Topit - The Interview

Topit, created by Einat Dotan, Dany Koren and Ira Morstyn, was nominated for the Europrix Multimedia Awards 2010. Topit won the award in their own category "online web projects", congratulations to them!

As far as educational background for this group goes, Einat has a degree in Interactive Graphic Design from the Holon Institute of Technology, Ira in Music Production & the Music Business from the Kingston University, as well as in Business Administration from The Interdisciplinary Center, and Dany a BSc in Computer Science from The Interdisciplinary Center.

The main inspiration for the project was simple; just like us, they had to come up with a project. After the initial idea they quickly realized there wasn't exactly anything like this already in the market. It was something that they wanted to use, but since they couldn't find an application that would do the job, they decided to create one themselves.

Currently the application is aimed for anyone, individuals and companies, as it was created primarily for fun use only. However, Einat and Ira hope that in the future the application will find its way to social media, and so gaining an established position in the media market.

It took the group about a year to create a final, solid application, however Einat joined Ira and Dany only after they had developed the product for about six months.

I was surprised to find out that they didn't actually have a proper project plan to start with. They just had a very general, yet great idea which they started developing. Ira did admit that the ideas varied a lot, and a lot of changes happened along the way. It was very important to them that every image could go deeper and deeper, having the possibility to create an entire story from a single picture.

As competing in the media field is never easy, Ira told me there are some similar products around; Picasa and Pixazza by Google. In spite of this Picasa only allows geotagging, and Pixazza is ran by a commercial team who tags the pictures for you, and therefore neither of them give the same kind of artistic freedom as Topit. Topit allows you to tag any part of the picture and add your own text, additional pictures, music or videos, or just simply link it with Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, Amazon, YouTube or Flickr.

When asked if either of them had been to Europrix before, both of them shook their heads and told me this was their first them, but they absolutely loved the whole experience.

I also wanted to know if they were currently part of any other projects, and Einat told me she has her own design studio that keeps her busy. She freelances whenever she has time. Ira instead is working in business development for a company called Picapp Technologies. Picapp is also an application that concentrates on making pictures interactive.

Any tips for someone starting a project?

Only start or take part of a project that really interests you. If the project does not motivate or inspire you in any way, you will not enjoy developing it, and it will most likely never get finished. Or, if you happen to manage to finish a project that doesn't interest you, it will most likely not match the expectations you had for it.