partial)
- right-click image copying and editing from any website
- access to the binary data on your computer clipboard
- quick searching Aviary and stock photo databases
- tablet pressure sensitivity
- quick launching applications
- and more!

Aviary at SXSW in Texas

Michael Galpert, Mario Klingemann and myself (Avi Muchnick) have the opportunity to speak about Aviary at panels in the upcoming SXSW conference. The only catch is that we have to be nominated by visitors to the SXSW website. So, Please vote for us!