Today we presented iLovePhotos at the Hawaii Mac and Apple Users Society. About 15 people showed up and they asked a lot of questions. The presentation pretty much went without a hitch thanks to all the endless days and nights the team’s been putting into making ILP solid. We even demoed some stuff I wasn’t sure about (like address book sync) and it all went smoothly. Katharine and Oliver were both there and Katharine got it all on video.

Special thanks to Eugene and Terrence for the opportunity to present to their group. Apparently they liked us so much, we’ve been invited to present at the “Mactoberfest”! Awesome.

It is my pleasure to announce that we've just hit beta on iLovePhotos! This is a very early Closed Beta release which means that we're still fixing things day and night. We hope that you enjoy this release, as it presents a significant improvement over the current Alpha!

We’ll be gradually rolling out to the people on the beta list over the course of the summer. If you’ve signed up, hold tight and you’ll be hearing from us soon. For those of you who have already been invited, any and all feedback you have for us is invaluable. We'd love to hear about any bugs you find, suggestions you have, or any kind of general feedback. By being a part of our beta program you're helping us create the best possible desktop photo experience on the planet. We'd truly appreciate you taking the time to download and use our software.

We've got an entirely new interface, which we've spent countless hours perfecting. It isn't as cluttered as the old one and provides a much cleaner experience.

We went back to the drawing board with our tagger and have created an all new tagging mode. This new mode helps you tag faster than you ever have before. It also provides quick-and-easy thumbs-up or thumbs-down rating functionality, to help you keep track of your favorite photos – or to help you hide those photos you aren't exactly proud of.

Keep an eye out for updates, because in the next week or two we are going to release two awesome new features: Smart Slideshows and Automatic Sharing!

With Smart Slideshows, iLovePhotos will begin automatically creating personalized slideshows on the fly as you tag your photos. Automatic Sharing is going under the knife for a complete overhaul, and will be in your hands in early July!

Welcome to the new and improved Blue Lava Technologies website and blog. It’s been a long time coming, but after two years of development we’re finally ready to take the covers off of our beautiful stealth project – iLovePhotos.com.

As we launch iLovePhotos.com into a formal closed beta we’ve also completely redone our corporate website and added a little more information about exactly what we’re doing. iLovePhotos introduces visual tagging as a completely new way of organizing your photos.

Our technology goes further than just letting you tag your photos quickly. Unlike any other platform in the world, we actually do something with the data you took so much time to input. Our automatic slideshow engine analyses all the information around your photos and instantly creates entertaining slideshows on the fly for you to enjoy on any platform – iPod, Mobile Phone, and TV.

As we open up our Beta, I’d really love to hear your feedback. iLovePhotos has been an intense labor of love for everyone on the Blue Lava Tech team, and we’re determined to make it amazing. We can only do that with extensive feedback from our users. Please take the time to talk to us – we’ll listen.