by Jim Whimpey | May 4, 2008 | Production
There’s not much that annoys me more online than having to sign up unnecessarily for free services. I went as far as to make a [complete website](http://uselessaccount.com/) making fun of the experience. When we began planning [Panedia Desktop Wallpaper](http://wallpaper.panedia.com) one of the first decisions we made was paid members would be the only user that required sign up, if you want free content, you could get it without barrier. If you have an account, you are a paying customer. At first the sign up process instinctively included email confirmation for accounts. As internet users we’re highly trained in this procedure — sign up, refresh email, click confirmation link, account activated. As a developer who’s implemented sign up systems multiple times, creating a sign up system around email confirmation wasn’t something I questioned. Until new users weren’t getting confirmation emails. We knew this would happen, with spam filters having no reason to trust us, users not checking spam folders, server side filters and plain human error. The best we could do was tell them to check their spam and add the question to the FAQ, I mean, we *need* email confirmation, right? Wrong! Accounts at other online services required email confirmation as a layer of protection against robots signing up for multiple *free* accounts. We don’t have free accounts, our barrier to robots is *money*. We dropped email confirmation, removed an extra step from the cumbersome process of signing up and made our lives easier by not having to deal with lost confirmation...
by Aaron Spence | Apr 3, 2008 | Production
With Panedia Wallpaper I’m introducing the first of many products and services to come out of the huge Panedia panoramic content library. The site has been up for a few weeks testing in narrow release, today we give it the official heave ho into wide release. (Tell your friends about it Panedia Desktop Wallpaper contains over 40 wallpapers at present, with a ‘Free Daily’ wallpaper being added every day. The daily wallpaper update is available free for 24hrs only, before it goes into the members gallery. There is also a public gallery (free) which is added to monthly. Each wallpaper on the site is available in 16 sizes from 800×600 to 2560×1600 for single, dual and triple monitors in the 3 common ratios 4:3, 5:4 & Widescreen (16:10). We produce 130 separate images for each wallpaper to provide all the sizes for MAC and PC computers. Members (paid) have access to all wallpapers at all times, plus the master files used to generate the wallpapers. With these files members can cut up their own wallpaper sizes, for up to 4 or 5 monitors. We’re working on tools to enhance this capability in the short to medium term. Members can also use Panedia Wallpaper as a form of Service, I’ve called it WAAS (Wallpaper As A Service) for want of a better term, whereby they need not horde images on their computers for wallpaper. A member can access the site at any time from any computer and download the exact size image(s) they require. Using the ‘Set As Desktop Background’ function of Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari the wallpaper image...
