It’s been a million kind of week. Instagram, that hip photo sharing iPhone app that makes your images look like an old Polaroid™ or a Lomo, announced on Tuesday that they had passed the 1 million user mark. In just over two months, the image taking, cool filter applying, and social sharing service has gained huge traction. Nick Bilton, writing for the Bits blog in the NY Times, speaks to its addictive nature. “Over the last two months I’ve watched friends become slightly obsessed with Instagram. I have too,” says Bilton. “We constantly check to see new photos from friends and engage in chatty conversations with strangers around the globe about their images.”
What makes the service so appealing? Certainly it’s possible to share images with others on sites like Flickr, TwitPic, or Plixi? What’s different about Instagram? Bilton thinks its in the balance. “Instagram’s ease of use and balance of simplicity, speed and artistic filters,” combined with the ability to share out to Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare is what is attracting users.
Wired writer Clive Thompson suggests that Instagram is successful because it’s “so perfectly simple, with none of crufty bells and whistles that plague, say, Facebook. You just see something and — boom — in about 15 seconds you’ve shared it with everyone in your network. And while, sure, there are photos on Facebook and Twitter, it turns out there’s something weirdly hypnotic about following the lives of your friends through nothing but images.”
It’s that singular focus that makes Instagram so fast. But the filters are what add such a strong artistic element to the images shared. The mundane becomes extraordinary, and the everyday becomes unique. For Thompson, Instagram has changed the way he views the world. “Instagram’s image-altering filters are a key part of my visual awakening, because they often take meh photographs and render them newly weird, making me look at the subjects in a new way.”
Instagram is available for free on the iTunes App Store.
The developers at Occipital have noticed that Apple has built in Gyroscope features into Mobile Safari with iOS 4.2. It seems like they’re the first to notice it and release a proof of concept using the functionality.
So really, the only thing this “finding” sheds light on is that the gyroscope is accessible from Mobile Safari. So, it’s more likely that we’ll see this functionality built into a game, or an application before we see it included in an augmented reality web application.
The California Public Employee’s Retirement System (CalPERS) thinks that Apple needs to upgrade their board election process. According to the group, Apple’s board members should have to receive a majority vote to keep their seat on Apple’s board.
Apparently the biggest U.S. public pension fund has their panties in a bunch because board directors are a little too difficult to oust during board reorganizations. Apple hasn’t responded to their request, and we don’t expect them to either. Why would Apple care what CalPERS thinks or wants? It’s not the Apple way, is it?
In response to Apple’s opposition, CalPERS has submitted an advisory shareholder resolution that will receive a vote in February during the company’s annual meeting.
Apple isn’t the only company to be pressured from the group. According to MacNN, CalPERS has also requested that 58 other companies make similar changes to their board election process, and only 20 replied.
Are you worried about how your noggin would hold up should you wake up without any hair? If you’re honest with yourself, do you think you might be bald at some point in the near future? PiVi has put together another fine iPhone application that lets you manipulate your headshot image to reveal what you would look like without all of your precious locks.
The application works automagically, and it lets you use a recently snapped photo or a photo from your gallery as the primary image. BaldBooth also lets you share the image with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.
So, do us a favor. If you’re rocking an ugly Christmas sweater this holiday season, snap a pick and run it through Baldbooth then share it with us on Twitter. We could use the laugh while we’re out battling the last minute shopping lines.
BaldBooth is now the third application in the Pivi lineup. They’ve also created such gems as FatBooth and AgingBooth.
National Geographic has released the ultimate dinosaur reference guide for kids as an iPad application. The application, titled Ultimate Dinopedia: The Most Complete Dinosaur Reference Ever, is currently on the App Store for $5.99, but before you get all up in arms over the price, you should know that it’s worth every single penny.
The Ultimate Dinopedia is full of amazing illustrations, and a boat load of video and interactive elements that effectively demonstrate how these giants from our past lived and interacted.
This digital dinosaur encyclopedia has up to date information on over 700 of the dinos, and it’s been getting a lot of accolades from teachers and associations in the U.S. for its teaching qualities. Both the National Science Teachers Association and the Children’s Book Council have given their approval of the application as an “Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students K-12.” If your kid is into dinosaurs, you want this app. It’s phenomenal. National Geographic is playing up their Ultimate Dinopedia as an application for kids, but I have to wonder how many adults are returning to their childhood with the help of the application. I know I did. At least this time around I know how to say their names properly.
Oh yeah, if your little one’s prone to nightmares, you might want to take the application for a spin first. As you can see from the image above, they don’t shy away from the dino-on-dino cannibalism.
On that note, what do you think dinomeat tastes like? Steak or Chicken?
Manchester City is is planning on launching an iPhone app in the New Year which is co-created by fans. It will offer exclusive content from the football club.
The app for Man City is being made by London-based agency Aqueduct, and it will feature stats, scores, commentary and videos, perfect for fans. It’s also planed that it will have features enabled so that fans can also share the information in it on Facebook and Twitter.
Ian Cafferky, Manchester City’s chief of brand and commercial officer, said:
“When designing the app we knew it not only needed to look slick and be extremely useful, but most importantly fun to use, be it down the pub with friends or in the stands with your family.
The app is only the beginning and will constantly evolve and get better with time, that’s why we created a blog for fans to leave their feedback and ideas.”
The app won’t be free, but there is currently no price confirmation.
They have been posting videos of the app’s progress so fans can see what they have designed and how it works. It seems a pretty amazing way to get folks involved, and I’m sure that it’s a great way to market an app too. They also announced in their laest blog post that fans can test the app over the holiday period, just follow the Man City blog for more details.
The fine folks behind Things have finally spoken-up publicly, through the written word, about the upcoming cloud sync service they will be releasing for Things.
The post is worth a read if you’re interested in the complexities of syncing data across various networks, and the problems associated with doing the transfers (merging multiple datasets).
There’s no mention of over the air (OTA) syncing in their post, outside of alluding to the problem of updating your data on a mobile device and then having it push the data through to the sync process.
The Cultured Code team is going to be releasing a series of posts explaining the process of creating their syncing platform, through which they’ll probably reveal more details about what we can expect.
So if OTA syncing in Things is of importance to you, you’re going to want to make sure you’ve subscribed to their feed.
After a week of software updates last week, the boys and girls in Cupertino are wanting users to fire up Software Update again for a new set of updates:
iPhoto 9.1.1
Introduced earlier this year, iPhoto 9 gave us new features like full-screen editing, improved social media integration and new print options. This update includes new options for emailing photos and stability fixes. The update also includes:
Adds a preference allowing photos to be emailed using an external email application
Adds “Classic” and “Journal” themes to email.
Photos attached to an email can now be sized to Small, Medium or Large
Improves reliability when upgrading a library from an earlier version of iPhoto
iPhoto now correctly preserves the sort order of Events after upgrading a library
Event titles displayed in headers can now be edited in Photos view
Addresses a problem that could cause duplicate photos to be added to a MobileMe album
Scrolling overlay now correctly displays ratings when photos are sorted by rating
Photos are now sorted correctly when a rating is changed and photos are sorted by rating
Fixes a problem that could cause text formatting controls to become inaccessible when editing a calendar
The second update of the day is far less popular than iPhoto, but still important. Here’s how Apple describes this utility:
iPhone Configuration Utility lets you easily create, maintain, encrypt, and install configuration profiles, track and install provisioning profiles and authorized applications, and capture device information including console logs.
While the average user uses iTunes to setup and configure iPhones, for IT staff with numerous iPhones to manage, this utility is a must-have.
It’s been a million kind of week. Instagram, that hip photo sharing iPhone app that makes your images look like an old Polaroid™ or a Lomo, announced on Tuesday that they had passed the 1 million user mark. In just over two months, the image taking, cool filter applying, and social sharing service has gained huge traction. Nick Bilton, writing for the Bits blog in the NY Times, speaks to its addictive nature. “Over the last two months I’ve watched friends become slightly obsessed with Instagram. I have too,” says Bilton. “We constantly check to see new photos from friends and engage in chatty conversations with strangers around the globe about their images.”
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December 22, 2010
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