Rays, spotlights and reflections
There are three main constructs on Reflective: rays, spotlights and reflections. Rays and spotlights allow organizing user-posted media into structured collections. Both rays and spotlights can host multiple media objects like photos and videos and their respective metadata, like the date they were captured, their location, description and user comments. We call each such media object with its respective metadata a reflection.
Rays
Ray is a request a user can send to a specific point on the world map. Other Reflective users who are in proximity to that ray will be notified of it and can post their reflections to it. Only media captured at ray’s location can be posted as a reflection to a ray.
Example of use: You want to see how the house you grew up in looks today but you now leave in another city far away from it. Find that place on the map and send a ray there. Other users will take a photo of it for you.
To send a ray, select the floating ray button on Map screen and place the red marker on the map in the place you are interested in. Alternatively, just long tap on the map or select Send Ray from the main menu. Then write what you’d like to see.
Sending rays spends 5 karma points. Reflecting somebody else’s (non-friend) ray earns karma 10 points. Reflecting friend’s ray earns karma 2 points.
Spotlights
Spotlight is a collection of user’s own reflections, i.e. media objects like photos and videos and their respective metadata, like date they were taken, location, textual description that a user can publish. Spotlights can be placed on the map. You can allow other users to post reflections to your own spotlight (and specify whether their reflections should be geographically close to yours). Finally, you can disable re-sharing and comments.
Example of use: You and your friend go on a hiking trip and take a lot of photos and videos along the way. You can create a spotlight called “Our weekend hike” and post all photos and videos you took during the trip to it. Your friend can add her photos (or as we call them, reflections) to your spotlight, creating a more complete memory of the event. Additionally, the entire hike can be pictured on the map. Once spotlight is created, you can re-arrange the photos and videos in required sequence, add textual descriptions or record a voice over.
To create a spotlight use the floating spotlight button on Map or Social screen or select Create Spotlight from the main menu. Then select the Gallery button if you want to publish an existing photo video you already have on your device, or photo or video buttons if you want to capture new photo or video directly from Reflective app.
Creating a public spotlight earns 2 karma points. Adding a reflection to somebody else’s (non-friend) spotlight earns 1 karma point. Creating spotlights visible only to friends does not earn any karma points.
Visibility and Lifespan
On Reflective you are in control of who and for how long can see your posts. Rays and Spotlights have two main attributes: visibility and lifespan. Visibility defines who can see it: Everyone, your friends, your close friends, your family or only you. You can further customize these setting, for example, select Family group and add just one of your friends to it.
Lifespan defines for how long ray or spotlight will be exist. Once the lifespan is up, it will be deleted, taking all its reflections with it. You can preserve the memories of important events forever, while automatically deleting things that are not important in the long run.
Two faces
There are two home screens in Reflective app. One is a Map screen, on which you can browse an interactive world map to discover what is happening on our planet. The other one is a more traditional Social screen, where user posts are organized into various streams.
On Reflective we value creativity and original content. Only fresh media (no more than 90 days old) with geo-tags present can be posted on the map in spotlights or rays. However, any piece of content can be published on the Social screen, regardless of its age or attributes.
Social screen has multiple views. They are controlled via a floating button at the bottom left. It cycles through three views: Grid, Glance and Browsing.
- Grid view shows only the small thumbnails of all media in the given stream. Media belonging to different rays and spotlights is displayed as one constant stream, very similar to a gallery app on any mobile phone. It is useful for quickly finding the photo or video you need and them jumping to it to see other information associated with it, like text description, voice notes, location.
- Glance view shows media organized into scrollable horizontal ribbons. Each ribbon represents one ray or spotlight. In this view, some additional information is displayed over each reflection, lie the name of the user that’s captured it, number of views, number of sparks, location icon and sharing icon. Most importantly, the Reflect! button is displayed there too. It allows you to interact with this ray or spotlight by adding you own content to it. If it is blue, interaction is possible, if it is gray – it is not.
- Browsing view is the most detailed of them all and shows all available information about all rays or spotlights in selected stream and all of their reflections. In this mode, all reflections from all rays and spotlights on the tab form a single news feed, sorted chronologically. If so desired, each ray or spotlight can be consumed separately, as an illustrated story. To do that, just tap on the ray or spotlight title. All photos and videos are displayed inline with their descriptions, comments and all controls and indicators. Reflect! bar is also shown at the top of any selected ray or spotlight. If it is blue, interaction is possible.
Messenger
Reflective has it’s built-in instant messenger. Any type of content can be sent through it: text, images, videos, audio, documents. This is where funny cat videos go. If you’re tired of typing, it also supports voice messages. Messenger can also deliver rays, spotlights and reflections. Messenger is accessible via “Chats” item in the main menu or via a shortcut on the bottom menu.
Favorites
Any particular reflection you like on Reflective can be added to your Favorites collection. To add a reflection to Favorites, tap on the star at the top of the reflection. It will then be accessible via Favorites item on the main menu. The name of the ray or the spotlight that particular reflection belongs to would also be shown there, so you can always see them too (provided their lifespan hasn’t expired yet).
Where is everyone?
Reflective allows you to see where your friends and family are (with their permission). You can also make your location known to them. You control what specific users or groups can see your location. This is set via “My location visibility” item in the main menu. For location tracking features to work correctly, it may be necessary to exclude Reflective app from battery optimizations Android applies to all apps when the phone is sleeping.
Get your reward (experimental)
Reflective can only exist because of the great content you, users, post publicly. And we want to reward you for that. Any piece of content posted publicly gets karma points and our built-in cryptocurrency – Amalgam. The more other users like it, the higher the reward. In the future, these rewards you accumulate over time can then be used to buy things and services on Reflective, or be converted to fiat currencies through cryptocurrency exchanges. Please note: Amalgam is an experimental feature that is only available in select regions and to select users. We will notify you when it is ready for a global rollout.
To summarize:
- See something interesting and want to post photos or videos about it? Create a spotlight. If desired, spotlights can be placed on the map.
- Want to see faraway places – send rays there and describe what you want to see. Other Reflective users will respond with photos and videos (we call them reflections).
- Reflections can contain photos, videos and audio. They can also have a voice over.
- Use built-in instant messenger for quick conversations.
- See where everyone is on the map using location tracking.
- Get rewards when you post publicly.