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With so many social networks and cloud storage services out there, it can become ridiculously hard to manage them all. Many of us are trying to be everywhere at once, while others just wish everyone else would make up their minds where the best virtual hangout is. Some are torn between their Facebook and Twitter friends, or can’t decide whether to post that photo on Instagram or Photobucket. It can all become overwhelming very fast.
Fortunately, a number of developers have had these same thoughts and aimed to help consolidate your life in the cloud. There are apps that help you post to multiple networks at the same time, apps that let you see all your friends social activity in one place, apps that help you collaborate with colleagues regardless of what tools they choose, and even apps to help you keep your own content in order. This post will highlight a few of these to help you make the most of your life in the cloud.
It’s well known that visual media is extremely popular online and this is especially true when it comes to social media. While it’s cool to read about what someone is doing, it’s even cooler to see a picture of it. This is why photo sharing has been such a huge hit recently. Instagram was already the hot topic in social before it was even acquired by Facebook. So where can you go next?
Many believe the next logical step after pictures is moving pictures and there are a few Android apps vying to make that market pop such as Telly and Viddy. There are a number of other contenders, but these two are almost blatantly trying to give their users that Instagram appeal. From the layout of the interface to the availability of fancy video filters, Telly and Viddy are definitely going head-to-head, and we’ll be following them with a thorough comparison.
Twas the week before Christmas, when all through the Android community, there was actually quite a lot going on. As one might expect, one of the final weeks before the end of the year and less than a month before CES 2013 did not bring a plethora of new device announcements but we did see a few app updates and plans to upgrade a number of phones to more recent versions of the OS.
Android has had yet another big week with a bevy of app updates making their way onto the platform, some new device announcements thrown into the mix and interesting developments with Android’s main competitors. In our This Week in Android roundup for the past 7 days, we’ll take a quick look at all of this. (more…)
Everyone loves sharing and looking at photos. That’s why social networking sites are so hard to stay away from — that’s why Facebook bought Instagram and Google+’s latest app design places such high emphasis on photos.
If you find yourself catching up with friends and families’ photos on a daily basis – or stalking your favorite celebrities through theirs – Pixable will let you get the job done in half the time.
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When Facebook bought Instagram last month for the cool price of $1 billion, my Twitter feed showed nothing else for about six hours after the announcement. It was big news, especially seeing as it was the biggest acquisition Facebook had ever made. It also caused instant chatter in the tech world, including those jokes (“Why did Zuckerberg pay $1 billion for Instagram when he could have downloaded it for free?”) which raised a slight chuckle the first time you read them but started to grate slightly when every third person was retweeting them.
These apps are not just ones that I found within the last week. These are apps that I’ve been using every day for months. Some are for the average user, some require a special demographic, but all in all they’re apps that I can’t do without.
There are a lot of photography apps on Android. And, thanks to Instagram being iOS-exclusive for so long, many of these apps compete exclusively with it.
I must admit, I didn’t “get” Instagram until someone explained to me that it was like Twitter, except instead of having 140 characters to communicate, you have one square photograph at a time. The actual app side of it (the filters, the frames, the interface), while nice, seems to be second to that social networking aspect. That explains why Facebook paid $1 billion for it, then.
Personally, I’m not interested in joining yet another social network unless it has a really compelling reason, and while I can see why a network centered around photography would appeal to some, it doesn’t appeal to me. Without that, what remains is a selection of decent effects and an easy interface – and although these are cool, they’re not cool enough to make me embrace Instagram as the One True photo app.
So that’s why I’m not using Instagram. But I know that many people love it! What about you?
It seems like there’s no end to the buzz around Instagram, the uber-popular photo sharing app initially released to iPhone users back in 2010. First the launch of the Android version two weeks ago, then the surge of new users (10 million in 10 days), and then the acquisition of the company by Facebook. But does the app deserve all the attention it’s getting in the Play Store?
For those of you who came in late, Instagram lets you take photos, apply filters to spice them up and then share them with the world on social networks. The app is free to use and now boasts a community of over 40 million users worldwide. Since it took so long to reach Android users, other developers created photo apps incorporating similar functionality. Let’s shoot a few pictures and see how Instagram holds up on this platform.
It has been a big couple of weeks for Instagram. It launched on Android to a very warm reception – over five million downloads in six days - secured $50 million in funding, and then was purchased by Facebook for $1 billion (yes, with a B). That’s a lot of goings ons for a free app that just recently went multi-platform and isn’t even in its terrible twos.
But no matter what you think of the acquisition itself, there’s no denying that a lot can, and probably will, change for Instagram and its community over the coming months. Here I’m going to speculate a bit on what those changes may be.
