August 29th, 2009
Look ahead! A few drops of high-tech collated with a piece of artistic point of view… This is how BeFunky looks ahead. We as the technology team and artists sit together, order 4-5 different drinks. We stare at those drinks served in different tastes, colors, different glasses with different shapes. Then we talk. We argue. We fight, enthusiastically with all the good will we have for the next step. And here, I talk about the next step: BeFunky Vector Graphics Engine.
From now on you will see some acronyms in BeFunky like: SVG, EPS, maybe PDF… I am pretty sure that most of the users here are already familiar with PDF (Adobe’s common document format). Now, I know that I should immediately answer 2 questions:
1) What are SVG and EPS?
2) What do these terms have anything to do with BeFunky?
The world of digital artists, photographers and designers are full of with vector graphics, which are small in size, scalable, standard and portable. They make great use of these features in poster design, logo design, photo editing and digital creativity.
We recently developed a technology, which will be integrated as an update or a special feature to BeFunky and which will allow you to retrieve outputs of some of the effects in vector graphics format, such as SVG, EPS or PDF. For now I can easily say we are sure that the raster to vector conversion capability will be on BeFunky and we will push the limits of this technology as much as we can. Simply, I wanted to announce you that the technology is there and it’s just a matter of time to integrate it and present to you.
Just wait a bit more after BeFunky Plus is released and we will fulfill this need for vector representation of raster images. The academic paper of this algorithm will also be freely available.
Ladies and gentleman, keep in touch with BeFunky!
Posted in Technology | 3 Comments »
August 27th, 2009
Hey Everybody!
It’s me Tolga Birdal. 5.00 am in the morning, and I am silently deciding to write my first blog entry… Who am I? Then check BeFunky About Us Page. I was looking forward to introduce myself a while ago, but had to wait for BeFunky systems to settle down, and decide on what I should write about. Considering the changes in BeFunky technology now it’s a good time to write, because there are so many news, even I can’t remember what we have accomplished.
During recent months we, as BeFunky geeks, we were working on a new server side architecture that would provide a more stable, faster user experience to you guys. We have discussed many alternatives which were capable of serving hundreds of web requests in a second and simply decided to fly over the clouds. And what the hack is that?
Cloud computing is getting pretty popular these days for its dead-simple manageability and relatively lower cost. However it’s pretty hard to “compute” something in a computer which is not yours (they call the cloud computing units as virtual layers, and something virtual is simply something you only can imagine that you have), especially if image processing and complicated vision algorithms are the case. To put in simple words, a “real” server would do computation faster than a virtual one, both in theory and in practice. That’s why please allow me to say that flying over the clouds isn’t as simple as buying a plane ticket.
BeFunky team implemented a novel, more efficient core library than before, and adapted a new server side architecture that could communicate super fast internally. At the end we came up with a system that could access more memory and utilize the CPU better. This new power now enables us to perform our complicated algorithms even on slower computers. And now we could fly over the clouds… The guys here are pretty excited to share this hilarious experience with you on BeFunky.
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April 14th, 2009
It’s amazing how far we’ve come in the last 10 years. With digital cameras dropping in price and hard drive space getting more abundant and a lot less expensive, we can store a seemingly infinite number of photos in a relatively small amount of space. Unfortunately, those memories rarely leave our computers.

Children Playing
Gone are the days where bookshelves and coffee tables are stocked with family albums of captured moments and photos. So wouldn’t it be a nice surprise to throw all of those amazing memories into an album?
A fully illustrated album would make a great gift idea for Grandma and Grandpa who might not have access to a computer. Got a friend who’s graduating? An album featuring all the great times you’ve shared throughout the years can make an awesome grad gift.
By using BeFunky’s Photo Effects, you can make old photographs come alive in an exciting new way. Let your creative juices flow and get wild with your memories. Get started with BeFunky Photo Effects.

Posted in Photo Effects | 1 Comment »
April 13th, 2009
2 weeks ago we were at Stanford for Global Technology Symposium. This year the Global Technology Symposium hosted a start-up pitch competition for early stage companies. BeFunky applied for the competition and selected as one of the six finalists. We were honored to present BeFunky on the stage to a selection committee comprised of professional investors, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, August Capital, entrepreneurs, and executives from corporate technology giants, such as Microsoft. We received valuable feedback on our BeFunky platform. Photos from the event are here

GTS Presentation
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April 8th, 2009
We are proud to be selected as the best widget in social networking/photos category at Motorola MOTODEV Widget Developer Challenge. BeFunky Photo Effects widget that is created for Motorola mobile phones allow users to easily create photographically rich and artistic photo effects from their digital images. You can reach the announcement here. Here are some screenshots from the widget.

MOTODEV Competition BeFunky Screenshot
Posted in Announcements | 3 Comments »