Instagram

Instagram is rolling out an update today for its iPhone app bringing two major new features, including a redesigned Explore tab and improved search functionality. The company said the updates will “help connect our community to the world as it happens,” or in other words, a more real-time experience thanks to new trending Tags and Places within the Explore tab.

With more than 70 million photos and videos posted to Instagram every day, wherever something is happening, chances are you can see it here. Whether it’s behind the scenes at the NBA Finals, on the runway with the latest fashion trend at a favorite club with a local band, people are capturing moments large and small on Instagram. But, until now, there’s never been an easy way to find these moments.

On top of the new trending tags and places in Explore, the company said it will be adding curated collections of images based on various themes, such as specific people or places, and featuring content from across the network.

The updated Explore feature is first rolling out to users in the US as part of the 7.0 update for iPhone that also adds improved search functionality:

For everyone on Instagram, we’ve dramatically improved the ability to find what you’re looking for. With the new Places Search, you can now peer in at just about any location on earth, allowing you to scout out your next vacation spot in the South Pacific, get a look inside that hot new restaurant or experience your favorite music festival — even if you couldn’t make it this year. The new Top Search also lets you search across people, places and tags all at once.

You can grab Instagram version 7.0 for iOS on the App Store now.

Latest Flickr iOS app mimics Camera Roll view as it offers to auto-upload all your iPhone photos

Ben Lovejoy May 7 2015 - 5:12 am PT

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Flickr has made a significant update to its iOS app, revamping the look to mimic that of your iPhone’s Camera Roll and bringing the auto-upload feature added back in 2013 front-and-center. When you first run the app, it immediately asks if you want to automatically upload every photo you take. If you say yes, photos are set to private, so you won’t be sharing them with the world.

With Flickr offering 1TB of free storage, and a typical iPhone photo coming in at around 2.5Mb, that gives you capacity in the order of half a million photos …
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Instagram introduces three new filters and support for emoji in hashtags

Mike Beasley Apr 27 2015 - 10:19 am PT

Instagram announced today that three new photo filters will be making their way to the photo sharing app later today through an update on the iOS App Store. The new filters are called Lark, Reyes, and Juno, and are focused on enhancing outdoor photography.

These new filters are just the first of many, as the app’s development team has promised to add new filters more regularly in future updates.

First look: Clear, the iOS app that vets your social media history for indiscretions

Ben Lovejoy Apr 22 2015 - 6:10 am PT

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Going for a sensitive job, or just friended your new romantic interest on Facebook, and want to make sure your drunken post from six months ago isn’t going to come back to bite you? That’s the experience Hipster co-founder Ethan Czahor had when he was hired as Jeb Bush’s chief technology officer. Journalists went digging and found some extremely embarrassing posts that led to his resignation.

He’s now put that experience to good use, though, beta-launching Clear, an app which aims to vet your social media history for offensive or insulting posts and offer you the ability to delete them (not to be confused with the to-do list app of the same name). I decided to take it for a quick spin …
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Apple Watch app developers say it’s all about timely notifications

Ben Lovejoy Apr 10 2015 - 6:34 am PT

Apple was clear with developers from the start that the Apple Watch is all about “quick, easy looks” rather than lengthy interactions, and it seems the message has been taken on board by major brands, reports the WSJ.

“If people use their desktop computers for hours at a time and their phones for minutes at a time, we think people will use the Watch for seconds at a time,” said Shayne Sweeney, an engineering manager at Facebook’s photo-sharing site Instagram, which created a Watch app.

Adam Grossman, founder of the Dark Sky weather app, echoed the comment.

Who wants to keep their wrists up to their face for many minutes?

Expedia’s chief product officer John Kim said the company was focusing mostly on itinerary-focused push notifications.

Instead of “pulling” information from websites or apps, users will want relevant information “pushed” to them at the most useful moments.

With American Airlines’ Kevin MacFarland agreeing.

The goal is the right information at the right time.

Apple revealed last year that the watch offers both “short and long looks,” with not even a touch needed to switch between the two.

Instagram iOS app adding Fade and Color tools, post notifications

Jordan Kahn Apr 7 2015 - 10:48 am PT

2 Comments

Instagram is adding a few new features to its iOS app this week including two new creative tools for editing photos and a new post notifications feature.

For the two new creative tools, the Fade feature offers “a quiet tone to your photos by softening colors,” while the Color tool allows you to apply a yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, blue, cyan or green tint to the shadows and highlights in your photos.

Also new in the updated Instagram app is a Post Notifications feature that allows you to receive notifications when people you follow post once enabled: You will see an option to “Turn on Post Notifications.

The updated Instagram app, version 6.10.0, will hit the App Store this week.

Instagram’s new Layout app automatically generates photo collages

Jordan Kahn Mar 23 2015 - 10:21 am PT

3 Comments

Instagram today released a new app called Layout that lets users easily stitch together multiple photos by automatically generating layouts to make a collage of sorts.
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Twitterrific 5 for iOS updated w/ multi-image support, videos, animated GIFs, more

Ben Lovejoy Jan 26 2015 - 6:11 am PT

[vimeo 117635973 w=1000 h=563]

The Twitterific iOS app has been updated to version 5.9, with a bunch of useful extra features.

The app now supports multiple images in the timeline, allowing you to view them as a slideshow or tap directly on the thumbnail you want to view, as well as allowing you to tweet multiple images yourself. Many videos now play directly in the timeline, as do animated GIFs. Supported videos include Vine, Instagram and Moby.

Instagram photos also open within the app, you can view a user’s mentions by tapping and holding their avatar, and media links now open the source page. The full change-log appears below.
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Instagram hits 300M monthly actives, rolls out verified user badges & deactivates spammy accounts

Jordan Kahn Dec 10 2014 - 8:28 am PT

Instagram announced today that it’s now at 300 million monthly active users, up from 200 million users that it announced approximately nine months ago. The company is announcing the new milestone on its website alongside other update user stats.

In addition, Instagram is today rolling out verified badges for brands and public figures while announcing it’s making a “significant effort to remove spammy and fake accounts”:
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These are the most popular non-Apple apps people keep on their homescreens

Ben Lovejoy Nov 26 2014 - 5:02 am PT

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You don’t need to go any further than iTunes to see the most popular iPhone apps, but a couple of days after Betaworks launched #Homescreen, an app which allows people to share their homescreens on Twitter, we thought it would be interesting to check the results so far. The above image was the result at the time of writing.

#Homescreen is an app with a single function: it allows you to share your current iPhone homescreen on Twitter. Betaworks uses image-recognition to identify the apps, and pulls together a constantly-updated image showing the most popular dock and homescreen apps.

Betaworks excludes Apple’s own apps, but does note that “between 45 percent and 65 percent of the home screens examined had replaced Apple’s default apps with third-party options,” reports TechCrunch.

One trend the company noted in a Medium blog post is the growing popularity of third-party messaging apps.

Facebook is Messenger is on 14% of people’s homescreen, Whatsapp is on 12 percent, Snapchat is on 11%, Path on 5 percent (while snapchat and path arent straight messaging app’s, worth noting them here for comparison), Groupme 4.7%, HipChat on 2.6 percent, Line on 1.5 percent, Viber 1%, Kik is on 0.5 percent.

Facebook, unsurprisingly, took the title of most popular third-party app provider, with 68.6% of homescreens having at least one of Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Pages or Instagram.

If you want to share your homescreen but can’t be bothered to download an app to do it, you can tweet a screengrab with the hashtag #homescreen2014.

Dropbox’s Carousel photo & video gallery app arrives on iPad & web

Jordan Kahn Nov 20 2014 - 10:05 am PT

First launched on iPhone earlier this year, Dropbox announced today that it’s launching its Carousel photo and video gallery app for iPad users. The company is also bringing the experience to the web at carousel.dropbox.com.

Part of making the best home for your photos is giving you a fast, simple, beautiful way to engage with your pictures, however and wherever you want. Today, we’re excited to announce big steps towards that goal: Carousel for web, iPad, and Android tablet.

In addition, the iOS apps add the ability to share to Instagram and WhatsApp with today’s update.

The Carousel app offers easy sharing of one or multiple photos to contacts or email addresses and allows users to get around many of the upload limitations usually associated with sharing photos. With everything backed up in full resolution directly to Dropbox, the app is essentially a standalone experience for managing to photos and videos stored in Dropbox.

A look at the Carousel UI for web is below:

The Carousel for iPad app is available on the App Store now for free.

What’s New in Version 1.7

We’ve updated Carousel with one of your most requested features: support for iPad! Now, view your photos and continue conversations on a bigger screen.

Plus, we’ve added support for posting to Instagram and WhatsApp!

Instagram revamps Explore tab, adds caption & location editing

Zac Hall Nov 10 2014 - 12:38 pm PT

3 Comments

After updating its app for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus last month, Instagram is out with a feature update today with some welcome features.

Users will likely appreciate the ability to edit photo captions and locations attached to photos in post now. That means if you make a typo on your caption, you no longer have to choose between correcting yourself in the comments, deleting and re-posting the photo with the correction caption, or just ignoring it altogether.
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Apple’s design team headed to Paris Fashion Week, likely for Apple Watch event

Jordan Kahn Sep 29 2014 - 9:04 am PT

6 Comments

Is that Jony Ive and Marc Newson at the top right?

Update: Both relevant photos have since been removed from Instagram.

Following a report earlier today that Apple and French fashion retailer Colette were teasing a one day in-store experience, there’s now more evidence the collaboration might be for Apple’s upcoming Apple Watch. It appears that Apple’s design team could also be headed to the event or at least to the same city, lending more weight to the idea that Apple Watch is about to get some stage time during Paris Fashion Week.
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Instagram’s Hyperlapse video shooter adds support for front camera & iPhone 6/6 Plus

Zac Hall Sep 25 2014 - 10:23 am PT

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Last month Instagram launched a new video shooting app for iPhone and iPad that combines effects like time-lapse and cinema stabilization called Hyperlapse. Today Instagram is introducing what they call the “selfielapse” by adding support for shooting Hyperlapse videos with the front facing camera on your device using the same features previously only available on the back camera…

Instagram details the technology behind its new Hyperlapse app

Zac Hall Aug 27 2014 - 11:40 am PT

3 Comments

As you can see above, Instagram’s new Hyperlapse app that debuted yesterday is one of the most simple apps on the surface. It does two things: shoots video in either portrait or landscape and changes speed from 1x to 12x for a time-lapse effect. There’s not very much other user interface aside from the record button and speed slider (and the share screen after you save a video), but under the hood there’s a lot of really smart stuff going on with Hyperlapse.

For those interested in all the under-the-hood work that went in to Hyperlapse’s video stabilization and time-lapse features, Instagram’s engineers behind the app have published a blog post detailing the technology that makes it all work.

The blog post goes into Hyperlapse’s approach to video stabilization, time-lapse stabilization, and adaptive zoom to detail how it all works under the surface. Below is a snippet including a chart describing one of the algorithms used by the app.

Video stabilization is instrumental in capturing beautiful fluid videos. In the movie industry, this is achieved by having the camera operator wear a harness that separates the motion of the camera from the motion of the operator’s body. Since we can’t expect Instagrammers to wear a body harness to capture the world’s moments, we instead developed Cinema, which uses the phone’s built-in gyroscope to measure and remove unwanted hand shake.

The diagram below shows the pipeline of the Cinema stabilization algorithm. We feed gyroscope samples and frames into the stabilizer and obtain a new set of camera orientations as output. These camera orientations correspond to a smooth “synthetic” camera motion with all the unwanted kinks and bumps removed.

If you’re interested in the wonkier side of capturing video and software, give Instagram’s post a read and check out Hyperlapse for iPhone and iPad on the App Store.

Instagram introduces Hyperlapse to stabilize and speed up your video

Zac Hall Aug 26 2014 - 8:22 am PT

6 Comments

Facebook-owned Instagram is introducing a new video capturing app for iPhone and iPad (and Android soon) called Hyperlapse. The photo (and video) sharing social network recently soft launched a new app called Bolt in Singapore, South Africa, and New Zealand that focused on quickly photo messaging friends, but Hyperlapse is more like an advanced feature that could have been found within Instagram. Hyperlapse offers up a unique way to capture and edit video using processor smarts to make panning shots smoother and add a time-lapse effect similar to the iOS 8 camera app.

Pixite’s new 3D photo editing app Matter debuts on iPhone and iPad

Zac Hall Jul 24 2014 - 6:00 am PT

5 Comments

Pixite is out today with a new photo editing app for iPhone and iPad called Matter. The app allows you to embed and manipulate 3D objects in your photography or photos from others to give your photos an impressive science fiction effect. This is achieved by Matter’s ability to intelligently apply shadows and reflections that match your photography to its library of 3D objects. You can see examples of images edited in Matter above and more details about the photo editing app below…
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City of Cupertino provides update on Apple’s Campus 2 progress with new aerial shot

Jordan Kahn Jul 21 2014 - 10:08 am PT

Following a number of amateur aerial shots of Apple’s Campus 2 construction popping up on Instagram and elsewhere online, today the City of Cupertino shared our best yet look at progress on the site with an aerial shot of the entire campus. The shot doesn’t just show the main circular “spaceship” structure, but also work starting on the the entire surrounding campus.
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Tweetbot for iPhone can now post and view multiple images per Tweet

Mark Gurman Jun 12 2014 - 5:27 pm PT

6 Comments

Popular third-party Twitter client Tweetbot for iPhone was updated to version 3.4 with some nice new features and enhancements today. Most notably, the app can now post and view up to four photos per Tweet. This is in line with functionality that Twitter added to its official application a few months ago.

Support for viewing/posting multiple twitter images (multiple images won’t show up in search or streaming timeline until Twitter enables it in the future)
Image detail views show corresponding tweet when relevant
Instagram videos now marked with play icon
Spanish Localization

The update, as can be seen in the release notes above, also adds various other images enhancements, a new play icon for Instagram videos, and localization for Spanish. For what it’s worth, users are also reporting that this update fixes some problems for iOS 8 Tweetbot users. The update is free on the App Store, and the app costs $4.99 for new downloads. You can read our full review of Tweetbot 3.0 from launch here.

Instagram for iPhone updated with new photo editing features, faster sharing, more

Zac Hall Jun 3 2014 - 10:00 am PT

7 Comments

Instagram today released a major update to its popular photo sharing app for smartphones. The latest release, Instagram 6.0, packs in several new photo editing tools including light and dark adjustments, sharpening effects, color adjustments, filter strengths, and more.

When you go to select a filter, you’ll now see a new wrench icon. Tap it and you’ll find a tray of photo editing tools ready for you to explore. You can also now adjust how much of a filter you apply to a photo by double tapping the filter icon.

The update comes just a day after Apple previewed iOS 8 which includes its own photo editing advancements in the native Photos app similar to those found in apps like iPhoto.
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Photo editing pioneer Hipstamatic offers Vine-like video app, Cinamatic

Ben Lovejoy May 8 2014 - 4:13 am PT

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Hipstamatic led the way in offering a fast and fun way to edit and share photos from an iPhone, but has been a little slow to move into video. The company has now corrected this, launching the Cinamatic app designed to compete with Vine and Instagram.

Cinamatic lets you shoot short videos ranging from 3-15 seconds, apply filters to them and then share on Vine, Instagram and Facebook – or send them via email or Messages …
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WhatsApp announces 64 billion messages sent through its texting app — in just one day

Mike Beasley Apr 2 2014 - 12:14 am PT

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Whatsapp, the popular messaging client for iOS and Android, announced today on Twitter that it had reached a new record for messages sent in a single day. With 20 billion outgoing messages and 44 incoming messages handled in a single 24-hour period, the grand total came out to 64 billion.

[tweet https://twitter.com/WhatsApp/status/451198381856014337 align=’center’]

Here’s a little perspective on that number: Instagram recently announced that its users had posted 20 billion photos to the service. You’ll notice that’s not a statistic for one day. It’s the total number of photos shared in the history of the network.

That means that in one day, Whatsapp handled over three times as many requests as Instagram has since it launched three years ago. Not too shabby.

Facebook reaches 1 billion active mobile users, 200 million Instagram accounts

Mike Beasley Mar 25 2014 - 4:45 pm PT