Turn your phone into a billboard
Whether it is a photo of your favourite book cover, or a portrait by an obscure artist, there is something for everyone’s ‘‘small billboard’’.
And although most mobile phone owners choose to have family photos on their home screen, some people prefer scenery, or artwork.
‘‘If you don’t like to put your family images there, it’s just another screen and with most of them being five-and-a-half inches now, it’s like a small billboard in your pocket,’’ Wellington app designer Ana Lyubich said.
‘‘You look at it about 100 times a day, and can close and open different apps, but the home screen is always there, so why not use it for something meaningful.’’
Excio is an app which offers mobile users an array of homescreen backgrounds, as well as providing exposure to photographers, artists and museums.
Lyubich, the co-founder and chief executive of Ad Cloud, the company behind Excio, said it offered more than 2000 images to choose from, including book cover illustrations and work from exhibits.
Most of the photos were from New Zealanders, of New Zealand, but there were also images of art from galleries in the United States, she said.
Lyubich and her partner, Vlad Dolgov, are now gearing up to tackle the Chinese market.
Excio differs from other home screen photo apps because it allows users to swipe down from the image to learn the name of the piece and the artist or photographer.
From there, they could read a brief description of the image, and see more from the person who created it.
‘‘All other apps … are like posters on the wall, you need to take down and put another one up from time to time, so it’s just a static image that doesn’t give you any information about the story behind the image,’’ Lyubich said.
Some of the big names taking advantage of the app include Te Papa, Staglands Wildlife Reserve, and the Wellington City Library, using it as a tool to showcase art, exhibition pieces, books, and animals.
‘‘What is interesting is that you can discover new content from artists and photographers you have not heard of before … you get to see so many photos which are extremely beautiful,’’ she said.
Lyubich hoped to grow the app in ‘‘as many parts of the world as possible’’.
‘‘And that’s mostly to give exposure to all the talent that is in the world, because there is a lot of talented people who just don’t have a way to break through and be discovered. I want to bring all these meaningful images to the screen.’’
The app is available only on Android phones, but would be available on iPhones within a year, she said.