I took a business trip recently, and it was a big deal. Even if it was nothing major for anyone else, it was a big deal for me. The trip was full of promise and opportunity. I made sure to capture all its key moments with my phone. When I got back, I didn’t want to stick all those photos into a bland, blue Facebook album.
I used Jux, because it lets me design the whole experience out to every edge of every screen. Jux just launched crop control for photos, so the Jux album of my trip looks just right on every device. A Jux isn’t a blog. It’s more like a portfolio. Each piece stands on its own.
Jux appreciates how sensuous and tangible the Web can be now. We’ve got so many ways to push and pull and play with the content. It flows onto different screens with different input methods. Some we touch with our fingertips. Others we click with a cursor. The stories have to live in all those places.
But to do a great job of that on our own is hard work, over the heads of most of us. Jux does the hard part for us and makes our decisions easy. We just choose the stories we want to tell and the objects with which we want to tell them. Jux puts them where they’re supposed to go.
It launched on the Web in August. It was optimized for the iPad in October. In December, the full-screen iPhone view arrived. Now, regardless of which device you use to visit a Jux, you see a version that fits the screen and responds to the right clicks, taps or swipes.
It uses a mixture of smart algorithms and basic cues from the user to shift around the content ever so slightly, so you don’t have to worry much about how your Jux will look on the different screens.
Jux has six kinds of posts so far: BlockQuote, Article, Photo, Video, SlideShow and CountDown. You can upload photos from your computer, grab them from a URL, or log straight into Flickr, Facebook or Instagram and get photos from there.
You can choose the colors and typography, as well as the basic shape of the layout. You can also apply some interesting photo effects. Jux will rearrange all these things for different devices while being true to your design decisions.
When you’re done, you can share the URL of your Jux, or you can embed it straight into a blog post or webpage. It’s smart enough to reflow into any screen.
Jux is still a little slow on handheld devices. But the promise of the tool is still exciting. There’s no need to surrender your stories to Facebook’s lightbox and other cruft anymore. You don’t have to worry about blogging your exploits on a regular basis. You’re free from the concept of a timeline. Jux is a hint of the true promise of computerized storytelling.
My Jux SlideShow from my trip to San Francisco:
