bits·done

2011 has started two weeks ago, but it’s only starting to sink in what I’m up to this year. I spent a very useful one and half years at Kitsite, working with great clients. I’ve been lucky too: Jamie (and earlier, Michael) was very generous to let me work on my personal projects one day a week.

And in 2010, the little, friendly personal projects started to grow in an incredible rate. PicFog started to require more and more time and StartupCharts (the engine behind LondonStartups.co.uk) appeared. I had to find more time.

So here’s the new year’s resolution: what if I draw the circumstances this time. I’ve decided to radically downscale my Kitsite presence and start to focus on PicFog. Great, amazing! See the problem here? My day job offers, well, job security and a salary, and PicFog offers neither of these. It offers thrill and excietement, but I’m not sure my landlord would like that very much. So - great plan, needs a bit more optimization.

And here you go: from next week, until I work out how to work on PicFog without losing my soul and sanity (okay, actually I can do without sanity) - I’m going to do some freelance work to fund my projects. (There you go, sanity!) I’m lucky to have some Kitsite work to kick it off.

I’ve done this before, albeit in Hungary, with way more hostile circumstances than in London. There’s not a lot that can technically scare me, I’ve picked up this and that during the last 12+ years, for technical details, see my LinkedIn profile. Also refreshed my knowledge about money - I’ve enjoyed this quora article very much and also was given invaluable advice from my old friend/colleague Alex.

Now sit back, get some popcorn and watch. Or say hi: tjp@tjp.hu

We’ve started experimenting with PicFog widgets a couple of months ago - the widget lets you embed any picture search result to a website, blog or online newspaper. We’ve learnt a lot during the process about how to deal with extreme widget traffics and other little details, and also learn people love to try the service before any serious commitment. The new pricing plan reflects these facts.

• Free to try: Anyone with a PicFog account can use up to 1,000 widget views a day for free.
• Anyone can create 5 different widgets (for 5 different searches)
• If you sign up for the paid plan, you may end up -not- paying: up to 30,000 widget views a month are free.
• From 30,000 widget views, you’ll be paying a CPM fee of $0.5. (Ie. 50 cents for 1,000 widget views.)

This lets our users to try the service more freely and also lets us scale more evenly than before. If you want to have a go, check out our showcase page to see how it looks like.