Aurigma’s motto is “Your upload partner”. It means we are doing our best to help customers in solving file transfer problem in wide range of fields. We offer solutions not only for somebody working on a web site and needing “just an uploader”, additionally, we are searching for areas for which we could have ready-to-use solutions. It allows customers to get solutions fitting their requirements closer as well as saving their time and money invested to their projects.

Today I am proud to introduce our Photo Order plug-in for VirtueMart. This solution is useful for everyone who has plans to utilize this CMS engine in photo printing or instant printing solutions. Among the feature I would highlight:

• Integration with VirtueMart products catalog.
• User-friendly interface.
• Support of multiple files being uploaded from client computers.
• “Drag and drop” zone for uploads.
• Easy installation.
• Export of orders to DPOF format.

The additional information can be found in our “Community Projects” section:

• Photo Order component for VirtueMart.
• DPOF component for VirtueMart.

Here is a screenshot how VirtueMart Photo Order plug-in looks like:

Hello everyone,

Several years passed since I have about Twitter for the first time. All this time it was unclear to me why it created such a big hype. However now I felt that it is a really impressive communication channel. That's why I decided to create a Twitter account for Aurigma. 

Follow us on Twitter to get latest information about our products and our plans, and of course to communicate us. :)

Today we released Photo Kiosk 2.1. This new release has two major improvements:

• Now Photo Kiosk can print memorial receipt with detailed information about submitted order.
• Now users can specify folders on removable media where to search for photos. This way if you have a flash card with 4Gb of photos you do not need to browse through thousands of them to print several ones from last after-party. If you have photos sorted by folders, you can just specify the folder with needed photos on the first step and order them through Photo Kiosk saving your time.

The full list of improvements and bug fixes can be found in what’s new.

Aurigma has more than 7 years experience on the market of Web upload solutions. You can find our products on many web sites all over the Internet. Today I would like to introduce our new product based on Flash technology.

Currently there are 4 widespread technologies allowing uploading files from client machines to web sites: ActiveX, Java, Flash, and Silverlight. Each of these technologies has its own pros and cons:

• ActiveX allows using native C/C++ code to get best performance and access to low-level OS functionality. However, ActiveX controls are supported in IE only. Of course, it still holds more than 50% of the browsers market but it is obviously not sufficient for publically available web site. Also there are security aspects with ActiveX components – some companies do not allow ActiveX controls in browsers on client machines by network security policies.
• Java - powerful, mature and widespread cross-platform technology. Google says that more that 80% of Internet-enabled computers have Java installed. Java Uploader - it is a solution working on Windows, Mac, and sometimes - on *nix, supported by the major browsers: Opera (win/mac), Firefox (win/mac/linux), Chrome (win), IE (win). Which contras does it have? It is slower than ActiveX. Most browsers restrict memory available for applets to 60-90Mb, so it is rather tricky to process large amounts of data. There are several Java implementations provided by different vendors, each potentially may have its own features and restrictions.
• Flash - absolute winner in popularity, at least on Windows/Mac. It is installed on more than 90% of Internet-enabled computers (thanks to YouTube) and very-very popular. Flash has reputation of "safe" client-side technology. But, "safe" always means "restricted" - and you can notice that Image Uploader Flash has fewer features in comparison to its “big brothers” – Java and ActiveX.
• Silverlight – in terms of upload functionality this Microsoft technology is very similar to Adobe Flash.

Historically Aurigma utilizes two of these technologies in its flagship product Image Uploader Dual: ActiveX and Java. This trick allows covering major currently used browsers. Sometime ago we started to think about third component for a perfect upload solution - Flash Image Uploader. The main strength of which is that it works almost on every client computer. It may be used as fallback solution in cases when Image Uploader Dual cannot be started on client machine. Flash still will be much better solution, than silly "browse" button. This product will meet requirement of our clients who do not need “heavy” functionality, like processing large images client-side or sophisticated user interface. Or it may be an additional option for sites, which want to provide their visitors with really rich choice.

During years of work on the market of upload solutions we accumulated experience in the field of file and image transfer. While working on new our product we used it to create flexible and simple solution. You should not implement any HTML-controls to make Image Uploader Flash work on your site. You should not write additional JavaScript code to embed Adobe Flash Player and so on. We have already done it for you. New generation of client scripts, ASP.NET and PHP controls allow you to save your time. The product will come with samples and we encourage you to use them as starting point for your code. Our goal is to provide you with solution that just works. And we hope that you will like it.

Here is how Image Uploader Flash looks:

If you would like to see Image Uploader Flash in action, it is available on our site: http://demo.aurigma.com/imageuploaderflash.

Visual WebGui allows core and web developers to develop data centric enterprise Ajax driven applications, in a simple way using Visual Basic and Window Forms visual drag & drop experience and skills. If somebody who uses this toolkit would like to integrate it with Image Uploader, our colleagues from Gizmox Team created sample application demonstrating how to achieve it: How to implement Visual WebGui custom control.

Hello everybody!

Just want to let you know that I am going to visit PMA 2010 expo which will take place in Anaheim, CA from Feb 21 through Feb 23. If anyone is interested to meet me and discuss some deals regarding our products or whatever else, feel free to drop me a note at a.simontsev @ aurigma.com.

First of all, new Image Uploader supports the freshly released Firefox 3.6. Firefox is admired for its stability, speed and crossplatform compatibility. So, we do our best and keep up with the latest releases by Mozilla.

Image Uploader 6.5 got some new web app samples.

The purpose of the set of web app samples is to illustrate typical uploader integration cases. The samples are constantly being improved. The newly released Image Uploader 6.5 brings three new web samples at once. They are invaluable for those who want to upload to cloud storages: Amazon S3 and Nirvanix.

Integration of Image Uploader with Amazon S3 and Nirvanix can be a bit tricky, but now we have done the biggest part of the work for you. We strongly recommend seeing those samples, if you are a cloud storage user. The samples come with the Image Uploader 6.5 package.

As usual, Image Uploader contains fixes for bugs reported by our users. To see the list of new features and bug fixes, we recommend checking the full list of 6.5 improvements.

Be sure to post any feedback regarding the new version to info@aurigma.com or to the support case system.

Hi there,

This is just a quick update. We have opened a toll-free number. Feel free to call us at 800-661-8190.

Old number is still alive, so you can still use it, but I would recommend to use the new one. Phone call are not immediately forwarded from old number, so you will have to wait extra 3-4 rings before we answer you.

A few weeks ago we released new version of Graphics Mill – 5.5. Looking through the what’s new list, everybody finds out that the major change in the product is a new module called AJAX Vector Objects. I'd say that this is a good module. A very useful one.

Using this module you can easily add functionality to your application allowing for combining images, text and shapes or annotating images interactively. Your users will add images, shapes and text to an image; rotate, resize and move objects using mouse or keyboard, hide and show objects. Finally, the control is able to save combined images, shapes and text strings for future use, to continue editing or to render them to a destination image. You can store an image for preview purposes or submit it for printing.

Here's a screenshot of a simple user interface implemented using the AJAX Vector Objects.

Now let us go through two cases where such functionality would be helpful.

Almost everybody who is working in the field of image processing came across a problem of creating some sort of an interactive designer. Reason may vary. For example, if you are creating a site allowing your customers to order photo products for printing (like T-shirts, caps, puzzles, etc), you would love to have an interactive online designer that would allow for creating these products on your site. The idea behind this is quite simple: your customer comes to your site, chooses a product to order and then interactively customizes the looks – adds an image, text captions and so on.

Another field of application for the new module can be the preflight tools. Suppose you have a web to print solution that allows for ordering prints online. On the final stage, i.e. before printing, the customer should approve design. This way, AJAX Vector Objects can be used to create a solution for annotating designs: customers open the tool and interactively pinpoint specific details to be changed and write how they'd like them to be changed.

Of course, AJAX Vector Objects usage scenarios are not limited to the two above ones. I just suggested two usage cases that are well-known in the field of image processing. If you need some sort of an editor or an annotating tool, AJAX Vector Objects will provide you with the required functionality.

Almost everybody in IT world knows that Microsoft is going to release two new operation systems in this October. It will be brand new Windows 7 and major update for Windows 2008 – 2008 R2. Several months ago we decided to get prepared to these new Windows versions in advance and test our Image Uploader with them.

First of all we were interested in Windows 7 as in a client platform where both Image Uploader ActiveX and Java will be launched in browsers. We have not found any major issues with previous versions of Image Uploader 6.x here.

Secondly we checked Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 from server platforms point of view. As we all know from Microsoft buzz these upcoming versions of Windows will have new Internet Information Services 7.5. And unfortunately it was a surprise for us here. IIS 7.5 did not want to recognize POST requests sent by Image Uploader 5.x and previous 6.x as a properly formed and returned HTTP error 400. So we had to spend some time and figure out what was wrong with requests. We found the reason and new Image Uploader 6.1.4 will be free of this problem. This new Image Uploader release will be avialable on our site by September, 19. Unfortunately if somebody is going to use Image Uploader with IIS7.5 as a server-side, you will need to have a version of Image Uploader not earlier than 6.1.4.

So Aurigma is ready for new Microsoft releases and upcoming Image Uploader 6.1.4 will be compatible with Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2.