Microsoft Garage is a place where the company’s developers can experiment and try out new ideas or showcase technologies that they’re working on. Over the years, MS Garage has given us such apps as the Word Flow keyboard, the Arrow launcher, the Next Lock Screen and so on. And now, a new Garage project is seeing the light of day, called Thinga.me.
Thinga.me allows users to collect “things, not photos” and share them in collections with friends or family. The app is based on Microsoft’s imaging services, that can automatically crop out objects and save them independently.
Thinga.me is a bit similar to Pinterest, in that you collect cutouts and pin them on a board, or display. But that’s where the similarities end as Thinga.me doesn’t seem to go for the whole social network aspect. Instead, the developers explain the app"s focus:
As a team, we"ve been frustrated that there aren"t decent tools that allow us to digitize these physical things in a way that makes them look great, and allows us to organize them and, if we want, share them with others. Thinga.Me is designed to fill this gap. This simple act of removing an item from its background starts to make it feel less like a photo and more like a physical thing, even though it"s still a digital representation. With this as a starting point, we added cool themes which really allow you to show off your stuff.
Thinga.me is currently in closed beta, and it’s only available on iOS right now, though you can browse a number of collections and get an idea of what the app is all about on its webpage. If you want to join the beta you can apply here.
Via: SlashGear